At the time of Lilia’s death Philip Herriton was just twenty-four years
of age--indeed the news reached Sawston on his birthday. He was a tall,
weakly-built young man, whose clothes had to be judiciously padded
on the shoulders in order to make him pass muster. His face was plain
rather than not, and there was a curious mixture in it of good and bad.
He had a fine forehead and a good large nose, and both observation
and sympathy were in his eyes. But below the nose and eyes all was
confusion, and those people who believe that destiny resides in the
mouth and chin shook their heads when they looked at him.
Philip himself, as a boy, had been keenly conscious of these defects.
Sometimes when he had been bullied or hustled about at school he would
retire to his cubicle and examine his features in a looking-glass, and
he would sigh and say, “It is a weak face. I shall never carve a place
for myself in the world.” But as years went on he became either less
self-conscious or more self-satisfied. The world, he found, made a
niche for him as it did for every one. Decision of character might come
later--or he might have it without knowing. At all events he had got
a sense of beauty and a sense of humour, two most desirable gifts. The
sense of beauty developed first. It caused him at the age of twenty to
wear parti-coloured ties and a squashy hat, to be late for dinner on
account of the sunset, and to catch art from Burne-Jones to Praxiteles.
At twenty-two he went to Italy with some cousins, and there he absorbed
into one aesthetic whole olive-trees, blue sky, frescoes, country inns,
saints, peasants, mosaics, statues, beggars. He came back with the air
of a prophet who would either remodel Sawston or reject it. All the
energies and enthusiasms of a rather friendless life had passed into the
championship of beauty.
In a short time it was over. Nothing had happened either in Sawston or
within himself. He had shocked half-a-dozen people, squabbled with his
sister, and bickered with his mother. He concluded that nothing could
happen, not knowing that human love and love of truth sometimes conquer
where love of beauty fails.
A little disenchanted, a little tired, but aesthetically intact, he
resumed his placid life, relying more and more on his second gift, the
gift of humour. If he could not reform the world, he could at all
events laugh at it, thus attaining at least an intellectual superiority.
Laughter, he read and believed, was a sign of good moral health, and he
laughed on contentedly, till Lilia’s marriage toppled contentment down
for ever. Italy, the land of beauty, was ruined for him. She had no
power to change men and things who dwelt in her. She, too, could produce
avarice, brutality, stupidity--and, what was worse, vulgarity. It was on
her soil and through her influence that a silly woman had married a cad.
He hated Gino, the betrayer of his life’s ideal, and now that the sordid
tragedy had come, it filled him with pangs, not of sympathy, but of
final disillusion.
The disillusion was convenient for Mrs. Herriton, who saw a trying
little period ahead of her, and was glad to have her family united.
“Are we to go into mourning, do you think?” She always asked her
children’s advice where possible.
Harriet thought that they should. She had been detestable to Lilia
while she lived, but she always felt that the dead deserve attention
and sympathy. “After all she has suffered. That letter kept me awake for
nights. The whole thing is like one of those horrible modern plays where
no one is in ‘the right.’ But if we have mourning, it will mean telling
Irma.”
“Of course we must tell Irma!” said Philip.
“Of course,” said his mother. “But I think we can still not tell her
about Lilia’s marriage.”
“I don’t think that. And she must have suspected something by now.”
“So one would have supposed. But she never cared for her mother, and
little girls of nine don’t reason clearly. She looks on it as a long
visit. And it is important, most important, that she should not receive
a shock. All a child’s life depends on the ideal it has of its parents.
Destroy that and everything goes--morals, behaviour, everything.
Absolute trust in some one else is the essence of education. That is why
I have been so careful about talking of poor Lilia before her.”
“But you forget this wretched baby. Waters and Adamson write that there
is a baby.”
“Mrs. Theobald must be told. But she doesn’t count. She is breaking
up very quickly. She doesn’t even see Mr. Kingcroft now. He, thank
goodness, I hear, has at last consoled himself with someone else.”
“The child must know some time,” persisted Philip, who felt a little
displeased, though he could not tell with what.
“The later the better. Every moment she is developing.”
“I must say it seems rather hard luck, doesn’t it?”
“On Irma? Why?”
“On us, perhaps. We have morals and behaviour also, and I don’t think
this continual secrecy improves them.”
“There’s no need to twist the thing round to that,” said Harriet, rather
disturbed.
“Of course there isn’t,” said her mother. “Let’s keep to the main issue.
This baby’s quite beside the point. Mrs. Theobald will do nothing, and
it’s no concern of ours.”
“It will make a difference in the money, surely,” said he.
“No, dear; very little. Poor Charles provided for every kind of
contingency in his will. The money will come to you and Harriet, as
Irma’s guardians.”
“Good. Does the Italian get anything?”
“He will get all hers. But you know what that is.”
“Good. So those are our tactics--to tell no one about the baby, not even
Miss Abbott.”
“Most certainly this is the proper course,” said Mrs. Herriton,
preferring “course” to “tactics” for Harriet’s sake. “And why ever
should we tell Caroline?”
“She was so mixed up in the affair.”
“Poor silly creature. The less she hears about it the better she will be
pleased. I have come to be very sorry for Caroline. She, if any one,
has suffered and been penitent. She burst into tears when I told her a
little, only a little, of that terrible letter. I never saw such genuine
remorse. We must forgive her and forget. Let the dead bury their dead.
We will not trouble her with them.”
Philip saw that his mother was scarcely logical. But there was no
advantage in saying so. “Here beginneth the New Life, then. Do you
remember, mother, that was what we said when we saw Lilia off?”
“Yes, dear; but now it is really a New Life, because we are all at
accord. Then you were still infatuated with Italy. It may be full
of beautiful pictures and churches, but we cannot judge a country by
anything but its men.”
“That is quite true,” he said sadly. And as the tactics were now
settled, he went out and took an aimless and solitary walk.
By the time he came back two important things had happened. Irma had
been told of her mother’s death, and Miss Abbott, who had called for a
subscription, had been told also.
Irma had wept loudly, had asked a few sensible questions and a good many
silly ones, and had been content with evasive answers. Fortunately the
school prize-giving was at hand, and that, together with the prospect of
new black clothes, kept her from meditating on the fact that Lilia, who
had been absent so long, would now be absent for ever.
“As for Caroline,” said Mrs. Herriton, “I was almost frightened. She
broke down utterly. She cried even when she left the house. I comforted
her as best I could, and I kissed her. It is something that the breach
between her and ourselves is now entirely healed.”
“Did she ask no questions--as to the nature of Lilia’s death, I mean?”
“She did. But she has a mind of extraordinary delicacy. She saw that I
was reticent, and she did not press me. You see, Philip, I can say to
you what I could not say before Harriet. Her ideas are so crude. Really
we do not want it known in Sawston that there is a baby. All peace and
comfort would be lost if people came inquiring after it.”
His mother knew how to manage him. He agreed enthusiastically. And a few
days later, when he chanced to travel up to London with Miss Abbott,
he had all the time the pleasant thrill of one who is better informed.
Their last journey together had been from Monteriano back across
Europe. It had been a ghastly journey, and Philip, from the force of
association, rather expected something ghastly now.
He was surprised. Miss Abbott, between Sawston and Charing Cross,
revealed qualities which he had never guessed her to possess. Without
being exactly original, she did show a commendable intelligence, and
though at times she was gauche and even uncourtly, he felt that here was
a person whom it might be well to cultivate.
At first she annoyed him. They were talking, of course, about Lilia,
when she broke the thread of vague commiseration and said abruptly, “It
is all so strange as well as so tragic. And what I did was as strange as
anything.”
It was the first reference she had ever made to her contemptible
behaviour. “Never mind,” he said. “It’s all over now. Let the dead bury
their dead. It’s fallen out of our lives.”
“But that’s why I can talk about it and tell you everything I have
always wanted to. You thought me stupid and sentimental and wicked and
mad, but you never really knew how much I was to blame.”
“Indeed I never think about it now,” said Philip gently. He knew that
her nature was in the main generous and upright: it was unnecessary for
her to reveal her thoughts.
“The first evening we got to Monteriano,” she persisted, “Lilia went out
for a walk alone, saw that Italian in a picturesque position on a wall,
and fell in love. He was shabbily dressed, and she did not even know
he was the son of a dentist. I must tell you I was used to this sort
of thing. Once or twice before I had had to send people about their
business.”
“Yes; we counted on you,” said Philip, with sudden sharpness. After all,
if she would reveal her thoughts, she must take the consequences.
“I know you did,” she retorted with equal sharpness. “Lilia saw him
several times again, and I knew I ought to interfere. I called her to
my bedroom one night. She was very frightened, for she knew what it was
about and how severe I could be. ‘Do you love this man?’ I asked. ‘Yes
or no?’ She said ‘Yes.’ And I said, ‘Why don’t you marry him if you
think you’ll be happy?’”
“Really--really,” exploded Philip, as exasperated as if the thing had
happened yesterday. “You knew Lilia all your life. Apart from everything
else--as if she could choose what could make her happy!”
“Had you ever let her choose?” she flashed out. “I’m afraid that’s
rude,” she added, trying to calm herself.
“Let us rather say unhappily expressed,” said Philip, who always adopted
a dry satirical manner when he was puzzled.
“I want to finish. Next morning I found Signor Carella and said the same
to him. He--well, he was willing. That’s all.”
“And the telegram?” He looked scornfully out of the window.
Hitherto her voice had been hard, possibly in self-accusation, possibly
in defiance. Now it became unmistakably sad. “Ah, the telegram! That was
wrong. Lilia there was more cowardly than I was. We should have told the
truth. It lost me my nerve, at all events. I came to the station meaning
to tell you everything then. But we had started with a lie, and I got
frightened. And at the end, when you left, I got frightened again and
came with you.”
“Did you really mean to stop?”
“For a time, at all events.”
“Would that have suited a newly married pair?”
“It would have suited them. Lilia needed me. And as for him--I can’t
help feeling I might have got influence over him.”
“I am ignorant of these matters,” said Philip; “but I should have
thought that would have increased the difficulty of the situation.”
The crisp remark was wasted on her. She looked hopelessly at the raw
over-built country, and said, “Well, I have explained.”
“But pardon me, Miss Abbott; of most of your conduct you have given a
description rather than an explanation.”
He had fairly caught her, and expected that she would gape and collapse.
To his surprise she answered with some spirit, “An explanation may bore
you, Mr. Herriton: it drags in other topics.”
“Oh, never mind.”
“I hated Sawston, you see.”
He was delighted. “So did and do I. That’s splendid. Go on.”
“I hated the idleness, the stupidity, the respectability, the petty
unselfishness.”
“Petty selfishness,” he corrected. Sawston psychology had long been his
specialty.
“Petty unselfishness,” she repeated. “I had got an idea that every one
here spent their lives in making little sacrifices for objects they
didn’t care for, to please people they didn’t love; that they never
learnt to be sincere--and, what’s as bad, never learnt how to enjoy
themselves. That’s what I thought--what I thought at Monteriano.”
“Why, Miss Abbott,” he cried, “you should have told me this before!
Think it still! I agree with lots of it. Magnificent!”
“Now Lilia,” she went on, “though there were things about her I didn’t
like, had somehow kept the power of enjoying herself with sincerity. And
Gino, I thought, was splendid, and young, and strong not only in body,
and sincere as the day. If they wanted to marry, why shouldn’t they do
so? Why shouldn’t she break with the deadening life where she had got
into a groove, and would go on in it, getting more and more--worse
than unhappy--apathetic till she died? Of course I was wrong. She only
changed one groove for another--a worse groove. And as for him--well,
you know more about him than I do. I can never trust myself to judge
characters again. But I still feel he cannot have been quite bad when
we first met him. Lilia--that I should dare to say it!--must have been
cowardly. He was only a boy--just going to turn into something fine,
I thought--and she must have mismanaged him. So that is the one time I
have gone against what is proper, and there are the results. You have an
explanation now.”
“And much of it has been most interesting, though I don’t understand
everything. Did you never think of the disparity of their social
position?”
“We were mad--drunk with rebellion. We had no common-sense. As soon as
you came, you saw and foresaw everything.”
“Oh, I don’t think that.” He was vaguely displeased at being credited
with common-sense. For a moment Miss Abbott had seemed to him more
unconventional than himself.
“I hope you see,” she concluded, “why I have troubled you with this long
story. Women--I heard you say the other day--are never at ease till they
tell their faults out loud. Lilia is dead and her husband gone to
the bad--all through me. You see, Mr. Herriton, it makes me specially
unhappy; it’s the only time I’ve ever gone into what my father calls
‘real life’--and look what I’ve made of it! All that winter I seemed to
be waking up to beauty and splendour and I don’t know what; and when the
spring came, I wanted to fight against the things I hated--mediocrity
and dulness and spitefulness and society. I actually hated society for
a day or two at Monteriano. I didn’t see that all these things are
invincible, and that if we go against them they will break us to pieces.
Thank you for listening to so much nonsense.”
“Oh, I quite sympathize with what you say,” said Philip encouragingly;
“it isn’t nonsense, and a year or two ago I should have been saying it
too. But I feel differently now, and I hope that you also will change.
Society is invincible--to a certain degree. But your real life is your
own, and nothing can touch it. There is no power on earth that can
prevent your criticizing and despising mediocrity--nothing that can stop
you retreating into splendour and beauty--into the thoughts and beliefs
that make the real life--the real you.”
“I have never had that experience yet. Surely I and my life must be
where I live.”
Evidently she had the usual feminine incapacity for grasping philosophy.
But she had developed quite a personality, and he must see more of her.
“There is another great consolation against invincible mediocrity,” he
said--“the meeting a fellow-victim. I hope that this is only the first
of many discussions that we shall have together.”
She made a suitable reply. The train reached Charing Cross, and they
parted,--he to go to a matinee, she to buy petticoats for the corpulent
poor. Her thoughts wandered as she bought them: the gulf between herself
and Mr. Herriton, which she had always known to be great, now seemed to
her immeasurable.
These events and conversations took place at Christmas-time. The
New Life initiated by them lasted some seven months. Then a little
incident--a mere little vexatious incident--brought it to its close.
Irma collected picture post-cards, and Mrs. Herriton or Harriet always
glanced first at all that came, lest the child should get hold of
something vulgar. On this occasion the subject seemed perfectly
inoffensive--a lot of ruined factory chimneys--and Harriet was about to
hand it to her niece when her eye was caught by the words on the margin.
She gave a shriek and flung the card into the grate. Of course no fire
was alight in July, and Irma only had to run and pick it out again.
“How dare you!” screamed her aunt. “You wicked girl! Give it here!”
Unfortunately Mrs. Herriton was out of the room. Irma, who was not in
awe of Harriet, danced round the table, reading as she did so, “View of
the superb city of Monteriano--from your lital brother.”
Stupid Harriet caught her, boxed her ears, and tore the post-card into
fragments. Irma howled with pain, and began shouting indignantly, “Who
is my little brother? Why have I never heard of him before? Grandmamma!
Grandmamma! Who is my little brother? Who is my--”
Mrs. Herriton swept into the room, saying, “Come with me, dear, and I
will tell you. Now it is time for you to know.”
Irma returned from the interview sobbing, though, as a matter of
fact, she had learnt very little. But that little took hold of her
imagination. She had promised secrecy--she knew not why. But what harm
in talking of the little brother to those who had heard of him already?
“Aunt Harriet!” she would say. “Uncle Phil! Grandmamma! What do you
suppose my little brother is doing now? Has he begun to play? Do Italian
babies talk sooner than us, or would he be an English baby born
abroad? Oh, I do long to see him, and be the first to teach him the Ten
Commandments and the Catechism.”
The last remark always made Harriet look grave.
“Really,” exclaimed Mrs. Herriton, “Irma is getting too tiresome. She
forgot poor Lilia soon enough.”
“A living brother is more to her than a dead mother,” said Philip
dreamily. “She can knit him socks.”
“I stopped that. She is bringing him in everywhere. It is most
vexatious. The other night she asked if she might include him in the
people she mentions specially in her prayers.”
“What did you say?”
“Of course I allowed her,” she replied coldly. “She has a right to
mention any one she chooses. But I was annoyed with her this morning,
and I fear that I showed it.”
“And what happened this morning?”
“She asked if she could pray for her ‘new father’--for the Italian!”
“Did you let her?”
“I got up without saying anything.”
“You must have felt just as you did when I wanted to pray for the
devil.”
“He is the devil,” cried Harriet.
“No, Harriet; he is too vulgar.”
“I will thank you not to scoff against religion!” was Harriet’s retort.
“Think of that poor baby. Irma is right to pray for him. What an
entrance into life for an English child!”
“My dear sister, I can reassure you. Firstly, the beastly baby is
Italian. Secondly, it was promptly christened at Santa Deodata’s, and a
powerful combination of saints watch over--”
“Don’t, dear. And, Harriet, don’t be so serious--I mean not so serious
when you are with Irma. She will be worse than ever if she thinks we
have something to hide.”
Harriet’s conscience could be quite as tiresome as Philip’s
unconventionality. Mrs. Herriton soon made it easy for her daughter to
go for six weeks to the Tirol. Then she and Philip began to grapple with
Irma alone.
Just as they had got things a little quiet the beastly baby sent another
picture post-card--a comic one, not particularly proper. Irma received
it while they were out, and all the trouble began again.
“I cannot think,” said Mrs. Herriton, “what his motive is in sending
them.”
Two years before, Philip would have said that the motive was to give
pleasure. Now he, like his mother, tried to think of something sinister
and subtle.
“Do you suppose that he guesses the situation--how anxious we are to
hush the scandal up?”
“That is quite possible. He knows that Irma will worry us about the
baby. Perhaps he hopes that we shall adopt it to quiet her.”
“Hopeful indeed.”
“At the same time he has the chance of corrupting the child’s morals.”
She unlocked a drawer, took out the post-card, and regarded it gravely.
“He entreats her to send the baby one,” was her next remark.
“She might do it too!”
“I told her not to; but we must watch her carefully, without, of course,
appearing to be suspicious.”
Philip was getting to enjoy his mother’s diplomacy. He did not think of
his own morals and behaviour any more.
“Who’s to watch her at school, though? She may bubble out any moment.”
“We can but trust to our influence,” said Mrs. Herriton.
Irma did bubble out, that very day. She was proof against a single
post-card, not against two. A new little brother is a valuable
sentimental asset to a school-girl, and her school was then passing
through an acute phase of baby-worship. Happy the girl who had her
quiver full of them, who kissed them when she left home in the morning,
who had the right to extricate them from mail-carts in the interval, who
dangled them at tea ere they retired to rest! That one might sing
the unwritten song of Miriam, blessed above all school-girls, who was
allowed to hide her baby brother in a squashy place, where none but
herself could find him!
How could Irma keep silent when pretentious girls spoke of baby cousins
and baby visitors--she who had a baby brother, who wrote her post-cards
through his dear papa? She had promised not to tell about him--she knew
not why--and she told. And one girl told another, and one girl told her
mother, and the thing was out.
“Yes, it is all very sad,” Mrs. Herriton kept saying. “My
daughter-in-law made a very unhappy marriage, as I dare say you know.
I suppose that the child will be educated in Italy. Possibly his
grandmother may be doing something, but I have not heard of it. I do not
expect that she will have him over. She disapproves of the father. It is
altogether a painful business for her.”
She was careful only to scold Irma for disobedience--that eighth deadly
sin, so convenient to parents and guardians. Harriet would have plunged
into needless explanations and abuse. The child was ashamed, and talked
about the baby less. The end of the school year was at hand, and she
hoped to get another prize. But she also had put her hand to the wheel.
It was several days before they saw Miss Abbott. Mrs. Herriton had not
come across her much since the kiss of reconciliation, nor Philip since
the journey to London. She had, indeed, been rather a disappointment to
him. Her creditable display of originality had never been repeated:
he feared she was slipping back. Now she came about the Cottage
Hospital--her life was devoted to dull acts of charity--and though she
got money out of him and out of his mother, she still sat tight in her
chair, looking graver and more wooden than ever.
“I dare say you have heard,” said Mrs. Herriton, well knowing what the
matter was.
“Yes, I have. I came to ask you; have any steps been taken?”
Philip was astonished. The question was impertinent in the extreme. He
had a regard for Miss Abbott, and regretted that she had been guilty of
it.
“About the baby?” asked Mrs. Herriton pleasantly.
“Yes.”
“As far as I know, no steps. Mrs. Theobald may have decided on
something, but I have not heard of it.”
“I was meaning, had you decided on anything?”
“The child is no relation of ours,” said Philip. “It is therefore
scarcely for us to interfere.”
His mother glanced at him nervously. “Poor Lilia was almost a daughter
to me once. I know what Miss Abbott means. But now things have altered.
Any initiative would naturally come from Mrs. Theobald.”
“But does not Mrs. Theobald always take any initiative from you?” asked
Miss Abbott.
Mrs. Herriton could not help colouring. “I sometimes have given her
advice in the past. I should not presume to do so now.”
“Then is nothing to be done for the child at all?”
“It is extraordinarily good of you to take this unexpected interest,”
said Philip.
“The child came into the world through my negligence,” replied Miss
Abbott. “It is natural I should take an interest in it.”
“My dear Caroline,” said Mrs. Herriton, “you must not brood over the
thing. Let bygones be bygones. The child should worry you even less than
it worries us. We never even mention it. It belongs to another world.”
Miss Abbott got up without replying and turned to go. Her extreme
gravity made Mrs. Herriton uneasy. “Of course,” she added, “if Mrs.
Theobald decides on any plan that seems at all practicable--I must say
I don’t see any such--I shall ask if I may join her in it, for Irma’s
sake, and share in any possible expenses.”
“Please would you let me know if she decides on anything. I should like
to join as well.”
“My dear, how you throw about your money! We would never allow it.”
“And if she decides on nothing, please also let me know. Let me know in
any case.”
Mrs. Herriton made a point of kissing her.
“Is the young person mad?” burst out Philip as soon as she had departed.
“Never in my life have I seen such colossal impertinence. She ought to
be well smacked, and sent back to Sunday-school.”
His mother said nothing.
“But don’t you see--she is practically threatening us? You can’t put
her off with Mrs. Theobald; she knows as well as we do that she is a
nonentity. If we don’t do anything she’s going to raise a scandal--that
we neglect our relatives, &c., which is, of course, a lie. Still she’ll
say it. Oh, dear, sweet, sober Caroline Abbott has a screw loose! We
knew it at Monteriano. I had my suspicions last year one day in the
train; and here it is again. The young person is mad.”
She still said nothing.
“Shall I go round at once and give it her well? I’d really enjoy it.”
In a low, serious voice--such a voice as she had not used to him for
months--Mrs. Herriton said, “Caroline has been extremely impertinent.
Yet there may be something in what she says after all. Ought the child
to grow up in that place--and with that father?”
Philip started and shuddered. He saw that his mother was not sincere.
Her insincerity to others had amused him, but it was disheartening when
used against himself.
“Let us admit frankly,” she continued, “that after all we may have
responsibilities.”
“I don’t understand you, Mother. You are turning absolutely round. What
are you up to?”
In one moment an impenetrable barrier had been erected between them.
They were no longer in smiling confidence. Mrs. Herriton was off on
tactics of her own--tactics which might be beyond or beneath him.
His remark offended her. “Up to? I am wondering whether I ought not to
adopt the child. Is that sufficiently plain?”
“And this is the result of half-a-dozen idiocies of Miss Abbott?”
“It is. I repeat, she has been extremely impertinent. None the less
she is showing me my duty. If I can rescue poor Lilia’s baby from that
horrible man, who will bring it up either as Papist or infidel--who will
certainly bring it up to be vicious--I shall do it.”
“You talk like Harriet.”
“And why not?” said she, flushing at what she knew to be an insult.
“Say, if you choose, that I talk like Irma. That child has seen the
thing more clearly than any of us. She longs for her little brother. She
shall have him. I don’t care if I am impulsive.”
He was sure that she was not impulsive, but did not dare to say so. Her
ability frightened him. All his life he had been her puppet. She let him
worship Italy, and reform Sawston--just as she had let Harriet be Low
Church. She had let him talk as much as he liked. But when she wanted a
thing she always got it.
And though she was frightening him, she did not inspire him with
reverence. Her life, he saw, was without meaning. To what purpose was
her diplomacy, her insincerity, her continued repression of vigour? Did
they make any one better or happier? Did they even bring happiness to
herself? Harriet with her gloomy peevish creed, Lilia with her clutches
after pleasure, were after all more divine than this well-ordered,
active, useless machine.
Now that his mother had wounded his vanity he could criticize her thus.
But he could not rebel. To the end of his days he could probably go on
doing what she wanted. He watched with a cold interest the duel between
her and Miss Abbott. Mrs. Herriton’s policy only appeared gradually. It
was to prevent Miss Abbott interfering with the child at all costs, and
if possible to prevent her at a small cost. Pride was the only solid
element in her disposition. She could not bear to seem less charitable
than others.
“I am planning what can be done,” she would tell people, “and that kind
Caroline Abbott is helping me. It is no business of either of us, but
we are getting to feel that the baby must not be left entirely to that
horrible man. It would be unfair to little Irma; after all, he is her
half-brother. No, we have come to nothing definite.”
Miss Abbott was equally civil, but not to be appeased by good
intentions. The child’s welfare was a sacred duty to her, not a matter
of pride or even of sentiment. By it alone, she felt, could she undo a
little of the evil that she had permitted to come into the world. To her
imagination Monteriano had become a magic city of vice, beneath
whose towers no person could grow up happy or pure. Sawston, with its
semi-detached houses and snobby schools, its book teas and bazaars, was
certainly petty and dull; at times she found it even contemptible. But
it was not a place of sin, and at Sawston, either with the Herritons or
with herself, the baby should grow up.
As soon as it was inevitable, Mrs. Herriton wrote a letter for Waters
and Adamson to send to Gino--the oddest letter; Philip saw a copy of
it afterwards. Its ostensible purpose was to complain of the picture
postcards. Right at the end, in a few nonchalant sentences, she offered
to adopt the child, provided that Gino would undertake never to come
near it, and would surrender some of Lilia’s money for its education.
“What do you think of it?” she asked her son. “It would not do to let
him know that we are anxious for it.”
“Certainly he will never suppose that.”
“But what effect will the letter have on him?”
“When he gets it he will do a sum. If it is less expensive in the long
run to part with a little money and to be clear of the baby, he will
part with it. If he would lose, he will adopt the tone of the loving
father.”
“Dear, you’re shockingly cynical.” After a pause she added, “How would
the sum work out?”
“I don’t know, I’m sure. But if you wanted to ensure the baby being
posted by return, you should have sent a little sum to HIM. Oh, I’m not
cynical--at least I only go by what I know of him. But I am weary of
the whole show. Weary of Italy. Weary, weary, weary. Sawston’s a kind,
pitiful place, isn’t it? I will go walk in it and seek comfort.”
He smiled as he spoke, for the sake of not appearing serious. When he
had left her she began to smile also.
It was to the Abbotts’ that he walked. Mr. Abbott offered him tea, and
Caroline, who was keeping up her Italian in the next room, came in to
pour it out. He told them that his mother had written to Signor Carella,
and they both uttered fervent wishes for her success.
“Very fine of Mrs. Herriton, very fine indeed,” said Mr. Abbott,
who, like every one else, knew nothing of his daughter’s exasperating
behaviour. “I’m afraid it will mean a lot of expense. She will get
nothing out of Italy without paying.”
“There are sure to be incidental expenses,” said Philip cautiously.
Then he turned to Miss Abbott and said, “Do you suppose we shall have
difficulty with the man?”
“It depends,” she replied, with equal caution.
“From what you saw of him, should you conclude that he would make an
affectionate parent?”
“I don’t go by what I saw of him, but by what I know of him.”
“Well, what do you conclude from that?”
“That he is a thoroughly wicked man.”
“Yet thoroughly wicked men have loved their children. Look at Rodrigo
Borgia, for example.”
“I have also seen examples of that in my district.”
With this remark the admirable young woman rose, and returned to keep
up her Italian. She puzzled Philip extremely. He could understand
enthusiasm, but she did not seem the least enthusiastic. He could
understand pure cussedness, but it did not seem to be that either.
Apparently she was deriving neither amusement nor profit from the
struggle. Why, then, had she undertaken it? Perhaps she was not sincere.
Perhaps, on the whole, that was most likely. She must be professing one
thing and aiming at another. What the other thing could be he did not
stop to consider. Insincerity was becoming his stock explanation for
anything unfamiliar, whether that thing was a kindly action or a high
ideal.
“She fences well,” he said to his mother afterwards.
“What had you to fence about?” she said suavely. Her son might know her
tactics, but she refused to admit that he knew. She still pretended to
him that the baby was the one thing she wanted, and had always wanted,
and that Miss Abbott was her valued ally.
And when, next week, the reply came from Italy, she showed him no face
of triumph. “Read the letters,” she said. “We have failed.”
Gino wrote in his own language, but the solicitors had sent a laborious
English translation, where “Preghiatissima Signora” was rendered
as “Most Praiseworthy Madam,” and every delicate compliment and
superlative--superlatives are delicate in Italian--would have felled an
ox. For a moment Philip forgot the matter in the manner; this grotesque
memorial of the land he had loved moved him almost to tears. He knew
the originals of these lumbering phrases; he also had sent “sincere
auguries”; he also had addressed letters--who writes at home?--from the
Caffe Garibaldi. “I didn’t know I was still such an ass,” he thought.
“Why can’t I realize that it’s merely tricks of expression? A bounder’s
a bounder, whether he lives in Sawston or Monteriano.”
“Isn’t it disheartening?” said his mother.
He then read that Gino could not accept the generous offer. His paternal
heart would not permit him to abandon this symbol of his deplored
spouse. As for the picture post-cards, it displeased him greatly that
they had been obnoxious. He would send no more. Would Mrs. Herriton,
with her notorious kindness, explain this to Irma, and thank her for
those which Irma (courteous Miss!) had sent to him?
“The sum works out against us,” said Philip. “Or perhaps he is putting
up the price.”
“No,” said Mrs. Herriton decidedly. “It is not that. For some perverse
reason he will not part with the child. I must go and tell poor
Caroline. She will be equally distressed.”
She returned from the visit in the most extraordinary condition. Her
face was red, she panted for breath, there were dark circles round her
eyes.
“The impudence!” she shouted. “The cursed impudence! Oh, I’m swearing.
I don’t care. That beastly woman--how dare she interfere--I’ll--Philip,
dear, I’m sorry. It’s no good. You must go.”
“Go where? Do sit down. What’s happened?” This outburst of violence from
his elegant ladylike mother pained him dreadfully. He had not known that
it was in her.
“She won’t accept--won’t accept the letter as final. You must go to
Monteriano!”
“I won’t!” he shouted back. “I’ve been and I’ve failed. I’ll never see
the place again. I hate Italy.”
“If you don’t go, she will.”
“Abbott?”
“Yes. Going alone; would start this evening. I offered to write; she
said it was ‘too late!’ Too late! The child, if you please--Irma’s
brother--to live with her, to be brought up by her and her father at our
very gates, to go to school like a gentleman, she paying. Oh, you’re a
man! It doesn’t matter for you. You can laugh. But I know what people
say; and that woman goes to Italy this evening.”
He seemed to be inspired. “Then let her go! Let her mess with Italy by
herself. She’ll come to grief somehow. Italy’s too dangerous, too--”
“Stop that nonsense, Philip. I will not be disgraced by her. I WILL have
the child. Pay all we’ve got for it. I will have it.”
“Let her go to Italy!” he cried. “Let her meddle with what she doesn’t
understand! Look at this letter! The man who wrote it will marry her,
or murder her, or do for her somehow. He’s a bounder, but he’s not an
English bounder. He’s mysterious and terrible. He’s got a country behind
him that’s upset people from the beginning of the world.”
“Harriet!” exclaimed his mother. “Harriet shall go too. Harriet, now,
will be invaluable!” And before Philip had stopped talking nonsense, she
had planned the whole thing and was looking out the trains.