THE CRUCIBLE
1
Of his mother’s anxious inner life during these latter weeks Oswald had
known nothing. Children accept the outer semblance shown them by their
elders as implicitly as they take food from their hands. When his mother
sat in silence he might wonder--after a while--as to the cause of it,
and marvel that she should be sad. For sorrow, bitter though it may be
to childhood in the first moment, is shed like tears and as easily
forgotten. Oswald remembered with a diligently nurtured sadness that his
little sister was dead; that he had lost his father years before. But
these things, as reasons for present grief, seemed vague and difficult
to comprehend. When, after some deeper silence than usual, he looked up
to see the slow tears creeping down his mother’s face, he experienced a
feeling of embarrassment bordering on shame, and after gazing long
enough to reassure himself that his first glance had not erred, he
turned away his eyes as from some spectacle to which it was not meet he
should be party. When his mother gazed into her purse and sighed, the
act prompted him to recall that they were very poor, and he reflected a
look appropriately mournful--not that he comprehended, save at second
hand, what poorness signified; for always he had food to eat, and
clothes to wear, and sometimes a whole penny in his pocket to spend.
Between him and the outer world his mother intervened; its shrill blasts
reached him only through the thickets of her love--stirring her
solicitude above him, like the raging wind subdued to soporific
faintness in the topmost branches of tall forest trees.
But he was aware, since little Beryl’s death, that a hush had fallen
over life, as if each day were Sunday. Their voices had never quite
regained their old brightness; and if ever Oswald broke into song upon
the stairs, he checked himself at once with a sense of guilt. He was
aware, too, that something secret and impalpable, something like a
tissue of the finest gauze, wrapped him to his mother in a new
relationship of love. He was aware that he had grown more precious to
her since Beryl’s death, and though he did his utmost to dissimulate
unworthy feelings, the boy in him could not ignore the proud
consequences resulting from this increase in his value. Yes. He meant
more to his mother; she leaned on him. She looked to him; he found her
eyes upon him set in a gaze of worship and admiration ... and he
experienced the tremble of pride trying prodigiously to be humble; of an
elation struggling to be duly sad. And though he was sensible of the
restraint imposed upon his youth by the necessity to act this graver
part, and though--from time to time--his impulses broke out and
traitorously betrayed him; the weeks that passed since Beryl’s death
enfolded his life in a sort of sanctified and golden glamour. The
supernatural softness of his mother’s voice and eyes; the religious
sublimity of his own behaviour which, as a detached spectator, he took
occasion to admire from time to time, marvelling at the heights of
righteousness his conduct reached--without effort or conscious striving,
but by a kind of natural aptitude as if he had (indeed) a genius for
being good. He would say “Yes, mother,” “No, mother” and “If you please,
mother” in such tones as he knew she loved to hear; and walked upstairs
with a tread so considerate of the hallowed home he lived in, and of
his mother’s feelings, as brought the blush of self-appraisement to his
brow. He did--like most of us--the things that capture praise, and it
was a joy to him to live in a world where goodness found such prompt
appreciation and such ineffable reward. Nay, he even reached that
pinnacle of exalted attainment where he was able to commiserate inferior
humanity, and ask how men could ever stoop to sin at all, with such
incentive to be virtuous.
Although Oswald possessed the quick eye and instantaneous observance of
outward things that is the heritage of healthy youth, he had as yet
acquired no skill at all in the art of translation from the open page of
life and drawing inference from fact. Thus, the visits of the burly
Councillor had (to him) meant nothing more than what, externally, they
seemed to be. And when his mother disclosed at length the full
significance of what the Councillor’s comings stood for, the
intelligence seemed at first too vast to be packed into the small
compass of his childish mind. Nor could he comprehend how it came to be
that his mother wept over him in imparting the prodigious news, and
clasped him to her heart, and implored him “never ... never to forget
his own dear father.” But already he had arrived at the stage of
understanding which accepts as fact that feminine tears mean different
things at different times, and that they are not always to be taken as
implying pain and grief alone, but stand sometimes for joys and prides,
and feelings too remote for words, and memories which no speech can
adequately represent. He was too young, as yet, to scorn his mother’s
tears; he held them rather in a mute respect as emblems of a wisdom
higher than his own. His youth felt vaguely conscious of its inability
to read or understand them. Nor was the announcement with which they
were accompanied much more comprehensible to his mind. At first the
tidings spread over his intelligence and clouded his present melancholy
happiness in life like a great sad cloud. But little by little,
gathering reassurance from his mother’s voice, and mollified by the
extra love which she pressed on his acceptance, as if it had been a
tempting slice of birthday cake, he began to recover confidence. Those
changes that older people stand in dread of show friendly to the heart
of youth. His quick eye saw a hundred possibilities in this wonderful
event disclosed to him, and his tongue--seeking after
enlightenment--betrayed too clearly to his mother’s ears the eagerness
within him. What? Did it mean that they were going to leave their
present home? Did it mean that they were both of them to go and live at
Rockery House, overlooking the Town Acres, upon the Hunmouth Road?
It hurt her, as she had foreknown it would, to find how greedily her
son’s words grasped after these new possibilities in life, and she asked
him with reproachful sadness in her tones: Would he be glad to leave
this house ... that had been home to them for so long? The tone and the
phrasing of her question were not lost upon him, and he dropped his
head. No. He would not be glad. He would be sorry ... for some
things.--But were they really going to leave it, all the same? Were
they, mother?
Yes. They were going to leave it.
And were they going to live in Councillor Burford’s big house?
She said “Yes....” and closed her eyes.
Only one consideration shadowed his eager face with doubt.
Would Miss Burford live there too? And when his mother reassured him:
“No, dear,” he drew a deep breath. Little by little his keen imagination
attached itself to the project. Just as his mother did--unknown to
him--though with infinitely more success, he tuned his mind to the
impending change. The first stupefaction gave place to zeal, to
enthusiasm, to pride. When the big Councillor called one day,
and--having first enquired of Mrs. Holmroyd: “Have you got him told yet,
ma’am?” and being assured she had--took Oswald by the sleeve and asked
him: “Well my lad! What do you think of me for your new father?”
Oswald’s bosom swelled with a vast importance. He began to experience a
pride in this great new acquisition to the family prestige. Yes. He
began to be proud that this big, broad man with the grey beard and the
authoritative voice, and substantial square-toed, well-blacked boots,
was soon to be his second father. The thought of the shop in High Gate,
with the two bowed windows and the big tea canisters and the abysmal
bottles of boiled sweets, coated inside with their delectable sugary
bloom, and the assistants in their white aprons and uprolled
sleeves--filled him with fervour. His youthful ardours, playing about
the thought of it, imbued the shop with unsuspected marvels. The magic
of accessibility threw it into a terrific light. He began to conceive a
passion for grocery and all pertaining to it. And then, the splendid
house along the Hunmouth Road, approachable through a cast-iron gate
with a corrugated handle; and the impressive Mansion House where
Councillor Burford walked in and out with perfect freedom, and showed
his head above the moreen curtains in the Council Chamber. All these
things were, in a sense, secured to him by a sudden change in the decree
of providence, as inexplicable as it was welcome. His only fear began to
be that providence might change its mind and cause something--as
inexplicable and unexpected as what had already taken place--to bring
his hopes to naught. He would wake up in the morning with an awful fear
that destiny had changed direction in the night; that this radiant
vision of stepfathers and groceries had been destroyed. And he would
scan his mother’s face with dread to find the confirmation of his
fears--asking her at length, if its testimony seemed inconclusive: “Are
we ... still going to live there?” He did not know--how could he--that
his obvious eagerness for the change herself so greatly dreaded, made
her martyrdom the more. For she could not disclose to her son the sheer
mainspring of necessity that moved her. She could not tell him that what
brought such joy and interest to his thoughtless youth, was, in some
sort, the crucifixion of his mother’s soul. And against his boyish pride
in the acquisition of a stepfather, and his ill-concealed enthusiasm for
the shop in High Gate, and all that pertained to it, she had no word to
say. This act of choice was hers, not his. But it hurt her. Oh, it cut
and hurt her to be the recipient of his unguarded confidences; to note
the pride that got the better of his tongue; to mark his readiness to
leave this home; his impatience to be associated with all that mortified
her.
If only her resources had permitted it, she would have striven to keep
the evil indefinitely at bay. But she perceived with something akin to
desperation, that her slender store was trickling to its end--with that
illusory acceleration which marks the passing of the last grains of sand
through the neck of the hourglass. If she delayed the inevitable day too
long, its evil would be but the more. Not as a pauper, surely, could her
pride consent to be the wife of Mr. Burford. All her self-respect
recoiled from the necessity to disclose her straitened circumstances to
him, or undergo--perforce--the degradation of his aid. And so, when the
Councillor attacked the subject of their marriage in a more practical
vein, saying to Mrs. Holmroyd: “Now ma’am. Surely I’ve given you time
enough to think things over and get your mind prepared. Don’t you think
we might be settling our plans and getting things in motion? When people
of our age decides upon a step like this, there’s no call for long
delays. At our time of life long engagements seem ridic’lous, and
exposes us to folks’s laughter. I propose ma’am, that we should push our
plans forward without delay, and get comfortably settled.”
... So when the Councillor spoke thus, standing in his overcoat on Mrs.
Holmroyd’s hearthrug, with his broad shoulders to the grate, and his
square felt hat, brim uppermost, upon the table, she could only tremble
with an inward spasm of alarm, and keep silence for fear the spoken word
might injure prudence and betray her into the power of her own weakness.
“Well ma’am?” the Councillor urged her. “Don’t you see the force of my
argument? Don’t you think, so long as we’ve made up our minds to get
married, that it’ll be wiser for us both to waste no time, but get the
whole business over and done with, and settle down comfortable? Life
won’t last for ever, ma’am, for either of us. There’s nothing in the
world to wait for, that I can see. Me and you’ll be older; that’s all.”
It was the last of her resistance. She took no further stand against his
wish. After all, her pride had enjoyed the poor comfort of submitting to
his persuasions; it had been spared the pressure of necessity. The only
time she asked for now was just such time as might be necessary to wind
off the skein of the Spring Bank Gardens life and free herself from the
obligations of her present home. As for the furniture....
“Why, you won’t need that now, ma’am,” the Councillor decided, passing
his practical, business eye over the effects displayed to view, in one
comprehensive and depreciatory glance that made Mrs. Holmroyd’s heart
beat faster.
“Not need it?” she stammered weakly, not daring for very shame to
champion what his eyes and voice had so emphatically disparaged.
“There’s as much furniture as ever you’ll want, and as good (I venture
to say) up yonder, ma’am. You won’t want to encumber yourself with a lot
of old rubbish--even if there was room for it at the other end. But
there isn’t.”
She looked and listened with a face of white dismay, but the Councillor
was too preoccupied with his task of bland dispraisement to note the
havoc wrought within his listener’s feelings. “I should pack it all off
to the sale-room, ma’am, and be done with it. Not that it will fetch a
deal--is that there table mahogany?--but it will be out of the road.
You’ve not much upstairs in the bedroom way, ma’am, I believe? I’ve
never been myself; I’m only going by what I understood Annie to say
after she’d paid you a call one afternoon.”
Against such masculine authority she dared not pit herself. She said
after a pause, in a voice directed obviously to his better feelings,--a
voice of veiled imploration:
“These things are of old association. For me ... they have a sentimental
value.”
“Aye, ma’am, sentiment!” the Councillor concurred, in an indulgent tone
which made her a present of the quality for what it was worth, whilst
showing his practical contempt of it. “But we can’t live on sentiment,
ma’am. That’s what I find in my business, at all events. Customers
doesn’t come to me for sentiment. They come to me for Value--and unless
they get it they’ll go elsewhere. What’s sentiment when you look at
things sensible? It’s only a hindrance ma’am, if you let it interfere
with practical affairs. There’s individuals in the Council Chamber, and
as many more outside it, that talks sentiment to hide their lack of
common sense. ‘Don’t remove such and such a pump,’ they say. ‘It’s
stood there since I was a lad.’ ‘Aye,’ says I, ‘and what use is it now
that every house has water laid on to its kitchen? I’ll wager not a
bucketful’s been drawn by anybody this past two years. Folks has grown a
deal too proud to be seen fetching _their_ water from a pump in public.
They’ll only condescend, nowadays, to go out to fetch beer.’ Take my
advice ma’am, and don’t give way to sentiment. It doesn’t pay.”
She protested: “Oh, Mr. Burford.... You do not surely mean all you say.
This pianoforte ... I used to practise on it as a girl. My mother....”
She could say no more, for many memories choked the source of speech,
and she turned away her head to hide the tears.
“Why ma’am,” said the Councillor, embarrassed by this unexpected sequel
to a harangue whose delivery had impressed him not a little, as serving
to give his future wife a hint of the eloquent common-sense her
husband-elect was able to disseminate upon occasion. “I wasn’t referring
to the piano, particular. I was speaking general, you understand. So far
as the piano goes”.... He bent on it an eye of judicial condescension,”
... I won’t say but what we can’t find room for that.”
She plucked up courage to thank him. “Indeed, I hope so. I should be
most grateful ...” and linked the table quickly to the favour granted,
and some of the pictures, and the mirror....
“To be sure ... to be sure,” the Councillor accorded. “We can find a
place for a few old odds and ends, on which you set particular store.
But ...” he crimped his brow and turned it about the four walls of the
room as if to suggest the difficulty of the task she set him. “I hope
you’ll be reasonable, ma’am, and bring no more than what there’s room
for. Such things as carpets and window curtains and slates and
schoolbooks would be best got rid of. They’d only be lumber where
they’re going to.” This she did not contest. Its material truth was too
patent to be argued. And yet, for her, even the humblest objects that
had once formed part of her home; nay, had formed the outer portion of
her very self (as to Mrs. Holmroyd it seemed), had a value almost
individual. They were,--so she had sometimes phrased it to her inner
ear, “the soul’s anchorage”; something by which in hours of grief and
moments of adversity she could stabilize the violent fluctuations of
self and feel unchanged by reason of the companionship of things long
known. To enter this strange man’s house with no reminders of the old
life left, was to break association with the past. He forfeited nothing.
His home, his shop, his daily round--all the familiar extensions of
himself remained unchanged. He gained a wife; he gave up nothing of
environment. She, on the contrary, must needs lose all, or most, and
find what comfort she could amid surroundings strange and storyless.
Little by little (so she felt) her life was being outstripped. That part
of it in which her dearest thoughts resided was being put off like a
skin. Soon she would acquire a fresh integument showing nothing of the
old pattern.
Slowly she would begin to take on the character of her new surroundings;
assume the hue; absorb into her inmost self the tincture of the strange
life entered. Nay! “God forbid!” her conscience cried out loud within
her. Through all, in spite of all, must she cling with passionate
allegiance to that earlier self with all its sacred memories and
obligations. That was the nature of the reverie into which her thoughts
dipped swiftly, with the swiftness of a swallow on the wing, as she
stood in the little Spring Bank Gardens parlour confronting her future
husband. Some of his words in her abstraction she failed to hear, but
she returned to consciousness of his voice. He was asking her to “call
round to-morrow, ma’am, and take a look at the house. It’s time you did.
I venture to think there’s not much you’ll find--or seek--to alter. But
you’re going to be mistress, and it’s only right you should have a voice
in things. I’ll tell you quite straightforward that I’m a man that
doesn’t care for a bit more change than there’s any reason for. The
house has suited me well enough for twenty years--and I believe I know
you well enough by this time, ma’am, to think it will suit _you_. With
all her faults Annie was a good housekeeper. She overdid it, we all
know. She’s been spring-cleaning ever since I let her know that things
was settled betwixt us. She says she’s not going to have you come into
the place and cry shame on her, and you shan’t be able to throw the dust
of the house after her when she’s gone. She won’t be there to-morrow,
ma’am. That’s why I should like you to call then, if quite convenient.
She’ll be going to stay with her Aunt Matilda after awhile.”
“ ... Yes. I’ll tell you quite straightforward that I’m a man that
doesn’t care for a bit more change than there’s any reason for.” The
phrase sank deep into her consciousness. She, the woman, was being asked
to change her name, her home, her habits, everything. He, the man of
business, who had no use for sentiment, was yet bound tight enough to
institutions by a something not more rational than sentiment, albeit of
a tempered hardness and dignified with a sterner name. Through his
marked desire to gratify and please her, his deference to her feelings,
his obvious care to misrepresent himself to her in nothing, but to take
his stand on the uncompromising pedestal of common-sense--she yet
divined more clearly, the closer she approached to it, the narrow nature
of the life awaiting her.
2
To nobody in Daneborough did Mrs. Holmroyd shrink from making the
disclosure of her impending marriage more than to Elizabeth. She shirked
it so effectually in fact, that Elizabeth spared her all initiative by
bringing the news to her own door, where--on entering--she flung
dramatic hands to heaven, and cried with the emotional fervour that
agitated her withered frame on the slightest occasion:
“Oh missus! And you never told me!”
For Elizabeth it was a fresh evidence of the world’s conspiracy against
her. Mrs. Holmroyd had withheld the news on purpose. This deliberate
secrecy was but part of a design.
“You’ve finished with me’m!” the old woman declared. “Now you’ve gotten
Joe Burford, and will be Mayoress one of these fine days, you don’t
intend to have nothing more to do with me. You’ll be same as Miss
Burford. You’ll be overproud to have me about the place, for fear I
might tell the servants I’d a chance of being Joe Burford’s mother if
I’d liked.”
Elizabeth’s shaft--wildly though she sped it--struck the target if it
did not pierce its centre. Her awareness of this painful convergence of
their two destinies in the Burford circle had troubled Mrs. Holmroyd
deeper than she dared admit. What Elizabeth’s undaunted independence had
declined, her own extremity had accepted. She was oppressed with the
humiliating sense of stooping to fallen crusts, rendered unsavoury by
association. And she felt no easier in spirit when Elizabeth, harping on
a theme dear to her heart, exclaimed:
“Aye’m! I ought to ha’ took him when I’d chance. Lots o’ folks has told
me so. If I had ’a’ done I should be living in yon fine house now, with
other women charring for me.” She praised Mrs. Holmroyd’s wisdom, that
would have been a lesson to her (she said) ‘nobbut it had come fifty
year before.’ “I thought then’m, that I should be able to work for ever.
Who wanted old Joe Burford i’ them days, wi’ his mucky aud appron and
muffin basket? I was a deal keener to be free to earn my own meat wi’ my
own hands. But if I could ’a’ seen then what I see now. Hands doesn’t
last for ever, nor eyes’m. Nor friends!” she added with a terrible
gesture of despair. “Nay’m! Friends is the first things a body loses. No
matter how hard you work, nor what you do for them’m, they’ve finished
with you moment you begin to fail.”
But her first energies of despair, dying down beneath Mrs. Holmroyd’s
gentle assurance of faith, welled into the customary tears, contrite and
supplicative. She hadn’t meant it. She’d spoke too hasty. “Don’t _you_
be angry with me’m,” she begged, “and turn again me for what I’ve just
said. It’s true of anybody but you. You’d never act like other people, I
know.” And her tremulous ambition besought but one boon of Mrs.
Holmroyd’s clemency. “Let me come and work for you when you get yonder!”
she supplicated. “Aye, do’m! You’ll only keep one servant. You’ll want
someone to come on Mondays to wash. I’d rather come and wash for you,”
she cried, “than anybody in Daneborough.” And her triumph was terrible
to see when Mrs. Holmroyd--touched by the dread spectacle of old age
warring, single handed, against the world--gave the necessary sanction.
“Aye! I knew it! I knew it!” Elizabeth declaimed, in a voice of such
passionate conviction as made the globe ring on the little chandelier;
for she stood in the passage just beyond the parlour door. “I knew
_you’d_ stand by me. I knew you wouldn’t throw me aside like Her! Oh’m!
I’d give all I’ve got to see her face when I tell her what you’ve
promised, and let her know I shall be charring up yonder long after
she’s gone.”
“ ... Make mischief’m?” she protested, in response to Mrs. Holmroyd’s
shocked admonition. “_Me_’m?” she emphasized reproachfully. “I’d scorn
to do such a thing. It’s not my way’m. But I shall be forced to tell her
when she asks me. For she’ll ask me’m. I know she will. It wouldn’t be
her if she didn’t.”
And on the next occasion of her working for Mrs. Holmroyd she brought
the tidings of a terrible encounter with the Councillor’s daughter. The
big black shawl in which Elizabeth stood enveloped tossed like a thing
alive, diabolically agitated by the emotions underneath it. She had told
Miss Burford.... Ah! she had told Miss Burford things to make the heart
of any widow turn cold. “Mrs. Holmroyd is a lady ...” she had told her.
“Which you never were and never will be.” “Mrs. Holmroyd knows my value
a hundred times better than what you do. She’s begged me to work for
her. Yes. I’m to get the place fit for her to come to. Mrs. Holmroyd
says (this). Mrs. Holmroyd says (that).” All the indignation long pent
up within Elizabeth’s bosom had been given (so it seemed) additional
authority by being passed through Mrs. Holmroyd’s lips. Mrs. Holmroyd
constituted the mouthpiece of all that Elizabeth’s triumphant anger had
to say.
“Oh! if you could ’a’ seen her face then’m!” she cried, her triumph
blind to the altered countenance confronting her. “If you could ’a’ seen
colour she turned. Red and green--and at last as white as yon
tablecloth. Oh, it would ’a’ done you good’m.”
Remonstrance with such uplifted passion was vain. Mrs. Holmroyd could
only bow her head to the storm let loose upon her outraged feelings. All
this, her impotent distress divined, was part of the harvest of her
reaping; part of her judgment.
Now what in these days of encounter with such compromising realities had
become of the Great Ideal?
Little indeed, it has to be confessed. Like some frail lantern striving
in a gale, so many gusts and blasts had blown upon it that at times its
flame looked to be perilously overset, if not extinguished quite. For no
man cares to recall his better motives when he acts deliberately
according to his worst, and a feeling akin to shame had deterred Mrs.
Holmroyd from dwelling on the Great Ideal--being all too conscious of
the doubtful nature of the road on which she travelled now to reach it.
But the details of Elizabeth’s encounter; the judicial sentence passed
by Mr. Burford upon her scanty furniture, and Oswald’s over-eager
acceptance of all the terms and conditions of the new life, awakened her
to a sense of danger imminent and real. The Great Ideal must be revived;
the smouldering lamp relit. She had been thinking (so her reproaches
ran) too much about herself during these recent days to pay true heed to
the welfare of her son. She had dwelt too utterly on the sacrifice which
her motherhood must make; too little on the glorious object of it. That
she must forfeit many of her own most deeply held ideals meant nothing,
if she could succeed in keeping true to the one ideal of Duty. Surely
all other ideals were--or ought to be--subordinate to this. They were
all comprised within this one strict law. Duty was the more than half of
love; the more than half of faith; the more than half of charity; the
more than half of everything that made life livable and justified it to
itself. For everything that love might do, duty might do. Less brightly,
to be sure, but not less thoroughly. Nay, was it not the very frame and
skeleton of love; the hard, strong staff that love itself must use to
lean on, and that--in love’s hands--put forth its blossoms and flowered
like a living shrub? Let her sacrifice be complete and noble, not
grudged and mean. Of what avail was prayer, so long as her poor material
self resisted all that prayer besought?
... So the lantern was relit, and Oswald--not without some wonder and
perplexity and vague disquiet--felt once more upon his shoulder the
burden of the Great Ideal. For already, in his boyish mind, he had been
disposed to give up his earlier pact, and every obligation contained in
it, as readily as he renounced his present home--in joyous exchange for
the brighter future beckoning him, and shining before his sight like a
brand new penny. Already, indeed, he had completed his preparation to
exchange the old Best of Fathers for the new. And his aspirations, tired
of running errands in quest of a vague and indefinable Ideal had
relapsed comfortably upon ambitions nearer home. The double-fronted shop
in the High Gate to his readjusted vision offered all that the most
ambitious spirit could desire. And to have a broad town councillor for
Father, and to live in a house standing behind railings and a rockery on
the Hunmouth Road, seemed in themselves attainments so lofty that it
damped his ardour to be told these things spelled not finality of
greatness; that they affected him personally not at all, and that still
his spirit must press forward to its unknown destination, leaving these
splendours far behind. But with the quick duplicity of youth he hid from
his mother’s searching look all the more incriminating evidences of his
culpability. Through his momentarily flagging underlip, and the tremour
of his eyelids beneath a gaze more searching than his guilty eye could
bear, Mrs. Holmroyd divined something of the boy’s trouble, flinching
under the burden reimposed. But he possessed the fickleness of mind that
is one of the most touching attributes of youth; the prompt reaction to
fresh needs and appetites aroused; so putting aside obediently the
bright new playthings of his fancy which were his hourly solace now, he
took up--at his mother’s wish--the thumbed and tattered and neglected
primer of ideals, and studied diligently at her knee the book he had
believed and hoped for ever laid aside. And to earn the praise which is
so precious to the young, he acted the part which he knew by experience
that his mother most desired to see him play.
“ ... And shall I go to the Grammar School, now, mother?” he asked, and
she answered--after just a moment’s hesitation--“Yes, dear.”
It was perhaps less dazzling, this Grammar School, to an imagination
that had once fed on the immoderate delights of flour bins and humbug
bottles and candied fruits and sugar scoops. But he tried his loyal
hardest to make the best of the Ideal; stimulated his pride once more
with thoughts of grammar-schools and mortarboards, and sought to puff up
his stature to the dimensions of the great things expected of him,
keeping nevertheless the closest watch upon occasion, like some obedient
dog that knows itself forbidden to solicit food at table, and yet builds
terrific hopes on the beseechful moisture of its muzzle and the
supplicative brightness of its eyes. Who knows!... Who knows.... So
thought this little boy within himself. Even hopes come true at times.
3
And now they were arrived at the last weeks of uncertainty and
expectation. They were come, indeed, so close to the inevitable that
Mrs. Holmroyd’s misery out-grew all wish or effort to prolong itself
against the evil hour, and was possessed only of that last desire of the
truly wretched--to drain their cup and drown anticipation in reality.
Yet despite this fact, so many tasks and duties called upon her time
that--in her rare moments of leisure, when the true self could escape
from the network of necessities--she even reproached her conduct with
indifference, saying: “I do not feel things as I should. Surely, there
are a hundred claims upon my sadness, and yet I never heed them. Can it
be that I am become hardened; that my feelings have lost their finer
edge?” Curiously enough, her apprehensions that had, at one time, filled
all the future with dismay, were resolved now into a single dread of the
marriage ceremony. She dreaded the ordeal of strange eyes; the moment of
publicity that should expose her to the scrutiny of a carnal
world,--repeating to herself, as though the invocation were a prayer:
“Oh, if it were only over!” The years that were to follow seemed as
naught by comparison with those few brief moments of publicity; that
narrow, bitter portal of experience through which she would be
constrained to pass.
Almost every day the Councillor’s broad and well-blacked boots traversed
the Spring Bank pavement, and after a prefatory knock his large hand
pushed open Mrs. Holmroyd’s door. The subject of the marriage ceremony
offered a theme of close deliberation between them.
“We don’t want no unnecessary fuss, ma’am,” the Councillor had told his
future wife. “Neither of us. In our case it’s not called for. We’re not
going into marriage with any silly, nonsensical ideas, and our heads
stuck up in the clouds, as if we was young people. We’re walking into it
in a reasonable manner, and it would be a mistake in my humble opinion
to make more of that business than what it is. Something plain and
simple, ma’am, would suit me--and I venture to think you’re of the same
way of thinking.”
The Councillor’s “venture to think” had all the force of a behest. He
used it, as Mrs. Holmroyd had by this time come to be aware, as an
imperative expression of his will, and she had already assumed that
secret attitude of mind which sought its refuge in submission. And
though she more than shared the Councillor’s desire for simplicity, the
need of it hurt her none the less. All the dignities and decencies of
what by right should go to constitute the act of marriage seemed
lacking. They could no longer stand before the sight of God and man with
that uplifting pride in the rightness of their mutual choice, and faith
in one another. Not--as on that first, ineffable occasion--could she
move towards the altar steps, sustained by love undoubting and undimmed.
That love, she knew despairingly, had been given once for all. Such
bridal veil as now alone she might rightly wear was the thick veil
wrapped about her feelings, to keep the inner eyes from seeing the truth
too clearly. For her and him--she realized with pain--the solemnities of
marriage were a mockery. And yet, something in her nature cried out for,
and seemed as if it could not dispense with, these very solemnities
which reproached and mocked her spirit with the blessed food of which it
lacked the power to partake. To his suggestion of being married at the
Register Office, “very quiet, ma’am,” Mrs. Holmroyd did indeed offer an
emphatic opposition. Where questions of common-sense were in debate she
yielded to his wish nine times out of ten without a word,--just as she
might have laid her submissive hand upon his offered arm. But the higher
spiritual altitudes had come to be acknowledged tacitly as hers. Here,
in a region of the judgment compromising no pounds, shillings and pence,
the Councillor gave way to her with a great air of condescension and
magnanimity. The mere sight of Mrs. Holmroyd’s shocked face had been
sufficient to make him instantly withdraw his suggestion.
“I see it doesn’t exactly meet with your approval, ma’am,” he said.
“And I’ve no desire to force you, nor nobody, against their feelings.
The Register Office would be nice and quiet, and I’m well known to the
Registrar, who’d do anything to make things comfortable for us both.
There’d be no sightseers let in to stare out of idle curiosity at
business that doesn’t concern them. But I see you don’t like the idea
ma’am, and so we’ll drop it. I’m willing to meet your wishes in the
matter. If you don’t care for the register office, how would _my_ place
of Worship suit you?”
He referred now to the stark, stone chapel in Friar’s Gate, built after
the pattern of a child’s house with freestone blocks in place of wooden
bricks, and the alternative (it transpired) suited Mrs. Holmroyd no
better. Already she had made it clear to Mr. Burford that their marriage
must be understood to cost her no part of those religious observances to
which, from childhood, she had been used, and to which both by
conviction and deep association she was indissolubly bound, and the
Councillor had said at once: “To be sure, ma’am. To be sure. I’ve
nothing to say against that. It’s sound and reasonable, and stands to
common-sense. I should be sorry to interfere with anybody’s religious
views.... I suppose, ma’am,” he added; “you don’t mean to imply that
you’d entertain any objection to accompany me now and again to _my_
place of worship? I venture to think you won’t consider that an
unreasonable thing for a man to ask of his wife. I give you credit for
not being bigoted, ma’am.”
And she had said--though not without misgiving, knowing too well the
dangers of compromise in spiritual affairs: “Certainly, Mr. Burford. I
should have no objection ... to going with you occasionally to Friar’s
Gate.”
“People would look for it, ma’am,” he told her with a voice that had
manifestly gained in courage from her assurance. “They’d expect to see
us worship together after we was married. I don’t necessarily mean as a
reg’lar thing. But as frequent as can be arranged agreeable to us both.
As far as I’m concerned,” he said with great toleration, “I flatter
myself I’m a broad-minded man in most things, or I shouldn’t have the
confidence of the burgesses of the West Ward to represent them at the
Council table. And I shouldn’t object to sit beside you at your place of
worship, ma’am, on special occasions and so forth.”
He did not tell her, to be sure, that in the course of his private
cogitations he had come to see in the approaching marriage a favourable
opportunity to cultivate a closer contact with the Established Church.
Up to the present he had been held fixed to his place of nonconformity
by the force of circumstances. Nothing in his life of inflexible routine
between the house, the business and the Council Chamber, had offered the
least excuse for any loosening of the rivets that bound him (to all
outward seeming) to the Wesleyan belief. And yet, apart from the
strength of its external hold upon him, the rigid compactness of its
observances into which from boyhood he had been wedged and mortared like
one of the stones of the chapel’s self, the Councillor’s religious
opinions were less dogmatic than the uncompromising attitude with which,
in public, he subscribed to them might have led outsiders to believe. He
had, at least, mixed with too many men and too many opinions in the
Council Chamber and Mayor’s Parlour to be indifferent to the material
advantages attaching to church membership. Theologically considered, the
Councillor’s opinions on any aspect of religion were negligible; and it
is not unreasonable to suppose that he had kept faithful to his first
fold for the same reason that many husbands remain constant to their
wives--that is to say, for lack of the requisite encouragement to
infidelity. But neither he nor Miss Burford was unaware of the stigma of
inferiority under which their own particular religious body laboured in
the eyes of social Daneborough. The knowledge rankled deep in both their
bosoms, though the Councillor had wit to case his resentments in a
breast of masonry, and show to the world a four-square front that seemed
impervious to slights or envy. Miss Burford’s resentment of the superior
pretentions of church-going Daneborough was, on the contrary, alert and
acrid. To collide by accident with the fashionable stream of worshippers
from St. Gyles’s was to bring instant defiance to her head, and
sharpness to her nose and scorn to her eye. She affected to despise
church-going as a mere outlet for pretentiousness and display. People
only went to church, according to Miss Burford, to show themselves off
and try and make the world believe them of more social importance than
they were. “I suppose she thinks herself Somebody!” had been one of her
contemptuous pronouncements on Mrs. Holmroyd, “because she goes to
Church! I declare I haven’t patience with such people. They haven’t any
religion at all; their worship is nothing but show.”
Despite her breach with her father, she took care to keep in constant
touch with him, for--though she had a daughter’s injury to vindicate,
she had also a woman’s curiosity to satisfy; and there were many points
about this monstrous marriage which her indignation burned to know.
Despite her vehement protestation to the contrary she had deigned to
accept temporary shelter with her brother and his wife in their
narrow-chested raw brick villa forming one of a terrace off the Hunmouth
Road, so recently come into existence that its nether end was still a
sandpit and depository of builder’s debris, the whole area being
impregnated with the odour of mortar and unseasoned wood. Here a
bedroom was being slowly prepared for her under her personal
supervision, and to all acquaintances she spoke of herself as being
already driven from her home. She still slept, however, under her
father’s roof, and whilst professing to take no further part in the
direction of the house, but saying in regard to all matters referred for
her judgment: “Don’t ask _me_. I don’t count for anything any longer.
I’m Nobody!” claiming to be, in point of authority, the inferior of her
father’s servant, whom (saying she never troubled, interfered with, or
corrected now) she nevertheless found ample opportunity to interfere
with and reprehend a great deal.
She had prophesied to more than one of her acquaintances--all of whom
were quite willing to insinuate sympathy with Miss Burford’s cause for
the confidential rewards that such ephemeral allegiance brought
them--she had prophesied: “Mark my words! I would never be a bit
surprised if the marriage was actually to take place in Church. She’s
capable of Anything. And as for my father....” To him, putting the
aspersion adroitly into the mouth of the world, she said, choosing her
opportunity:
“A nice idea! Causing people to talk about you as they do, and saying
the wedding is going to take place in Church!”
“Well,” said the Councillor after awhile, in a tone between repudiation
and contempt. “And what if it is?”
“What if it is!” Miss Burford expostulated, roused by the triumph of
conviction. “Do you mean to say you’re actually going to let that woman
drag you where she pleases, just to gratify her pride and vanity?” She
drew in the breath of indignation through her tightened nose. “You
that’s worshipped Wesleyan all your life.”
“Is that to say,” her father asked deliberately, “that there’s no other
places of worship but what’s Wesleyan?”
“Ah!” she cried, with a light of terrible comprehension breaking out
upon her face. “So that’s it, is it! That’s what she’s brought you to.
If I didn’t think so! You’ll be going to church with her on Sundays
before long, like the rest of them. That’s what you’ll be doing.”
Her prediction, made in that acrimonious key, was not unwelcome to the
Councillor. She had flung the gauntlet down to him in anger, and by a
little diplomatic show of resentment he might with better credit pick it
up and charge the consequences to her.
“Well? And suppose I do?” he said. “You’ll only have yourself to blame,
Annie. It’ll be you that’s driven me, not her. I don’t know what sort of
Christianity you call yours, but if it’s the sort of Christianity one
gets by attending chapel ... I venture to think I shan’t get a deal more
harm by going to church.... There’s one thing, though,” he added.
“Whether a man goes to church or chapel, he doesn’t need to ask
permission of his daughter, nor of nobody. Wherever I go to I shall go
to please myself.”
“Do you call That religion?” his daughter challenged him severely, at a
blind end for an answer. “Is religion pleasing oneself I’d like to
know?”
“Why, so far as you’re concerned,” her father answered imperturbably,
“it’s neither pleasing oneself nor nobody, Annie. It’s being as
ill-tempered as you can, and trying to make everybody else the same.
There’s not more real religion in your nature than would cover a
threepenny bit, and it doesn’t become you to talk about other folks’
religion, whatever sort it is, so I’m telling you, Annie, and I’m your
Father.”
All things considered he was by no means dissatisfied with this
encounter.
“Well, she knows now,” he complimented himself. “She can’t say I haven’t
told her.”
And the more he thought over the episode the better pleased he was with
the turn his policy had given to it.
“As a member of the Corporation I’ve got to be broad-minded and
reasonable. There’s more places of worship in this town than one, and
more feelings to consider than mine or hers. It’s only natural for a man
to pay his wife the compliment of attending her place of worship, so
long as she’s willing to do the same by him. I venture to think there’s
nobody of common sense can quarrel with it.”
And in pondering the idea he found increasing satisfaction with this
propitious opportunity to plant one foot in the established faith, and
come to handshakes with the Clergy.
“The worst of nonconformist bodies,” he told himself for his
instruction, “is their bigotry. They’re that narrow. Folks that’s too
closely connected with their own sects and sees no good outside them,
gets warped. Annie’s warped. Her friends is warped. I can see it now.
I’ve been inclined to get a bit warped myself, and to look on
churchgoers as if they wasn’t hardly Christians. Well, I’m glad to say
I’ve seen the error I was making before it’s got too late. I don’t want
to meet a better Christian than my future wife. She’d be a credit to any
Body or place of Worship. And if the clergy calls upon Us there’s nobody
will know better how to receive them. That I _do_ know. And I venture to
think they’ll get no better treatment in any parishioner’s house than
what they will in mine.” In such wise he held forth to his inward ear,
formulating the phrases with self-importance, and listening to them with
appreciative pride. And the more he delved into the subject the more
sanction he was gratified to find for his contemplated movement to the
Church. “I live in St. Saviour’s parish,” he reminded himself. “The
church isn’t more than a stone’s throw from my own front door. It is
common-sense to leave one’s wife at the porch on a wet morning and then
trudge another half mile under a dripping umbrella to Friar’s Gate, as
though my wife’s worship wasn’t good enough for me?”
“And beside ...” he continued to himself, and to the other listeners in
his imagination, “ ... after a man’s been married in a place of worship,
it has associations that he’s got to consider.” Unconsciously he adapted
Mrs. Holmroyd’s terminology and point of view to his own more practical
necessity.
“If I can go to church for _my_ convenience, it’s only right and fair to
go again for _theirs_. I gave Friar’s Gate its turn when I was married
the first time, because my wife worshipped there the same as me. But
it’s not to be supposed that a man’s bound for ever by what he does
once. It isn’t business. Customers doesn’t tie themselves to me; they go
where it suits them, and religion stands to be the same. I’ve customers
from all the leading bodies, and it’s no bad thing to show oneself well
disposed. Church can do a lot for a man when it wants. A church-warden
in a place of worship like St. Gyles’s or St. Saviour’s has a lot of
influence, and is very much looked up to. By all classes.”
And thus arguing the whole theological position, and balancing its pros
and contras, he felt more than satisfied that Mrs. Holmroyd was a
churchwoman, and that he had so handsomely acceded to her wishes. For
the Mayor of this important Borough, close parochial relationship with
the established faith would not fail to be a valuable asset; it would
tend to magnify the importance of his office; give him a status not
vouchsafed to mere dissenters, and commend him by his toleration and
notable broad-mindedness to those more influential circles
whence--despite the robe and chair and chain of office--true mayoral
glory cometh. As he said to himself:
“I think I can venture to congratulate myself that things has turned out
just as they have done. I’ve no anxieties about the step I’m going to
take. Unless I’m very much mistaken, she’ll be a great comfort and a
great help to a public man like me. She’ll be just the sort of wife a
man in my position ought to have!”
And each time passing the church that was to exercise such fatal
influence upon his future, he cast a new and almost proprietorial look
upon its grey stones, parapet and tapering spire, as if the sacred
edifice had been a prospective branch of his High Gate business, shortly
to be opened to the public.
“If only Annie had been sensible and took what’s happened in the right
way,” he ruminated more than once, regretfully, in gazing at St.
Saviour’s as he walked to business, “we might perhaps have done the
thing a bit more public. It isn’t _every_ day a Town Councillor gets
married.”
He indulged himself, however, to this luxurious regret without
entertaining the least misconception as to the possibility of obviating
the thing deplored. Annie being what she was (he told himself) any
attempt at a wedding on the grand scale--even if Mrs. Holmroyd had been
willing--might only end in unpleasantness and failure. And Councillor
Burford was certainly too good a man of business to risk unnecessary
expenditure for a benefit so problematical. No, no, (said he with
resolution) let them take up their married life very simple and quiet
first of all, and go cautious in all things until they found their feet
and saw exactly where they stood. If this wedding was proclaimed too
loud and open, there’d be many folks expect to be invited to it whose
acquaintance (said the Councillor to himself) he wasn’t so particular
anxious to encourage. Such a function would have a tendency to emphasize
his social circle and fix him in it; and he saw no reason to be fixed in
_any_ circle, or bind himself to friends that wasn’t (strictly speaking)
such particular friends of his after all. This was an age of progress,
and with such a wife as he’d had the foresight and good fortune to
provide for himself, he wouldn’t venture to say _what_ his social circle
in the ancient “Borrow” might ultimately be.
“If any woman can help a man to get what his public and private capacity
entitles him to,” said he; “it’s Her. So long as she’ll row in the same
boat--and I have confidence she will--there’s no telling where we shall
end before we’ve finished. Other men’s done it, and I venture to think
I’ve got as much practical common-sense as them.”
4
It was a significant morning for Councillor Burford when he passed St.
Saviour’s on his way to worship at the Friar’s Gate Chapel, and told
himself with satisfaction as he scrutinized the weathered fabric:
“Well! They’ll have something to talk about this morning. I’d give a
good deal to be sat in there, so as no one could see me, and study their
faces. I daresay there’s one or two won’t be unprepared for it--but
there’s others will be took by surprise.”
He was referring to the banns of course, which were to be published that
morning for the first time of asking; a fact responsible for Mrs.
Holmroyd’s absence from church.
She shared in nowise her future husband’s curiosity to hear the
proclamation read, or to note its effect upon the assembled
congregation. The mere thought of such publicity was so painful that she
felt she would not dare to worship in the church again until the
marriage was accomplished, and she had come to working terms with fact.
She stayed at home instead, striving to evade the publicity of her own
thoughts, and keeping far removed from the window lest any passer-by
should catch a sight of her. She knew that the Councillor would be sure
to ask her on the morrow with complacence:
“Well, ma’am! And how did things go off with you in church on Sunday?”
and she would be at trouble how to answer him, for fear--in the effort
to save two sets of feelings--she might wound both.
... But if she hid herself at home, and Councillor Burford curbed a
wandering curiosity in chapel, asking himself from time to time: “Well!
Is it over by now? Has it been made public yet?”--Oswald, in his place
in the dim chancel beneath the conglomeration of stained glass, heard
the portentous announcement and turned his ear to drink in every word,
suffused with pride to know himself the very son of the Widow of This
Parish (as the violent elbow of his neighbour in the choirstalls
notified) and to be the future stepson of the Joseph Henry Burford who
owned the big villa on the Hunmouth Road, and part of the Mansion House,
and would some day be Mayor of Daneborough and go to church and public
functions with a gold chain round his neck. And he--through whose
consciousness these glorious reflections ran like the sands through the
waist of an egg-timer, imparting delicious shivers of consequence and
urgency--he, the thinker, was Oswald Holmroyd, who had had the best of
fathers, and was foredestined to the best of futures. Ah! it was a
supreme, immense, prodigious moment, in which the very roof of
imagination shook and lifted like the church itself when the sixty-four
feet pedals stirred its pulses, and the Rate Collector lifted his nose
to heaven and said: “Sublime!”
The newly married couple were agreed to have no honeymoon in the
accepted sense of the word. To Mrs. Holmroyd the thought of such an
expedition for the purpose of enjoying the dead fruits of this second
marriage, filled her with inexplicable wretchedness. She would have
suffered anything rather than protracted leisure in which to taste,
beneath the artificial flavourings of joy and happiness, the bitterness
of truth. For her part, she said, she would prefer to enter upon their
new and actual life with the least loss of time, and the Councillor--who
was never a very happy man away from business and the engrossments of
the Council Chamber; and who had himself opened the subject to Mrs.
Holmroyd by hinting a fear that he would not be able to offer her much
in the way of a honeymoon (ma’am) at this season of the year--applauded
sentiments so agreeable to his own, with the heartiness that recognized
a difficulty removed. Still, since convention almost demanded that a
newly married couple--even of their maturity--should retire from public
observation to practice the first intimacies of the wedded state, it was
decided that they should spend a few days at Spathorpe, for the sake of
propriety. “I shall have to be back at business on the Friday, ma’am,”
the Councillor decided. “That and Saturday’s my busy days, and there’s a
lot of new proposals that needs my attention in the Council Chamber. I
can’t very well be spared just now.”
The disposal of Oswald during this brief period offered some difficulty,
and Mrs. Holmroyd had indeed cited her son as one of the considerations
disinclining her to leave home. The suggestion, to be sure, was very
gently made, and she laid no insuperable stress upon it, but the
Councillor showed more decision in ruling out this feature of her
argument than she relished.
“What, ma’am!” he said. “Why ... that boy of yours is big enough to look
after himself by this time, I should hope, without no need for his
mother to do it for him. He can’t always expect to have hold of your
apron strings. When I was not much more than his age, I’d begun to earn
my living in earnest. Livings _had_ to be earned in them days. You’ve
got to think about yourself _some_ time, ma’am; you’ve got every bit as
much right to be considered as him.”
He spoke with the comfortable candour that seemed to have only her
interest at heart, and sought to let her understand that his wife-to-be
constituted, now and hereafter, the speaker’s charge and care. But the
homily blew like a chill wind across her heart, and caused presentiments
to shiver faintly as if they had been wet leaves. It was just such a
speech as, uttered earlier, might have weighed heavily against the
speaker on her oscillating beam of sentiment, but until this moment the
Councillor’s interest in Oswald had seemed the perfect reflection of her
own, and her hopes--looking everywhere for comfort--had presumed too
much upon the semblance. He had taken Oswald by the sleeve; pinched the
lobe of the boy’s ear between a solid thumb and forefinger; greeted him
with a face and voice indicative of satisfaction, and had passed
judgment upon the boy’s intelligence and natural abilities in terse but
favourable phrases that caused his mother’s heart to swell.
“He’s a smart enough lad, ma’am. He ought to do something ... _some_
day.”
Until now the Councillor had appeared to hold Mrs. Holmroyd and her son
in an equable regard, as if she and he were one and indivisible. But
this hint of separation, as though their interests no longer were in
common, but stood within sight of the parting of the roads--this hint
disturbed her and made her voice and courage fail.
“We can surely find somebody to look after him,” the Councillor said. He
was referring still to Oswald and the question of the boy’s disposal
during their absence. “Why ... I daresay my son would have been
agreeable to take charge of him for the few days we’re likely to be
gone--if it hadn’t been for Annie stopping with them. One couldn’t
reasonably expect him to have ’em both. Is there no neighbour of yours,
ma’am, who’d be disposed to take him in? It’ll be ... let’s see; it’ll
only be four days at the outside, and it’ll learn him to be independent
and look after himself.”
Once upon a time she would have been courageous enough to tell him that
her son’s happiness was dearer to her than her own, and that she would
consent to leave him nowhere, and in no hands, where that happiness was
not likely to be secured. But already the influence of this stronger sex
began to fall prophetically across her mind like an encroaching shadow,
effacing more and more of her woman’s power to will and strive. The hope
in her mind; the hope she had half determined to reveal, yet dared not,
was that Oswald might be privileged to occupy the little bedroom
awaiting him in their new home. It hurt and disappointed her that no
proposal to this effect fell from the Councillor’s lips, but no idea
seemed farther from his thoughts, and she could not broach the topic to
a mind so blankly unprepared for it. Had their positions been reversed,
and this son were his--not hers--her lips would have teemed with
considerations for his sake, but the Councillor’s lips lent her no help.
She said, with the meekness that confessed a hope renounced:
“I will see what can be arranged.”
And before the evening fell she had made arrangements to board Oswald
with the next-door neighbour. Now that her trusted staff of hope had
failed her, she clung almost prayerfully to the alternative hope that
the Rencils might divine her difficulty once again, and come at the
eleventh hour to her aid with an offer to take charge of Oswald as on
that previous, scarcely less melancholy occasion. And Oswald indulged
the hope too, filled with rekindled ambition to taste afresh the
wonders, splendours and soul-stirring kindnesses of the Organist’s
house; to look out of the lofty big bowed window upon the world below;
right down the Hill Gate to the Mansion House, and to know himself
admitted into the very sanctuary of the Organist’s home life; a sharer
in all its merriments, delights and glories. But no such second proffer
came. Only--one evening--there arrived at the house in Spring Bank
Gardens a fellow-chorister of Oswald’s who had been given this journey
by Mr. Rencil as an agreeable alternative to scale practice--two pupils
(it seemed) having collided at the same hour, each being dismissed on a
separate errand in order to make way for the other. He knocked, after
hesitation, at the door, and said “Hello!” to Oswald who opened it,
asking, with a parcel in one hand and a letter in the other: “Is this
where you live?” Oswald answered in the affirmative, and was revolving
in his own mind how, with dignity, he might impart the information that
he lived here only for the present, and would be moving shortly to more
commodious premises on the Hunmouth Road, when the fellow-chorister
pushed the letter and the parcel into his keeping with the remark:
“Here! Take hold of these, then, and give ’em to her. Mr. Rencil sent
’em. With his compliments, I was to say. I wish I hadn’t gone for my
lesson to-night. I very nearly didn’t. I should ’a been playing Reliev-O
now.” With which he took his leave at a run, leaping each alternate step
and thumping each alternate door with his doubled fist as he sped
noisily down Spring Bank Gardens. Oswald, divining something of
consequence in this unusual combination of letter and package, bore them
excitedly to his mother, crying as he ran: “Mother! Mother.... From Mr.
Rencil.” His exclamations and the sight of what he held brought the
blood to her face in a swift tide that was half of joy and half of pain.
Tears rose instinctively to her eyes for an emotion already apprehended,
and her fingers trembled as they tore open the envelope addressed to her
in Mrs. Rencil’s writing.
“Dear Mrs. Holmroyd,” (the brief note ran, diffusing round about
her as she read the faint, sweet perfume associated in her
recollection with the Organist’s wife). “ ... My husband and I ask
your acceptance of the accompanying small present as a token of our
very kind regard, and of our joint good wishes for your happiness
in the new life, upon which--we understand--you will so soon be
entering. We thought that the little book-slide might be useful. I
remember your saying how pleased you were with mine. My husband did
all the woodwork, and I am responsible for the lining and the tiny
silk bookmarker. We hope they will serve to remind you of us both,
and bear testimony to our very kind remembrance of you.
“Once again, dear Mrs. Holmroyd, wishing you every happiness in the
new life, which--we are both agreed--nobody better deserves.
“Ever sincerely yours,
“Ethel Rencil.”
That was the letter, though she could scarcely read the wording for the
tears that stood in her eyes; and Oswald eagerly awaiting exclamations
of astonishment and rapture, constrained by this unexpected change in
her, dropped his gaze and turned embarrassed to the window. The letter,
caressing her with its tender perfume, as if it had been a soft hand, or
a hushed, kind voice, touched her to the heart. For awhile she could
only stand silent, wrapped in this atmosphere of human sympathy and
kindness; suffering a gratitude so deep, so tremulous, so poignant, as
to be almost a pain. And yet, a pain of such sweet sorrow as to satisfy
the deepmost necessity of her soul. Pain like this, sadness like this,
aching gratitude like this.... Oh! they were nearer to heaven than mere
happiness. In those brief moments life itself seemed little; love was
all. A wondrous sense of the infinite possessed her; a sense of the
eternal curtain of compassion drawn between kindred souls and darkness.
“How can I ever thank them!” she said at last. “Dear friends.... Dear
friends!” She pressed the letter for a moment to her lips and replaced
it in its envelope with fingers that expressed reverence. She had never
looked for such a gift from them. It roused who knows what hopes in her.
She clung to their unlooked-for act of friendship as the drowning cling
to a hand, seeking the comfort and assurance of it long after it has
saved them. If she had but hearkened to the impulses that surged within
her she would have gone without delay to bear her gratitude in person,
whilst yet an intoxication of thankfulness warmed her heart and lent
words to her lips. But reason prevailed with her. She read afresh the
letter whose first perusal had so flushed and gratified her. And again
she read it, and as she read the earlier glamour seemed to fall away
from the written page like the glow from an evening sky when the sun
sinks west-ward apace; and where the splendour and promise and
loveliness of friendship had once been, now was only the drear, chill
light of disillusionment. Clearly could she read the words at length,
with eyes undimmed. Their loveliness had lain in her own tears; her own
emotions, long pent up, had only used this page of scented friendliness
as a vent for their outflowing. Word by word she pulled the periods to
pieces as if they had been petals, trying to wrest from them the secret
of their creation. “A token of our kind regard” (she read). “ ... We
hope that they will serve to remind you of us both....” “Our very kind
remembrances....” “Every happiness in the new life--which nobody better
deserves....” Yes. These sentences exhaled a delicate and fragile
friendliness, but of the future ... not one word. They were phrases of
sweet finality, laid like precious flowers upon a grave; tributes to the
past, and to the happiness gone with it. This letter, this book-slide
were dedicated to their dead, or dying, friendship. With the Mrs.
Councillor Burford of the new life to which, so tenderly, their wishes
wafted her, they had naught to do. Slowly, from that first great
exaltation, she sank despondently upon her loneliness, as the sick do
who rise ecstatic from their pillows to clasp an empty and dissolving
vision.
She was wrong (of course); emotions, overstrained, misled her. The
balance of her judgment was not fine enough to register exact
distinctions. And yet, she was not so wrong; she had come very near to
truth, in missing it. Mrs. Rencil’s note concealed much labour in its
folds. Three imperfect drafts had gone to the making of it, and its
final form owed not a little to her husband’s aid.
“Help me, Arthur,” she had begged him. “It is an occasion on which I
feel that I would like to say so much.... And yet....” Her eyes sought
those of her husband, to solicit his understanding without the use of
words.
“I know,” he acquiesced.
“It is so difficult,” she confided, “when one’s sympathies are so deeply
involved. I don’t want to say anything injudicious. But I don’t want to
say too little. How will this do, Arthur? Listen,” She read it to him,
and bit by bit between them the note that Mrs. Holmroyd finally received
was written.
“Do you think it sounds quite ... genuine?” the writer asked. “As if it
had been written in a spirit of real friendship? Or does it read a
little bit stilted and constrained? Poor thing! I do wish she had been
marrying somebody worthy of her; somebody one could really like, and
take an interest in. The whole thing is too sad. I feel as if I were
losing a dear friend--just at the moment when I had come to know how
deeply fond I am of her. I fear we shall see very little of her now.
What, Arthur?” Mr. Rencil had not spoken. He had only gazed out of the
window through the strong lenses liquifying his brown eyes, as
though--through his wife’s voice--he listened to heaven’s annunciation
of the first notes of a new anthem.
“I’m afraid not,” he said.
“And I felt,” his wife continued, studying the sheet of writing paper in
her hand, “that Mrs. Holmroyd was just the sort of friend I had been
wanting. A real, close friend, Arthur, that I could have placed all my
confidence in.”
“Have you no husband, Ethel?” he asked of her, with his sudden winsome
smile.
“You know I have,” she said. “But I mean someone of my own sex, whose
friendship I might have enjoyed without jealousy. With so many women,
Arthur, friendship seems only a pretext for spitefulness; it is like the
cream on sour milk. The only way some women can enjoy friendship between
themselves is by being unfriendly towards others. Mrs. Holmroyd was a
curious exception. I never heard her utter one single unkind word. More
than once ... her sweetness has been so irresistible that I have almost
had it on my tongue to propose that we should call each other by our
Christian names.” She sighed. “Perhaps it is well that I never did. It
might only have made things more difficult. What a nuisance all these
silly social distinctions are!” she said, as though to disclaim a
personal responsibility. “One feels so powerless. Why mayn’t we be
friends with _any_body, just for friendship’s sake? However ... I
suppose we can’t. It isn’t possible. So long as Mrs. Holmroyd remained
just her own dear self--with no relations or acquaintances to
consider--it was one thing. But as Mrs. Burford ... it _does_ become so
awkward. One has one’s other friends to think of. And the Burfords are
all strong Wesleyans,” she added. “Such narrow, unsociable, joyless
people. They don’t understand music, Arthur, and they look with
disapproval on anything but money. You get no pupils from _them_.”
“Still ...” the Organist remarked at last. “I suppose that Councillor
Burford will be Mayor, some day.”
“Yes. I suppose he will,” Mrs. Rencil said, and she picked up the letter
from the writing table. “Let me read it to you once more, Arthur, and
hear how it sounds.”
But Mrs. Holmroyd had no husband to appeal to; only her own, uncertain
self. And doubtful now of all emotion likely to mislead her, she waited
till her heart was cold enough to write with prudence. Even the mere
transcribing of her gratefulness brought back a glow of mild unreason
that she found hard to restrain, but at last the letter was completed.
“Dear Mrs. Rencil,” (she wrote)
“How can I possibly find words to thank you and your husband for
your good wishes, and for the lovely present which you have sent
me? Such an unlooked-for token of your kind remembrance has touched
me deeply, and I can scarcely say how much I value the gift, for
its own sake and yours, and for the sake of the many happy memories
which it will serve constantly to recall.
“Be assured I am not likely to forget all the kindness and sympathy
which I have received so abundantly at your hands, and I shall
never cease to look back upon this chapter of my life with a
gratitude deeper than I know how to express.
“Most faithfully yours,
“Margaret Hester Holmroyd.”
Studiously she had avoided the least allusion to the future; the least
appeal to a friendship from which, in heart, she felt herself cut
off--albeit, kindled by the gratitude that she tried so discreetly to
reveal, she yearned to throw herself upon its mercy and crave such
crumbs as, in her altered state, it might still be disposed to give to
her. And Mrs. Rencil, touched though she was with the writer’s
gratitude, did not fail to note the air of sad finality; the tone of
mourning for friendship and kindness of the past. She showed the note to
her husband, underlining its significance for him with a finger as he
read, and thus--on each side--motives were sought and countered, and
doubts multiplied, and a thin, fine web of mutual uncertainty spun its
divisive veil between them.
5
These last days were days of unutterable wretchedness for Mrs. Holmroyd.
She had not conceived how terrible, to her, would be the liquidation of
their little home. When the hour arrived at last for its dismemberment,
and Elizabeth appeared in her black shawl as the embodiment of
destruction--it seemed to her as if they slew some living thing. These
tables, chairs, carpets, curtains--even the meagre fragments of
linoleum--possessed for Mrs. Holmroyd a life and sanctity of their own.
They were not pieces of dissociated furniture, but vital elements of
corporate existence; each dependent on the other; each necessary to the
other; essential to the home they stood for. And now, to separate them
all by violence, was like the tearing out of tongues. This home, that
once had been, and now so shortly would be no more,--it cried to her
with a penetrating voice; she could not bear it. Worst of all was the
ruthless fervour that Elizabeth brought to her task. Nay! It was not
fervour; it was ferocity. The old woman’s very youth came back to her,
regalvanized by this golden opportunity to indulge the long frustrated
passions of her life. The hand that seized and tugged, the arms that
lifted, were remorseless. Lost in the rapture of her work she heard no
voices crying to her heart for mercy from this ravished home, as Mrs.
Holmroyd did. Like a hawk, too, she hovered over the doomed house,
scenting prey and plunder. Her predatory instincts were aroused; there
was nothing so out-worn and perished but that it protested still some
value in her eyes. She begrudged the meanest victory to the dustcart. To
strips of ragged oilcloth--confessing their full wretchedness now that
they were torn from their surroundings--old curtains, broken blind-cords
... she attached her hopes with terrible solicitude, demanding of Mrs.
Holmroyd: “What’s to be done with this’m?” with an anxious voice, and an
eye unable to conceal the sharpened intensity of its longings. Nor did
she once suspect, nor did Mrs. Holmroyd divulge to her, the sickness of
the latter’s heart at being spectator of this dread and violent
defunction.
Not till now, when all the happiness and sorrow embalmed in the
tranquil atmosphere of her little home were being dispersed for ever,
did she quite realize how much it had meant to her; how great a portion
of her life was wrapt in it. One strip of evening sunlight no broader
than her hand, when it lay golden on the bedroom wall, smote her like a
smile on the features of the dying. This bedroom, so often the
repository of her earnest prayers, in its hour of despoliation assumed a
serenity, a peace, a loveliness greater than her soul could bear. Thus,
and thus, had the setting sun laid his finger on the wall when Beryl was
alive, and Beryl’s voice and smile, something of Beryl’s very self were
wrought into the tissue of this house. Oh! How could she leave it!
But the fury of Elizabeth abated not. With her brimming pails and
scrubbing brushes, her bars of mottled soap, and sopping floor-cloths,
she moved voraciously about her work, diffusing a relentless enthusiasm
that offered sentiment no quarter, whilst her pile of household spoils
accumulated in its special corner in the kitchen. Hard to suffer though
Elizabeth’s distinctive fury might be, she was--at least--a merciful
alternative to the horrors of the salesroom and the brutality of the
auctioneer’s hammer. As each doomed piece of furniture made its last,
mute supplication to Mrs. Holmroyd’s heart, she said: “I cannot! No, I
cannot! Sold, it shall never be.” And its sentence was commuted into
charity; let it be slain by gift, but not by barter. “Would you like to
have this, Elizabeth?”
“Oh, mum!...”
“I know that _you_ would take care of it.”
Aye! That she would. Be very sure she would’m. It should be stood
here’m, or it should be stood there’m, in her little house--where Mrs.
Holmroyd might be free to call and see it, any time she chose. “For
don’t think I shall part with it’m. Don’t think I shall ever take it
... _you_ know where. Nay. Not me’m! I think too much about it, and
You.”
Tears of thankfulness, like holy water, Elizabeth shed upon each gift in
turn, and through the blessedness of giving, Mrs. Holmroyd’s heart
escaped the direr penalties of sacrifice. Her home was being not
altogether broken into fragments; not altogether scattered to the four
winds. Somewhere, in unstrange hands, some part of it would still
preserve its ancient atmosphere of love. For of Elizabeth’s fidelity to
her new charge Mrs. Holmroyd never entertained a doubt.
“I shall look after them,” she cried, “until I die’m. I shall be as
careful of them as if they was yours. Oh’m! Nobbut I’d had these last
year, I could have let splendid for the Race Week.”