LIKE TO LIKE
IT was in May, 1916, that Waldo got a severe wound in the right
shoulder, which put him out of action for the rest of the war and sent
him, after two or three months in a hospital, back to Cragsfoot. He
had done very well, indeed distinguished himself rather notably; had
fortune been kinder, he might have expected to rise to high rank. The
letters which I received—I was far away, and was not at the time able
to get leave, even had I felt justified in asking for it—reflected
the mingled disappointment, anxiety, and relief, which the end of his
military career, the severity of his wound, and his return home—alive,
at all events!—naturally produced at Cragsfoot.
Sir Paget wrote seldom and briefly, but with a quiet humor and an
incisive touch. Aunt Bertha’s letters—especially now that she had only
me to write to, and no longer spent the larger part of her epistolary
energy on Waldo—were frequent, full, vivid, and chatty. But she was
also very discursive; she would sandwich in the Kaiser between the
cook and the cabbages, Waldo’s wound between Bethmann-Hollweg and Mr.
Winston Churchill. It was, however, possible to gather from her, aided
by Sir Paget, a pretty complete picture of what was going on both at
Cragsfoot and at Briarmount.
For at Briarmount too anxiety reigned, and the times were critical. As
might be expected of him, Mr. Jonathan Frost had wrought marvels during
the war. The whole of his vast establishments had been placed at the
disposal of the Ministry of Munitions; he had effected wonders of rapid
adaptation and transformation, wonders of organization and output; he
“speeded up” a dozen Boards and infused his own restless energy into
somnolent offices. But two years of these exertions, on the top of a
life of gigantic labor, proved too much even for him. He won a peerage,
but he gave his life. In the September of that same year he came back
to Briarmount, the victim of a stroke, a dying man. His mind was still
clear and active, but he had considerable difficulty in speaking, and
was unable to move without assistance. His daughter, who had sedulously
nursed him through his labors, was now nursing him through the last
stage of his earthly course.
But there was also a newcomer at Briarmount, a frequent visitor there
during the last months of its master’s life, one in whom both Aunt
Bertha and Sir Paget took considerable interest. This was Captain
Godfrey Frost. Lord Dundrannan (he took his title from a place he had
in Scotland) was old-fashioned enough not to approve of confiding to
women the exclusive command of great interests; they lacked the broad
view and the balance of mind, however penetrating their intuitions
might on occasion be! And too much power was not good for them; he
even seemed to have hinted to Sir Paget that they were quite masterful
enough already! That he meant to leave his daughter handsomely, indeed
splendidly, endowed, was certain; but he was minded to provide himself
with an heir male in the person of this young man. It would have been
natural, perhaps, to suspect him of planning a match between the
cousins, but this did not seem to be in his head—perhaps because such
personal matters as marriages held a small place in his mind; perhaps
because he suspected that his daughter’s ideas on that subject were
already settled; perhaps because his nephew was somewhat too young
and—from a social point of view—unformed to be a good mate for his
accomplished daughter.
Captain Frost was, in fact, inexperienced and backward, shy and rather
silent, in society; but unquestionably he had a full share of the
family business ability—so much so that, when Lord Dundrannan “cracked
up,” he was brought back from the front (against his protests, it is
only fair to add), and put in charge, actual if not always nominal,
of a great part of the important activities on which his uncle had
been engaged. His disposition appeared to be simple, amiable, and
unassuming. He was pleasantly deferential to Sir Paget, rather afraid
of Aunt Bertha’s acute eyes, cordial and attentive to Waldo. Towards
Nina he was content to accept the position of pupil and _protégé_; he
let her put him through his social paces; he regarded her with evident
respect and admiration, and thought her worthy to be her father’s
daughter—more than that he could not do! There was no trace of any
sentiment beyond this, or different in kind from it. There was, in
fact, to be detected in Aunt Bertha’s letters an underlying note of
satisfaction; it might be described in the words, “He’s quite nice, but
there’s nothing to fear!”
But if such a note as that were really to be heard in Aunt Bertha’s
letters, it could mean only one thing; and it marked a great change in
her attitude towards Nina. It meant that she was looking forward with
contentment, apparently with actual pleasure, to a match between Nina
and Waldo. Other signs pointed in the same direction—her mention of
Nina’s frequent calls at Cragsfoot, of her kindness to Waldo, of her
devotion to her father, of her praiseworthy calm and level-headedness
during this trying time. The change had perhaps started from a
reaction against Lucinda; after the first impulse of sympathy with
the distracted fugitive (a very real one at the time) had died down,
Lucinda’s waywardness, her “unaccountability,” presented themselves
in a less excusable light. But the main cause lay, no doubt, in Waldo
himself. Aunt Bertha was—passing impulses apart—for Waldo and on his
side. Any shifting of her views and feelings in a matter like this
would be certain to reflect a similar alteration in his attitude.
In November a letter from Sir Paget told me of Lord Dundrannan’s death,
at which, by chance, he was himself present; evidently moved by the
scene, he recounted it with more detail than he was wont to indulge in.
Hearing that his neighbor was worse, he went to inquire; as he stood at
the door, Nina drove up in her car—she had been out for an airing—and
took him into the library where her father was, sitting in a chair by
the fire. It was very rarely that he would consent to keep his bed, and
he had insisted on getting up that day. “Godfrey Frost was there” (my
uncle wrote) “and Dr. Napier, standing and whispering together in the
window. By the sick man sat an old white-haired Wesleyan minister, whom
he had sent for all the way from Bradford, where he himself was born:
he had ‘sat under’ this old gentleman as a boy, and a few days before
had expressed a great longing to see him. The minister was reading the
Bible to him now. It looked as though he had foreseen that the end
was coming. He had had a sort of valedictory talk with Nina and young
Frost a week before—about the money and the businesses, what they were
to do, what rules they were to be guided by, and so on. That done,
he appeared to dismiss worldly affairs, this world itself, from his
thoughts, and ‘took up’ the next. I am not mocking; yet I can hardly
help smiling. He seemed to have ‘taken it up’ in the same way that he
would have inquired into a new, important and interesting speculation;
and he got his expert—the old minister from Bradford—to advise him. He
was not afraid, or agitated, or remorseful; his feelings seemed, so
far as his impaired speech enabled him to describe them to his family,
those of a curious and earnest interest in his prospects of survival—he
eagerly desired to survive—and in what awaited him if he did survive.
The fact that he had neglected religion for a great many years back
did not trouble him; nor did ‘How hardly shall a rich man——’ He seemed
confident that, if immortality were a fact, some place and some work
would be found for Jonathan Frost. Whether it was a fact was what he
wanted to know; he hated the idea of nothingness, of inactivity, of
stopping!
“The old minister shut his book when I came in. Nina led me up to her
father. He recognized me and smiled. I said a few words, but I doubt
if he listened. He pointed towards the book on the minister’s knee—he
could move his left hand—and tried to say something: I think that he
was trying to pursue the subject that engrossed him, perhaps to get my
opinion on it. But the next moment he gave a smothered sort of cry—not
loud at all—and moved his hand towards his heart. Napier darted across
the room to him; Nina put her arm round his neck and kissed him. He
gave a sigh, and his head fell back on her arm. He was gone—all in a
minute—gone to get the answer to his question. Then there was a ringing
of bells, of course, and they came in and took him way. Nina put her
hands in mine for a second before she followed them out of the room:
‘My dear father!’ she said. Then she put her arm in young Frost’s,
and he led her out of the room, very gently, in a very gentleman-like
way, I must say. I was left alone with the old minister. ‘The end of
a remarkable life!’ I said, or something of that sort. ‘I’m glad it
came so easily at the end.’ He bowed his white head. ‘He did great
things for his country,’ he answered. ‘God’s ways are not our ways, Sir
Paget.’ I said good-by, and left him with his book.”
A month after Lord Dundrannan’s death I got Christmas leave, came to
England, and went down to Cragsfoot on the Friday before Christmas Day;
it fell on a Monday that year. It was jolly to be there again, and to
find old Waldo out of danger and getting on really famously.
But how he was changed! I will not go into the physical changes—they
proved, thank God, in the main temporary, though it was a long
time before he got back nearly all his old vigor—but I can’t help
speculating on how much they, and the suffering they brought, had to
do with the change in the nature of the man. Perhaps nothing; it is, I
suppose, rather an obscure subject, a medical question; but I cannot
help thinking that they worked together with his other experiences.
At least, they must have made him in a way older in body, just as
the other experiences made him older in mind. I never realized till
then—though I ought to have—how very little I had really been through,
in what had seemed two tolerably exciting and exhausting years,
compared to him who had “stuck it through” all the time at the front. I
said something of this sort to him as we gossiped together, and it set
him talking.
“Well, old chap,” he said, laughing, “I don’t know how you found
it—you were, of course, a grown man, a man of the world, before it all
began—but I just had to change. It’s no credit to me—I had to! I was a
cub, a puppy—I had to become a trained animal. As it was, that infernal
temper of mine nearly cost me my commission in the first three months.
It would have, by Jove, if Tom Winter—my Company Commander—hadn’t been
the best fellow in the world; he was killed six months later, poor
chap, but he’d got a muzzle on me before that. You will find me a bit
better there; I haven’t had a real old break-out ever since.”
“Oh, I daresay you will, when you get fit!” said I consolingly.
“Thank you,” he laughed again. “But I don’t want to, you know. They
were a bit upsetting to everybody concerned.” He smiled as though in
a gentle amusement at his old self. “Only father could manage me—and
he couldn’t always. Lord, I was impossible! I might have committed a
murder one fine day!”
I recollected a certain fine day on which murder, or something very
like it, was certainly his purpose. Oh, with a good deal of excuse, no
doubt!
Perhaps his thoughts had moved in the same direction; seeing me again
might well have that effect on him.
“I don’t want to exaggerate things. I daresay I’ve a bit of the devil
left in me. And I don’t know whether men in general have been affected
much by the business. Some have, some haven’t, I expect. Perhaps I’m a
special case. The war came at what was for me a very critical moment.
For me personally it was a lucky thing, in spite of this old shoulder;
and it was lucky that my father was so clear about its coming. I was
saved from myself, by Jove, I was!”
The “self” of whom he spoke came back to my memory as strangely
different and apart from the languid, tranquil man who was talking to
me on the long invalid’s chair. He reclined there, smiling thoughtfully.
“I bear no malice against the girl,” he went on. “It was my mistake.
She went to her own in the end; it was inevitable that she should; and
better before marriage—even just before!—than after. Like to like—she
and Monkey Valdez!”
Though I had my own views as to that, I held my tongue. If once I let
out that I had seen Lucinda, one question—if not from Waldo, at any
rate from Aunt Bertha—would lead to another, and I should be in danger
of betraying the needlewoman’s secret. I had made up my mind to lie if
need be, but if I kept silence, it was a hundred to one that it would
not occur to any one at Cragsfoot to ask whether I had seen Lucinda.
Why should I have seen her? It never did occur to any of the three of
them; I was asked no questions.
“The best thing to be hoped is that we never run up against one another
again. I might still be tempted to give the Monkey a thrashing! Oh,
I forgot—I don’t suppose I shall ever be able to give anybody a
thrashing! Sad thought, Julius! Well, there it is—let’s forget ‘em!” A
gesture of his sound arm waved Lucinda and her Monkey into oblivion.
So be it. I changed the subject. “Very sad about poor old Frost.
Dundrannan, I mean.”
“Yes, poor old boy! For a week or two it was about even betting between
him and me—which of us would win out, I mean. Well, I have; and he’s
gone. We didn’t half do him justice in the old days. Really a grand
man, don’t you think?”
I agreed. Lord Dundrannan—Jonathan Frost—had always filled me with the
sort of admiration that a non-stop express inspires; and Sir Paget’s
letter had added a pathetic touch to the recollection of him—made him
more of a human being, brought him into relation with Something that he
did not create; that, in fact, I suppose, created him. Really quite a
new aspect of Lord Dundrannan!
“She’s come through it splendidly,” said Waldo.
“What, Miss Nina?”
Waldo laughed. “Look here, old chap, you don’t seem to be up to date.
Been in Paraguay or Patagonia, or somewhere, have you? She’s not ‘Miss
Nina’—she’s my Lady Dundrannan.”
“Nobody told me that there was a special remainder to her!”
“Well, he’d done wonders. He was old and ill. No son! They could hardly
refuse it him, could they? The peerage would have been an empty gift
without it.”
“Lady Dundrannan! Lady Dundrannan!”
“You’ve got it right now, Julius. Of Dundrannan in the county of Perth,
and of Briarmount in the county of Devon—to give it its full dignity.”
“I expect she’s pleased with it?”
“We’re all human. I think she is. Besides, she was very fond and proud
of her father, and likes to have her share in carrying on his fame.”
“And she has wherewithal to gild the title!”
“Gilt and to spare! But only about a third of what he had. A third to
her, a third to public objects, a third to Godfrey Frost. That’s about
it—roughly. But business control to Godfrey, I understand.”
“Does she like that?” I asked.
He laughed again—just a little reluctantly, I thought. “Not
altogether, perhaps. But she accepts it gracefully, and takes it out of
the young man by ordering him about! He’s a surprisingly decent young
chap; she’ll lick him into shape in no time.”
“From what Aunt Bertha said, you and she have made great friends?”
“Yes, we have now.” He paused a moment. “She was a bit difficult at
first. You see, there were things in the past——Oh, well, never mind
that—it’s all over.”
There were things in the past; there were: that group of three on the
top of the cliffs; the girl sobbing wildly, furiously, shamefully; the
man holding the other girl’s arm in his as in a vise of iron. Meeting
Nina again may well have been a bit difficult at first! It was also a
bit difficult to adjust one’s vision to Baroness Dundrannan and Madame
Chose’s needlewoman, to re-focus them. How would they feel about one
another now? Lucinda had found some pity for the sobbing girl; would
Lady Dundrannan find the like for the needlewoman?
Or would Waldo himself? In spite of the new gentleness that there was
in his manner, taken as a whole, there had been an acidity, a certain
sharpness of contempt, in his reference to Lucinda. “That girl”—“like
to like”—“she and Monkey Valdez.” It was natural, perhaps, but—the
question would not be suppressed—was it quite the tone of that “great
gentleman” whom Lucinda herself still held in her memory?
I was content to drop the subject. “Your father’s looking splendid,” I
remarked, “but Aunt Bertha seems to me rather fagged.”
“Aunt Bertha’s been fretting a dashed sight too much over me—that’s the
fact.” He smiled as he went on. “Well, I’m out of it for good and all,
they tell me—if I need telling—and I suppose I ought to be sorry for
it. But really I’m so deuced tired, that——! Well, I just want to lie
here and be looked after.”
“Oh, you’ll get that!” I assured him confidently. There was Aunt Bertha
to do it; Aunt Bertha, at all events. Possibly there was somebody else
who would do it even more efficiently.