silently. How could he meet her? Perhaps she also knew the truth, had
known it all the time. He hastily wrote a note, saying that he had
gone for a walk, and would return in an hour. Vickars still slept. He
knew that in a few minutes Elizabeth would be with him. He went softly
down the stairs, and let himself out into the Lonsdale Road.
In the freshness of the morning air his tragic suppositions seemed
incredible. Life lay round him in its wide security of joy; birds
sang, flowers bloomed, men were astir; everything breathed of honest
industry, honest kindness, and it seemed a thing impossible that behind
this fair show of things there lay unimaginable depths of cruelty. He
passed Eagle House, shuttered and silent, and he fell to thinking of
his father. Stern, inscrutable, resolute he knew his father to be, but
he had never known him cruel. Yet if he had done this thing he was a
monster. He had made a compact with death for money. Over the porch
of Eagle House there hung a Virginia creeper, already touched with the
first rusty crimson of autumn, and to the boy's wild imagination it was
a stain of blood. "Splashed with blood of the poor," Vickars had
said.... Yet, at that moment, every memory of his father that he could
summon up was kind and gracious. He remembered his generosities to him
during his university career, his patience with him while he waited for
a decision on which his heart was set in burning eagerness, his trust
in him over the Leatham business, and all that pride and love which had
a thousand times met him in his father's glance. But he knew also that
in the scales of justice even such memories as these were worthless.
They could not outweigh deliberate fraud. He must know the truth; he
was merciless in his appetite for truth; until that hunger was
satisfied there was no place for kinder thoughts.
It struck him all at once that there was an easy way to satisfy his
doubts. The doctor would know the exact truth, and to the doctor he
would go.
Ten minutes later he stood in the doctor's waiting-room. Dr. Leet was
not yet up. He would be down in half an hour.
Presently the doctor entered, a somewhat formal, gray, middle-aged man,
with a hesitating manner which had grown upon him in the constant
effort to avoid hurting the susceptibilities of patients who asked
awkward questions which he was unwilling to answer.
"Ah, you come from Mr. Vickars? Nothing wrong, I hope?"
"No, doctor. I left him asleep."
The doctor nodded and waited.
"I came to ask you a question, doctor."
"Yes."
"It's about Vickars. I want to know the cause of his illness. I have
a good reason for asking."
"The cause? Well, you see, Vickars had been run down for a long time
before he became ill. He had probably worked too hard for years. That
meant a certain devitalisation, which made him susceptible to fever."
"And is that all?"
"Well, not altogether, of course. There is still the question of the
fever itself."
"That is what I want to know, doctor. I shall be very glad if you tell
me plainly what you think."
"Oh, there's not much room for conjectures. Drains, of course.
Lonsdale Road had been a perfect nest of typhoid germs for years. I
don't know who built the street, but I do know that, whoever he was, he
was a scoundrel. The drains run under the kitchen floors, and I'll be
bound that there isn't one that is not a death-trap. I've seen some of
these drains exposed, and I give you my word for it that the pipes are
not so much as cemented together."
Arthur turned sick and pale. Then he said quietly, "My father built
those houses."
"Oh, my dear sir," began the doctor, "I'm sorry I spoke. I had no
idea."
"You need not apologise," said Arthur. "I asked a plain question and
expected a plain answer. I understand that Vickars is the victim of
bad drains?"
"Well, yes, primarily. Of course, run down as he was, he might have
fallen ill, any way. But honestly I can't say that I believe this.
The real cause is only too clear."
"Then Eliz--Miss Vickars is in danger too?"
"Any one is in danger who lives in those houses," said the doctor
hotly, forgetting his usual caution. "They are mere death-traps, I
tell you. And though I don't want to hurt your feelings, yet I am
bound to say that in my opinion a highway robber who takes your purse
upon a public road is a respectable person compared with the rascal who
condemns scores of decent people to certain suffering, and some to
certain death, for the sake of a few pounds of illicit gain."
"Thank you, doctor. I think I'll go now."
He groped for his hat, like a blind man.
"You'd better wait a little while," said the doctor. "Stop, and have
some breakfast with me."
And then Arthur's self-control broke. He leant against the library
shelves, covering his face with his hands.
"O my father," he cried, "how could you do it?"
"Don't take it too hardly," said the doctor. "Perhaps he didn't know
... surely he didn't think."
"Yes, he knew," said Arthur, turning on the doctor a pair of flaming,
tear-wet eyes. "He's done it before. He once put oyster-shells and
road-gravel into the foundations of a church instead of concrete. I
heard him say so. He must have done it many times. And he doesn't
care. People die, and he doesn't care. And I'm his son ... the son of
a man who is a scoundrel."
He pushed the astonished doctor aside, and somehow found his way into
the open air. There lay the world, even as he had left it, but its
aspect was wholly changed. In the fresh morning light it had smiled
upon him, it had seemed honest, it had breathed security of joy; now
the mask of hypocrisy was gone, and it was an old, evil, wrinkled face
that leered at him. It was the stage of tragic passions, it was full
of the habitations of cruelty.
"Splashed with blood of the poor"--so he saw the world at that moment,
a red grotesque, a grim crimson horror. And he saw his father, too,
clothed in the same blood-red livery of crime.
IX
THE CONTEST
The troubles of the young are apt to move the ridicule of the mature,
who have long since discovered that even tragedies can be outlived,
disasters forgotten, and the worst defeats repaired. That there is a
strange and stubborn resilience in life, which enables us to survive a
thousand shocks, is indeed a wonderful quality which is needed to
explain the persistence of the race. But the final view of life is
never the immediate view, and, whatever we may think now of ancient
sorrows, unless the memory is quite dulled we know well that they were
once real and terrible enough. The child's terror of the dark, his
bitter tears over slight or injustice, his first agony of homesickness,
his rage against acts of cruelty or tyranny, the wounds inflicted on
his tenderness or pride--these things may appear to us now absurd or
insignificant episodes in the process by which we adjusted ourselves to
the social scheme; but it may be doubted if any tears were bitterer
than these, any later sorrow comparable with these young sorrows that
left us dumb with fury and astonishment. The years bring healing and
forgetfulness--or perhaps it were truer to say, a tougher skin, a less
sensitive organism; but, if we care to examine our hearts, most of us
would find that the scars of these earliest wounds run deep and are
ineffaceable.
How well does the writer recollect a certain mournful morning when he
stood at bay in the corner of a large school playground, tormented by
the jeers and blows of a jovial crowd of young bullies, who found
occasion for fresh mirth in every fresh impotent spasm of rage and
grief. Since that day he has wept over open graves, said farewell to
so many of those he loved that the unseen world seems less uninhabited
than the seen, been betrayed by friends he trusted, been humiliated in
a thousand ways by the cruelty or stupidity of men, but he has known no
sorrow quite as keen as that sorrow, and no betrayal that seemed quite
so cruel as the act by which his parents gave him to the wolves in that
brutal playground. He can jest about the story now, but in his own
private heart that fatal morning still looms tragic, and there are
times when he still wakes out of painful dreams with the old horrible
sense of forsakenness that he felt then.
So he finds it impossible to treat lightly Arthur Masterman's first
cruel astonishment when the revelation of his father's misdoing was
made plain to him. If Arthur had been more observant, he would have
learned it by degrees, and so its force would have been broken; if he
had not built up for himself an admired image of his father, the shock
would have been easier to bear. As it was, the revelation came with a
shattering blow which shook his life to the centre. And the blow
struck him precisely at the point where he was most sensitive. His
father had all but slain Vickars, who was his friend, and he might yet
strike down the daughter who was dearer to him than his own life. He
had as good as planned their death, for what he did he had done
deliberately, well knowing the issue of his deeds. And how many more
were there who were his helpless victims? How many graves had he
filled? Where would the harvest of disgrace and death end? The doctor
was right--the highwayman who took a purse was a reputable citizen
compared with the criminal who wilfully sowed the seeds of death among
innocent people for a few pounds of illicit gain! And he was the son
of the man who had done this; the very clothes he wore, the food he
ate, the books he read, were purchased by his father's sin.
To Vickars, slowly recovering from a mortal sickness, he dared not
speak, to Elizabeth still less. So he took refuge with Mrs. Bundy,
whose bosom was an open hospice for all sorts of vicarious sorrows.
"Well, well!" she said cheerfully, "Didn't I tell you that your father
was like the man in the parable, 'an austere man, gathering where he
had not strawed'? But it takes all sorts to make a world, laddie, and
your father's none so bad as some."
"That's poor comfort," he replied gloomily.
"Poor it may be, but it's not to be forgotten. I mind the time when
Bundy was in trouble, and it was your father helped him. Did I ever
tell you that?"
"No."
"Well, he did. He lent Bundy what he asked, and did it cheerfully."
"Oh! I don't doubt he can be generous, but that's not the point. It's
not what he may do with his money, but how he makes it."
And then he proceeded to pour out all the bitterness of his heart in
hot, indignant words. He raged like a man blind with pain, who knows
not how or where his blows fall.
"You cannot justify him," he cried. "God knows I've tried hard enough,
but I cannot. Dr. Leet said he was a scoundrel, and I, his son, could
not contradict him. I have tried to think he did not know, but this is
a thing he must have known. It's a hard thing to hear your father
called a scoundrel, and be silent. And I was silent, for I knew that
it was true."
"Hush, hush, laddie! It's not for you to say that."
"I must say it. There are hundreds of people saying it. And I am his
son--the son of a scoundrel."
If Arthur had not been blinded by his anger he would have known why
Mrs. Bundy sought to stop the torrent of his words. For, while he was
speaking, young Scales had entered the house, and stood in the doorway
watching this unusual scene. The Scales family had returned that
evening from their holiday, and it had occurred to young Benjamin
Scales to call at Mrs. Bundy's, where he would be sure to find some of
his acquaintance. Young Benjamin was not a pleasant youth; he had a
mean, narrow face, like his father, and wore eye-glasses, not from any
defect of vision, but because he imagined that they gave him an air of
cleverness, and among his strong antipathies was jealousy of Arthur.
So what more natural than that he should seize avidly on Arthur's angry
words, and duly report them to his father, who in turn waited his
opportunity of reporting them to Archibold Masterman.
The opportunity came a few days later, when Scales went to Brighton to
see Masterman upon the Leatham business, which was still undecided.
Scales knew very well why it was undecided, and his grudge against
Arthur had grown by careful nursing. And now, thanks to Arthur's angry
words, he had the means of avenging himself.
Masterman had, of course, read Arthur's report, and was secretly
delighted with it. It was an admirable piece of writing, plain and
convincing, and it was expressed with a lucidity to which he was not
accustomed in similar documents. "The boy has brains," he said, as he
read it; "he will go far." It was the first time he had tested those
brains on any practical affair, and his pride in his son was great.
"I'm not at all sure Arthur isn't right," he said to Scales, and so he
had postponed decision from day to day.
But the time had now come when the decision must be made, and Scales
was fully resolved that that decision should be favourable to his own
interests.
"I don't deny," he said, "that your son's report is admirably done, but
you must recollect that he has no real experience of business. And
besides----"
"Besides what?"
"I don't think he will ever understand business."
"Why not?"
"From words he said to me. From words he has said to others."
"What words? Tell me plainly what you mean?"
"I had rather not."
"Now look here, Scales," said Masterman, "either you have said too much
or not enough. In a few weeks Arthur will be my partner, and the
sooner you begin to think of him in that way the better for our future
relations."
"I don't think he will ever be your partner," said Scales quietly.
"Why not?"
"Because he is a wild, impracticable boy," said Scales, throwing away
his caution. "Because he told me that business--your business and
mine--was, in his opinion, organised theft. Because he has been going
about saying that you are a scoundrel----"
"What's that?" cried Masterman, rising to his feet. His face was pale
and terrible, and his attitude so menacing that Scales was afraid. But
in that mean heart hate was stronger than fear, and it supplied a
certain desperate courage.
"I didn't mean to tell you, sir. But you ought to know it. Ask what
he has been doing in London this last fortnight. Ask him where he has
been. I can tell you. He has been living with Hilary Vickars, he has
been making love to his daughter. Vickars is a Socialist. And your
son shares his views, and he has said publicly that your methods of
business prove you a scoundrel."
"Is that true?" said Masterman.
"It is God's truth. Do you think I would have come between father and
son with a lie that was bound to be found out."
"No; I believe if you lied, you'd choose a safe lie, Scales," he said
bitterly.
"You are unjust to me, sir. I have never lied to you. I don't lie
now."
"That will do," said Masterman.
"But what will you do?"
"That's my affair," he retorted grimly.
"But it's my affair too, sir. I want to know whether your son's report
is to go against my experience and yours? whether you will complete
this Leatham purchase or not?"
"Ah! I wasn't thinking of that." He turned away, and stood for some
moments looking out of the window in silence. Then he walked rapidly
to his desk, unlocked a drawer, and took out Arthur's report. "This is
my reply," he said. He tore it in pieces, slowly, almost methodically,
and trampled it beneath his feet. "Come in an hour," he added. "I
will sign the purchase papers. Now go."
"I hope you'll forgive me, sir----"
"What's that?" he roared in sudden rage. "'Go!' I said. Man, can't
you see I'm dangerous? Go----"
The door banged behind the retreating Scales, and Archibold Masterman
was alone.
So this was the end of all his hopes, his dreams, his ambitious
purposes for Arthur! For he did not think of doubting the story Scales
had told him. He knew very well that Scales would never have dared to
tell the story if it were not true. In a swift moment of agonised
apprehension he knew also that there had always been an element of
insecurity in those very hopes and purposes on which he had set his
heart so eagerly. His son had always stood aloof from him, there had
always been some impalpable barrier between them. Yet of late he had
been much less conscious of this barrier than he had ever been. Arthur
had shown himself willing to meet his father's wishes, and in the
Leatham business he had displayed practical faculties for which he had
not given him credit. Instinctively Masterman knew that something had
happened of which even Scales had not the clue.
If Arthur had been guilty of any of the common indiscretions of youth,
he could have forgiven him readily; he would indeed have almost
welcomed the opportunity, since it would have destroyed the barrier
between them. But this was a different matter. He caught a galling
vision of his son as his judge and critic publicly condemning him; no
father could condone that. He had been too lenient with him, too
generous. He had as good as admitted his superiority, he had even been
humble before him. And this was the result--his son forgot all
gratitude, all decency even, and denounced him as a scoundrel. The
word stung him like a gadfly. His heart began to harden into cold,
pitiless anger towards his son.
Yet he must give him a hearing. That was only fair. And he was too
proud to seek it. His first instinct was to wire Arthur to come to
Brighton at once, but this would be to admit an importance in the
situation which he was resolved to ignore. In a day or two the family
would be back in London, and then the opportunity would come.
The opportunity came a few days later.
Eagle House was reopened, and the common forms of life were
re-established. Dinner was just over. Helen was chattering about the
new friends she had made at Brighton, but no one else had anything to
say. A heavy restraint rested like a cloud over the family. Mrs.
Masterman sat silent as usual, Arthur had not said a word during the
meal, Masterman had replied to Helen's ceaseless small talk in curt
monosyllables.
Arthur rose quietly to leave the room, when his father's voice arrested
him.
"Arthur."
"Yes, father."
"I want to see you."
"Very well, sir."
The words were colourless in themselves, but to one ear in that room
they rang like a clash of swords. Mrs. Masterman looked up, her face
quivering and eager. Her eyes sought Arthur, and as he passed her
chair she pressed his hand. Arthur understood that silent overture,
and was grateful for it.
"Come into the office," said Masterman, rising from the table.
Arthur followed obediently. The hour long foreseen had come, and upon
the whole he was glad. He was sick of suspense, sick of the deceit of
eating his father's bread with bitter resentment in his heart, but not
the less he trembled. There was a strangling pressure in his throat,
his heart swelled, a vein in his temple throbbed painfully. He had
long rehearsed the hour; he had shaped every phrase that he would use
to sharpest meaning; but now he felt unaccountably dumb. And, as if
memory herself turned traitor, a sudden picture flashed before him of
how, years ago, in some childish illness, his father had sat beside his
bed, had taken him upon his knee, and had hushed him to sleep upon his
bosom. It passed through his thoughts like a strain of music, like the
fragrance of incense from an altar, subtly suggestive of a forgotten
sacredness in old affections and of their inalienable claim upon his
heart. And with it came that old sense of bigness in his father.
Strange how that persisted, but it did. This rough mass of man, this
big fighting figure, this man of many combats, did he really understand
him? And he replied with the sadness of a great pity that he
understood him too well, and he saw the gulf between them.
But there was no such touch of grace or tenderness in the father's
mind. He also had rehearsed this hour, but with an extraordinary
vehemence of rage, which grew by what it fed on. He had come to
conceive himself a too generous and indulgent parent wronged by an
ungrateful child. And worse still, he had come to conceive of Arthur
as a weakling, who refused the battle of life; a fool, who wanted life
arranged on a plan of his own; an attitudinising Pharisee, who held
himself aloof from realities, and said to the man who grappled them,
"Stand aside, I am holier than thou." Well, he would teach him! He
would give him a lesson which he would never forget. His only mistake
had been that he had not done it long ago.
The moment the door was closed he wheeled round upon him with a
formidable gesture.
"I want a word with you," he said, "and I'll thank you not to interrupt
till I'm done. It seems I've got a son that doesn't approve me. Well,
I could bear that, but what I can't bear is to have a son that is fool
enough to go about saying so. It seems I'm not good enough to be the
father of this son. I'm a scoundrel, so he says, and he says it with
my meat in his belly and my clothes on his back. My father was a hard
man, and beat me, but I never told other folk what I thought of him. I
never went whining to other folk and called my father names. I bore
what I had to bear, and kept my mouth shut. But it seems I've got a
son that must be talking. Well, I'm going to take care that he talks
where I can't hear him. I thought to take him into my business--the
more fool I. Business! Let me tell you business needs commonsense,
which it seems you haven't got. And business needs a still tongue,
which you'll never get, to say nothing of some kind of decent faith
between partners, which you haven't a notion of. Partners! Why, let
me tell you, I'd sooner take the most ignorant boy in my office and
make him my partner than you! He'd at least have commonsense enough to
know which side his bread's buttered, which you'll never know. So
that's at an end, and you know my mind."
"But, father, you are unjust to me. You don't understand."
"What don't I understand?"
"What was in my thought."
"It's not a thing I'm at all anxious to understand," he retorted grimly.
"But you must. I won't be condemned unheard."
"But you condemned me unheard."
This was a shaft that drew blood. It was true, Arthur knew it to be
true; he had taken the word of other people against his father.
"There were circumstances----" he began.
"Circumstances? Every fool pleads circumstances," Masterman
interrupted. "Give it the right name, you that are so honest, and say
lying gossip."
"No, it was not gossip, father."
And thereupon he went over the whole story of the illness of Vickars,
his visit to Dr. Leet, and the doctor's angry denunciation of the
builder of the Lonsdale Road houses as a scoundrel. He spoke with
quiet force, and his father listened in perfect silence, but with
averted face.
"Have you done?"
"Yes, father."
"Are you sure you've omitted nothing?"
"No, that is all."
"Well, now listen to me. Dr. Leet may be right or wrong in what he
says--I don't know, and I don't care. The only thing I know is that
when I built those houses I gave the best value I could at the price.
I've told you before that if I am paid a cheap price I give cheap work.
All the talking in the world can't upset that position--it's plain
business."
"But if people die through the cheap work! O father, you can't mean
what you say!"
"A good many people have lived in Lonsdale Road and haven't died. Your
doctor is an old woman, telling fairy-tales. But even if he were
right, I disclaim responsibility. I give the best value I can for the
money; if people won't pay for things, they can't have them. _I_
didn't set the standards of business. They existed before me, and
they'll exist after me. If I hadn't built those houses, some one else
would have built them, and probably worse."
"But the dishonesty of it!" cried Arthur.
"Dishonest? Well, I'll admit that too, if you like. But whose
dishonesty? Find me a business in London that isn't dishonest. It's
London itself that is dishonest. It insists on having what it hasn't
paid for, and won't pay for. It prefers shoddy because it's cheap. It
has no right to complain of what it gets."
Arthur listened in appalled silence; before this brutally lucid
exposition of what business meant, it seemed as though all his fine
ideals of right and justice were so many burst bubbles. For a long
moment it was as though he saw the world streaming past him, like a
dark torrent thronged with dead faces, upon whose agonised pale lips
was the eternal accusation of things as they are.
"Father, it can't be right!" he cried.
"There's a power of things isn't right in this world, as you'll find
out some day. And talking won't put 'em right, either. But that
brings me to what I wanted to say. It's about the thing you omitted to
mention when you told me your story."
"What was that, father?"