Alfred returned home that night. He had been away at a race-meeting, but
the day, so far as he was concerned, had proved a failure, and an
injudicious attempt later to neutralize matters by a game of cards had
been hardly more successful. He didn’t know where the deuce the money
was to come from, and it somehow did not tend to put him in any
pleasanter mood to discover his father waiting up. His marriage too had
begun to weigh upon Alfred’s mind. From many points of view it was
unsatisfactory. The girl, he still felt, was worth it, but it had
serious drawbacks, and their meetings at present were accompanied by
nearly all the disadvantages and discomforts attendant on illicit loves.
What was the use of being married, thought Alfred, when you have to
behave as if you weren’t? He felt that he must make his position known
on the first suitable opportunity.
As he came in from the obscurity outside, the strong light in the
dining-room dazzled him, and he was conscious that he did not show to
advantage. The fact naturally irritated him, for he was not at all so
drunk as he knew for a minute or two he must appear to be. Mr. Bracknel,
his hands under the tails of his coat, his back against the
chimney-piece, watched him with considerable interest. The rest of the
family had gone to bed.
“Well,” Mr. Bracknel remarked genially, “I hope you’ve had a pleasant
day?”
“Very,” answered Alfred, making a sudden, plunging movement to get out
of the room. The opportune moment to tell his tale had not yet arrived,
and he knew nothing of Rhoda’s betrayal.
“I’m glad to hear that, but you’d better wait a moment; I’ve something
to say to you. I’ve been hearing some news about you--quite unexpected
news--bright and festive news I might call it.”
His father’s manner was highly disagreeable, and Alfred paused at the
door without turning round. “What have you been hearing?” he asked
shortly.
“About your increased responsibilities,” said Mr. Bracknel in the same
tone of sinister geniality.
A dark flush overspread Alfred’s heavy face, and a vicious spark of
light showed itself in his dull little eyes; but he knew that he must be
propitiating, that it was his only chance. “What responsibilities?” he
asked, trying to throw into his voice an amiability he was far from
feeling.
“I mean the responsibilities which are always incurred by matrimony.”
Mr. Bracknel spoke in soft purring fashion as he swayed his coat-tails
gently up and down. The cheerfulness of his words, their prolonged
sarcasm, had an intensely exasperating effect upon his son.
“Who told you I was married?” Alfred asked thickly.
“Your wife’s aunt,” replied Mr. Bracknel, with great relish. “Your
wife’s aunt.” He repeated the words, rolling them on his tongue, as if
he took a particular pleasure in their sound. “You might at least have
given us a chance of going to the wedding or of offering you a present!
I hear you were married in church, with the greatest regularity. Well,
well; of course you know your own affairs best.”
Alfred said nothing and there was a silence till his father broke it
once more: “How do you propose to live? What are your plans?” He rubbed
his hands softly together and smiled. “What do you propose to do; but
possibly such questions are indiscreet?”
“We haven’t settled yet. We were going to keep it quiet for a time.” It
may seem strange, but Alfred had calculated that his father, once he got
used to the idea of the marriage, would probably put him in a position
to support his wife in reasonable comfort. He now saw these hopes
rapidly dwindling. “I suppose she wormed it out of her,” he added
gloomily, alluding to Mrs. Brooke and Rhoda.
“I don’t know--I don’t know, I’m sure, what particular method was
employed. By the way, your salary is two hundred, isn’t it?”
“It is--at present.”
“At present?” His father grew positively radiant. “Ah, I see. You have
something better in view: you are thinking of leaving us--thinking of
leaving us.... _Not_ thinking of leaving? Oh well, of course it isn’t
impossible to live on two hundred. People do it: though you may find it
difficult at first. These little excursions such as you have just
returned from to-night, for instance--these pleasant, harmless little
excursions I should think must be rather imprudent for a man in your
position and with your ties. You see, you will have to allow for so many
things--house-rent for example--unless you propose to live with your
aunt?”
“I don’t propose doing so,” Alfred muttered. The flush on his face
deepened, spreading over his neck and ears and up to the roots of his
hair.
“I see. You will take a little house, then?--a little villa,
perhaps?--one of those little villas with a porch and a glass door and a
name on the gate. I shouldn’t advise you to spend too much on it. A
small house in a street, where your wife will not be too far away from
her aunt, might be best. I am sorry your abilities, and the intermittent
attention which is all you are able to find for business, do not allow
me to offer you a better position.”
Alfred’s mouth began to twitch. “No, I should think you would want to
keep anything of that sort for your bastard.”
A silence followed these words, a silence in which the ticking of the
clock became audible--a creak from the stairs--then nothing but the
ticking of the clock. The father and the son still faced each other, but
Mr. Bracknel’s geniality had departed. When he spoke again there was an
icy note in his voice: “Well, I needn’t detain you any longer. Of course
you know your own affairs best.”
Alfred did not move. He was conscious that he had burned his ships with
a vengeance. Also, for a moment, he was a little shocked by the sound of
his own words, though now that he had spoken them he would have liked
them to have had more effect. His father’s apparent indifference--he had
neither started nor changed colour--bewildered him. Could there be any
mistake? He had received his information from Rhoda in the intimacy of a
long discussion of their mutual affairs which had taken place the day
after their wedding. It had been startling, but he had almost instantly
recognized its truth. There was that in it which one _could_ recognize.
Had not Rhoda herself made it all out independently, even if with more
to go upon than he had had? For him there had been nothing save an undue
favouritism, and a physical resemblance, extraordinary, though not
obvious, though not striking indeed perhaps, save to the completely
initiated. But this resemblance had flashed upon him the instant she had
spoken, and he found himself referring to it now, as if for
corroboration, as if for support. Yes; it was there; he believed in it.
And simultaneously he discovered that he had something else to say,
something which had been bottled up for a long time within him and which
an exasperated sense of injury, of accumulated wrong, gave him now the
necessary eloquence to express. “You’ve treated me badly from the
beginning; you’ve treated me meanly, and you’ve favoured John Brooke.
I’ve never had a chance. I have been kept down and he has been pushed
forward. You have never given me any authority in the place. I’m nothing
more than any of the clerks for all the position I’ve got; and then you
grumble at me because I don’t take an interest in the drudgery that you
give me to do. What chance have I ever had to take an interest? I can’t
do anything without coming to you first to get your permission. That’s
what you like. You like everybody to go down on their knees and lick
your boots.” His flow of words suddenly subsided. He could get no
further though his father waited for him to go on. Mr. Bracknel was
perfectly patient, even gravely attentive.
“If you have no authority,” he replied calmly, “it is because you have
never shown yourself fit to have any. And, as for John Brooke, he isn’t
drawing as much pay as you are.”
“I don’t care what he’s drawing. I’m quite sure you give him as little
as you can, though he _is_ your favourite. He has a position all the
same, and I haven’t. He does things on his own account and everybody
recognizes him. He has responsibilities: he isn’t a machine. I’ve heard
you asking him for his opinion when I was standing by, but of course not
worth talking to; and others have heard it too. That’s the sort of thing
I’ve had to put up with ever since he came into the place.”
“And why _should_ I ask your opinion?” Mr. Bracknel put it to him, with
a sort of crushing, brutal deliberateness. “What sort of value do you
imagine it has? You surely know that if you were not my son I wouldn’t
have you in the place an hour longer than I could help! All you have
ever done there has been to set an example of idleness and dissipation.
Where have you been all day? What did you do when I sent you out to
Switzerland? It has been the same story from the beginning. Cards,
betting, drinking, and I don’t know what less mentionable
pursuits--these are what have occupied your mind. It is only your
constitution that has saved you from being at this moment as great a
wreck physically as you are mentally and morally. Do you seriously
expect me to entrust my business to men of your stamp?”
“Oh, damn you and your business,” said Alfred violently. “I hope you’ll
take it to hell with you.” He turned on his heel, but on the threshold
he met his mother standing there, pale and frightened, clad in a long,
dark dressing-gown.
“Oh Alfred!” she murmured, horrified. “How could you speak so to your
father!”
But Alfred only muttered something incoherent as he pushed past her and
on upstairs.
Mrs. Bracknel entered the dining-room. In her long, flowing gown she
seemed shadowy, hardly human. Mr. Bracknel’s air of indifference had
dropped from him; he regarded her in sombre silence; but since he did
not repulse her, which she had half expected him to do, she ventured to
draw nearer.
“What is the matter, James?” she asked in a low voice that trembled
slightly.
Mr. Bracknel was in a humour when it was a relief to have somebody to
whom he could unburden himself.
“The matter?” he answered bitterly. “The matter is that he has done for
himself.”
“Done for himself?” a vague vision of some dire deed floated before her
mind, though without taking any precise form.
“He’s married,” said her husband laconically, “married a type-writing
girl out of the office, that’s all.” He uttered the words with a kind of
gloomy contempt, and Mrs. Bracknel gave a sigh of relief. The poor lady
had imagined something infinitely worse.
“But when was it? To-day?”
“Oh, a day or two ago. What does it matter when?”
“And you didn’t know anything? You didn’t----”
He looked at her angrily. “Of course I didn’t know. Do you think I’m a
fool? They took precious good care that I didn’t know. A silly little
doll with a pretty face and the brains of a chicken.”
“But is she--is she a nice girl?--is she a good girl?”
“Oh, damn her,” said Mr. Bracknel. “I don’t know how nice she is. Nice
enough for him, I daresay.”
“But is Alfred fond of her--what does he say about it all?”
“Fond of her! What do you mean by ‘fond of her?’ You don’t think he
married her for her position, do you? Whether he’s fond of her or not,
he’ll be sick of her at the end of a month, and God help her then!” He
looked straight before him with unmitigated pessimism.
“Oh, don’t say such dreadful things!” Mrs. Bracknel quavered. “Why
should he be like that?”
“Because he’s a brute and she’s a fool.” He spoke thickly, which was a
sign that he was much agitated, but quietly, and even with a sort of
gloomy fatalism. “What’s the use of sentimentalizing about it? You ought
to know him well enough by this time, though he _is_ your son! At any
rate, if you don’t, I do.” And he began again to pace up and down the
room.
His wife watched him for some moments in a kind of fascinated silence.
Then she asked timidly. “What are they going to do?”
Mr. Bracknel smiled mirthlessly. “They’re going to be sorry they ever
saw each other. They’re going to live in a squalid little house till
they hate the very sight of each other. God knows what they’re going to
do! Alfred can’t afford to keep her at any rate--with his tastes, and on
his salary.”
Mrs. Bracknel’s gentle countenance was filled with trouble. She sank
into a chair. “But where is she now?” she asked helplessly.
“She’s at her aunt’s, I suppose. Where else would she be? She’ll have to
go on living there unless he takes a house.”
“She has no father or mother then?”
“It appears not: it’s the one redeeming thing about her.”
Mrs. Bracknel sighed. She tried to see some ray of light in all these
gloomy pictures, but she had not yet had time to take in the full
significance of what had happened. “Perhaps she is a nice girl,” she
murmured, with a weak return to her former position. “After all, we
don’t know her, do we?”
Mr. Bracknel broke into a laugh. “If she was a nice girl she wouldn’t
have married Alfred.”
“But we don’t know her,” his wife repeated. She was beginning to resent
these attacks upon her son. Surely he had not committed a crime in
getting married.
“_I_ know her--as well as I’ll ever know her. She’ll never cross this
door: you may put away any idea of that sort.”
“Do you think she entrapped Alfred, then? Do you think----”
“I don’t know what she did. She hasn’t drawn a prize at all events,
though I suppose she thought it worth the risk. I can’t live for ever,
of course, and then it will be all right.”
“But we must do something for them in the meantime, mustn’t we?” Mrs.
Bracknel pleaded.
“Must we? I’m pretty sure we won’t. Fortunately you’ve no money of your
own to waste on them.”
“But why are you so severe? Is she--is there anything against her
character?”
If he had wanted to, he could have told her why he was severe, he could
have repeated to her the remark her son had let fall, have repeated
those few words, for he remembered them perfectly, they still rang in
his mind, in spite of the fact that he had been able, apparently, to
ignore them; those words that had sounded like a menace, but a menace he
would never yield to. “I tell you I know the type,” was all he said. “If
he had married some simple country girl, it would have been different.
But a girl like this--no, it won’t do.”
“But now that it _has_ happened,” Mrs. Bracknel wonderfully persisted,
“mustn’t we make the best of it? You can’t cast Alfred off. If you
allowed----”
“I won’t allow him a penny more than his salary. He’s overpaid as it
is.” Suddenly he sat down in a chair. The colour faded from his face and
he began to breathe queerly. His wife flew to his assistance, but in a
minute or two he was better and able to get on his feet again. “I’m not
going to lose my night’s sleep over it either, whoever else may,” he
added, with a poor attempt to carry off his curious collapse. But his
face was still colourless and a perspiration had broken out on his
forehead. He moved a little uncertainly across the room and up the
stairs, leaning heavily on the banisters. Mrs. Bracknel followed him
closely.