FATHER AND SON
"_The wise sometimes from wisdom's ways depart:
Can youth then hush the dictates of the heart?
Precepts of prudence curb, but can't control
The fierce emotions of the flowing soul._"--Byron.
The three young people, after partaking at Fuller's of an excellent
tea, returned to Bryanston Square in good time to dress for dinner.
As they entered the house, Mr. Rosenberg emerged from his library on
the ground floor, and called to Gerald, who, thus summoned, hung up his
hat and walked into the dark, cool room where his father was seated at
his roll-top desk, with a letter lying before him.
The elder man looked up at his only son with a kindly, half-rueful
expression. "Gerald," he said, "I'm not as a rule tyrannical, and I
think you will admit that I don't pry unduly into your affairs."
"I do admit it, father----"
"Well, if I put a question which may seem to you unwarranted, I want
you to understand that there is grave reason for it. The question is
this. Is there any understanding between yourself and Miss Mynors?"
Gerald flushed, a slow, dark flush, as he seated himself near his
father, his eyes on the ground. "No," he said quietly, "not as yet."
"Ha!" The shrewd, kindly eyes above the rims of the reading-glasses
were fixed upon him. "That means that you might--eh, Gerald?"
The younger man did not at once reply. He seemed to be weighing
carefully the thing he wished to say. At last:
"I am not a fool, father," he began, "and I have ambition, or I should
be no son of yours. I should prefer to make a marriage which would
establish me socially." Embarrassment made his phrasing somewhat
stilted. "You will remember that when I first saw Miss Mynors, she was
the daughter of a man with a county position. One assumed the adequate
rent-roll that went with it."
"Yes, yes, my boy--I quite understand."
There was a pause. "She is far the most beautiful girl I ever saw,"
said Gerald at length.
"I grant it."
"She has also a beautiful disposition."
"H'mph!"
"Yes, it is so. Her birth being undeniable, and her beauty so great, I
have been wondering whether--whether anything else that is within my
reach could ever be as well worth having--could ever compensate me for
her loss."
"In short, my able, intellectual son is preparing to consider the world
well lost for love--eh?"
"I think, father, you will admit the temptation to do so in this case."
"I do," was the answer, in tones abrupt but heartfelt. "I don't mind
owning that, during the past fortnight, while seeing whither you were
drifting, I have been half-inclined to drift also in that direction.
But, my boy, it won't do." He laid his clenched hand heavily on the
desk before him. "I tell you plainly that it won't do. The girl is
beautiful, I don't deny it. But she comes of a bad stock. Her mother is
a woman whom I should describe as having no moral sense. They are
beggars. You would have bound upon your back, for the term of your
natural life, a ready-made family of three, none of whom, I dare swear,
will ever earn a farthing as long as they live. Just run your eye over
that."
With a sudden twisting gesture he pushed a note, on lavender paper with
a tiny, narrow black border, and scented with orris root, towards where
his son sat. Gerald read:
Laburnum Villa, Wayhurst.
_My dear, generous friend,_
_With your kindness to my Virginia already placing me under a burden
of obligation to you, it must indeed seem to you that I stretch
friendship to its utmost in writing to weary you with my troubles and
to beseech advice. My excuses are, briefly, these: I know you to be an
excellent man of business; and I know that you love my girl._
_I will try not to be tiresome, and, indeed, the story of my
misfortune, though dire, will not take long to tell. My poor
husband--who, alas! had not your gift for finance--mortgaged our dear
home during his lifetime. At his death, the debts on the estate
swallowed up almost all other available money. We were obliged to let
Lissendean, and to live upon the rent paid. I am quite unused to
business, having lived, till my sad widowhood, so sheltered a life, and
I forgot that if the payments were not kept up--the interest on the
mortgage--I should lose the house altogether. Believe me, in our
straitened circumstances, it was impossible to keep up the payments.
Only yesterday have I heard from my solicitor that the mortgagee has
foreclosed, and that we are left as destitute as though my husband had
been a crossing-sweeper._
_Can you suggest to me any means by which this trouble could be met?
Is there any way of raising money by which I can stave off the utter
ruin that threatens my helpless children? I turn to you as a last
resort, and you will never know what it costs my pride to let you into
the secret of our misery. Do not tell my darling child until her visit
is over--let her have her happy, happy moments with you undimmed. I can
break the bad news to her to-morrow, upon her return--or later, should
you by any chance wish her to extend her visit.--I am, dear Mr.
Rosenberg, your sorely tried friend,_
Virginia Mynors.
The dark colour deepened upon Gerald's face as he read this letter. He
laid it down with a gesture of distaste, and made no audible comment.
His father, looking sympathetically at him, tapped the paper with his
broad finger-tips. "Gerald," he said, "that woman is a humbug, through
and through. It is the letter of a cadger. Look at it--written on paper
that cost exactly ten times what her note-paper ought to cost. Little
things like that tell one a lot. No doubt everything else is on the
same scale. I expect they are up to their necks in debt. What can I do
with that letter, except send the writer ten pounds and regret my
inability to help her further? Nobody could help her. But I tell you
plainly, my son--if I can prevent it, as God's above us, that woman
shall never be your mother-in-law."
He did not speak violently, but judicially, as one summing up a case.
"I went down there once, you may remember, for a week-end, while they
were still at Lissendean," he continued. "I took her measure then. She
is a woman who would fleece any man who could be got to admire her. She
is that type. You think the girl is different. I tell you that what is
bred in the bone will come out in the flesh. The girl isn't to be
trusted any more than the mother. You see the position--absolutely
destitute! Three of them! What is to happen? Say you marry--say you
allow her two or three hundred a year--that's going to cripple you, and
it isn't going to keep her." He spoke with ever-increasing urgency. "If
you give her three, she'll spend five. If you give her five, she'll
spend eight. Can't you see that for yourself, Gerald? It's all in that
letter--every word of it--if you read between the lines."
"It's a contemptible letter," said Gerald, pushing back his chair
abruptly; "but I can't believe that the girl----"
"Gerald, put it to yourself a moment. Even if the girl is the best girl
in the world, are you prepared to keep the lot? Virginia's very
qualities--her love for her family, her generosity where they are
concerned--would be your ruin. You couldn't say no to her; she couldn't
say no to them. There you would all be."
Gerald's face hardened. His likeness to his father came out
clearly--breaking, as it were, through the polish of his public school
and university training. He saw the case with the Rosenberg eye, and he
flinched.
"But how," he stammered, and cleared his throat, "how am I to draw back
with honour, father?"
"I've done that for you. That is, the way out is open if you will take
it. The Liverpool house wrote me this morning, asking to have you sent
down for a week--some bother about that inspector, Routledge; you know
the man. I wired to the hotel that you might come on by the night
train. It may fairly be called urgent. My counsel to you is that you
just bolt--bolt and get clear away before you have committed yourself
to a thing which must be hopeless."
Gerald leaned forward, covering his face with his hands. It was a very
rare sign of feeling with him.
"You haven't committed yourself--you haven't said or done anything that
makes it impossible to draw back?" asked the elder man in deep anxiety.
"You said you hadn't."
"That is true. I have said nothing. I am not even certain what her
answer would be. I could not say that she had given me any reason to
hope. She is so serene, so impartially sweet, one cannot tell--like my
'Last Duchess,' you know--'who passed without much the same smile'?"
Mr. Rosenberg did not read Browning. The allusion passed him by.
"Then take your courage in your two hands, boy, and do as I tell you.
In a month or two you'll be thanking me on your knees. Bolt, I tell
you, bolt. Don't see her again. Leave a message by me--catch the
restaurant-train. I told Brown to pack your valise, and the car is
waiting."
Gerald was pale now. "She'll think me a cur."
"No such thing. I shall make good your case. Urgency. She will think
you could not help yourself. She will look upon the affair as hung up,
not ended. After a while she will forget it."
"But--but what are they to do?" stammered Gerald. "The mother may
deserve this, but she doesn't. It is she who will have to suffer."
"She shall not suffer. I will send them enough to carry on, and I will
recommend that wax doll of a mother to take a situation--to go as
companion to some heiress or something--to put her shoulder to the
wheel and help to keep her children. She has had a good run for her
money, now let her taste the rough side of things for a while. Do her
no harm. Do her good."
Gerald rose and went to the window, gazing out with unseeing eyes at
the busy welter of society traffic--the swift cars, laden with
well-dressed occupants, which flashed by in the summer evening.
His father watched him anxiously.
"Gerald," he said at last, "listen to me. If you go now--if you do as I
tell you--there need be nothing final about it. The girl will be at
Wayhurst--you will know where to find her. Suitors are not likely to be
as common as blackberries, even with her looks. Take this chance to
think things over more coolly than is possible when she is in the same
house with you. I don't want to demand too great a sacrifice, boy----"
The last words were husky and wistful. He loved his son sincerely.
Gerald swung round. "You have me beat, as the Irish say," he muttered
abruptly. "I know I'm not master of myself. If I speak to her, it might
be against my better judgment; I might regret it. You are right--it is
better to temporise, to postpone a decision. Yes, it is better--I am
almost sure."
He spoke absently, jerkily. In his mind was one of those pictures which
rise unbidden--and apparently without reason--to the memory. It was the
picture of the face of a man he had remarked that afternoon at the
Wallace collection, standing in the doorway of the Boucher room, as the
Rosenberg party went downstairs. The man had a noticeable face--dark,
with an expression in the eyes which brought to mind the word
"smouldering."
He had watched the gay little party of three with an air that was like
Mephistopheles sneering at Faust. "So! You are snared--snared like
other men, by a pretty face and luminous eyes----"
That was what the silent watcher had conveyed to the prosperous young
suitor.
Oddly, the recollection of his face, swimming all unaware into the
field of memory, turned the scale.
"Yes, father, I shall go," said Gerald.
* * * * *
"Why, where's Jerry?" demanded Mims, as she and Virginia entered the
drawing-room, and proceeded to greet a couple of young men, who stood
there with the before-I-have-dined expression upon their clean faces.
"How do you do, Lawrence? How do you do, Mr. Bent? I expect our box
will hold five."
"I telephoned Bent an hour ago, Mims," said Mr. Rosenberg. "Poor old
Gerald has had a stroke of bad luck. I have been obliged to send him
away."
Mims paused in consternation, and, as though she could not help it, her
glance flew to Virginia. "To send him away? Why, where?" she cried
blankly.
Virginia, more in reply to the glance than as a result of the news,
coloured divinely. She had put on her very sweetest gown. It was a
survival of Lissendean days, carefully altered by the finger of genius,
so that it looked to be the very latest. It was pale blue, with touches
of faint periwinkle mauve: and young Bent, as he gazed, was trying to
decide which colour matched her eyes more nearly.
She was hurt. The news wounded. She had spent this fairy fortnight in
luxury and also in a dream of happiness. She had not singled out Gerald
as anything more than one factor in her bliss. He was just a part of a
scheme of things which must be injured by any interference.
So unconscious was she of any deeper significance, that she turned at
once to Mr. Rosenberg, lifting to him the eyes that even he found a
difficulty in resisting, and cried impulsively:
"Do you mean that Gerald is gone--that I shall not see him again before
I leave?"
"Why, if you are leaving in course of the next few days, I fear not,"
said the hypocrite. "He was not pleased, as you may imagine. But
business is sometimes urgent, you know. Had he not gone, I must have
done so myself: and he thought a night journey to Liverpool rather much
to expect from a man of my age who had a son to send. Eh?"
"Of course," murmured Virginia. "But it is a pity! Spoils our last
evening!"
"Oh, now, now, Miss Virginia! That is a little rough upon poor Bent,
who has rallied up at a moment's notice to make your party complete.
Confess now--in the lamentable circumstances, could I have done better?
Eh? I think not. There is dinner announced. Come, take my arm. Mims
must divide herself between the two young men."