and no man's help. You think I'm done for, don't you? So does
everybody. But I'm not. The world has cheated me, but I'm going to
get even with the world. I'm going to get my revenge. I've years of
work in me--years of work--and I've a dozen schemes for success."
And then he began to talk in a loud, scornful, hectoring voice.
Failure? Only fools talked of failure, and they failed themselves
because they were fools. He was going to start again. He would start
that very day. No sensible man would think the worse of him for what
had happened. There were scores of men in the city who had come much
nearer a prison than he had; and what were they now? They were rich,
honoured, respected. They had succeeded, and no one reminded them of
past misfortunes. The very men who had tried to ruin them were now
licking their boots. Well, he'd have the world licking his boots, too,
before he died. Only he'd kick their lying faces in when the time
came, that's what he'd do. He'd teach them. He'd let them know what
kind of man Archibold Masterman was.
There was much more of the same kind, a loud outrageous monologue, to
which Arthur listened with a sinking heart. It was obviously useless
to interrupt or interfere. It was the fierce outcry of a man in
torment, the immedicable torment of an injured pride. And, as Arthur
looked upon that coldly furious face, he began to suspect, what was
indeed the truth, that his father's mind hung upon the verge of madness.
And this impression was confirmed when, without warning, the gust of
rage ceased, and was replaced by a pathetic weak humility.
"I somehow don't feel well this morning. I didn't sleep last night.
Perhaps I'd better wait a day or two and get my strength built up. O
Arthur! I've had lots to try me. I've had a hard life, with very
little in it but toil and trouble. And I'm a man that's had sorrows.
Your mother's dead. They buried her while I was in gaol. They
wouldn't give me bail at first. Did I tell you that? When they let me
out on bail, she'd gone. They'd buried her in Highbourne Cemetery.
They showed me her grave. And Helen wasn't pleased with me. I did
everything I could to please the girl. And yet, when my trouble came,
she flew at me like a cat. And she's gone away too--I don't know
where. I reckon she thinks me a poor kind of father. Well--well--I'm
a man that's had sorrows. And I suppose you'll be going away too? Eh?"
"Father, father, you know I won't go away. I love you, and you used to
love me. Don't you love me still?"
"Well, I don't know, Arthur. I don't know that I love any one. It
doesn't seem much good loving people, does it? They always go away.
Well--well----"
And then he relapsed into a gloomy silence, from which nothing could
arouse him. So he sat for hours, gazing out of window, until he fell
asleep in his chair.
This scene was but a sample of many similar scenes. Sometimes he would
rouse himself, dress, and go down into the city, full of all kinds of
schemes to rehabilitate his fortunes. From these excursions he would
return late at night, weary, but full of impossible hopes. He would
try the Stock Exchange. That was where fortunes were made. Hard work
didn't pay; it was the gambler who got both the luck and the money. He
had had a tip from some one who knew; such and such a stock was bound
to rise. And then, with pen and paper, he would work out his illusory
profits, his hands trembling, his face glowing, and reach the most
surprising and incredible conclusions.
"If I only had the money!" he would cry. "I would buy upon a margin.
Bruce and Whitson would be proud to do business for me, for old times'
sake. Masterman isn't forgotten in the city, I can tell you. Not by a
long chalk. All I want is a chance, just a little money to begin with."
"I have a hundred pounds, father," Arthur replied to one of these
appeals. "You can have that."
"A hundred pounds! Yes, that would be enough." And then, with a
sudden flare of the old pride, he exclaimed, "No, no. That wouldn't do
at all. I'm not sunk so low as to be a pensioner upon my children.
I'll get what I want out of the world yet, and I'll get it by myself.
I'm not very well yet, but wait till I get my nerve back, and I'll show
you. Don't you be afraid about me. I'm playing a waiting game, and
I'm going to win--you mind that!"
So a month passed, marked by tragic incalculable alternations of temper
in his father. No one came near the house. Bundy had called twice,
but Masterman had refused to see him. The church people appeared to
have forgotten his existence. When the Sundays came, Masterman drew
down the blinds, and sat alone in his office. If Arthur left the house
it was but for the briefest absence. He would go round to Lonsdale
Road, exchange a few words with Vickars, taste a raptured moment with
Elizabeth, and return in haste and often in fear. For he could not
calculate his father's moods, he did not know what he might be tempted
to do, and he dared not leave him solitary.
And yet, all the time, Masterman's mind was slowly recovering its
poise. His anger still burned, but it was now with smouldering rather
than with active flame. His boastfulness declined. There were
moments, not only of humility, but of extreme gentleness, like the
gentleness of a sick child. They were but moments, often followed by
gusts of bitter speech. In the bitter moments Arthur was to him the
prodigal son who had deserted him; in the tender moments the only human
creature on whose love he might repose. It was Arthur's lot to listen
in silence to a hundred hurting comments on his conduct, uttered with
sardonic scorn, and all the talent for invective which a disordered
brain and wounded heart could contrive. And then, just when he was
goaded almost beyond endurance, the mood would change, the black squall
of rage would pass, and an inimitable softness, like the softness of a
rain-washed sky, succeed it.
"I begin to think I'm a fool," he said once, after one of these
explosions. "Well, you must forgive me. I'm a new kind of Job, and,
like Job, I speak foolishly. I never could make out why they called
Job patient. The thing I admire in Job is that he wasn't patient. He
let himself rip. He cursed himself tired. Well, that's like me. I've
got to do it, or burst."
"But Job trusted God through it all, father. Can't you?"
"Did he? Well, if he did at first, he didn't in the middle, any way.
And I'm in the middle of the mess. And, besides, I don't see what
God's got to do with it. As I understand it, a man's got to go through
with things to the end, and the only satisfaction he'll get out of it
is that he hasn't squealed."
It was a poor enough philosophy no doubt, but there was no denying the
tonic virtue in it. And perhaps it was the only kind of medicine for
this mind diseased, as Arthur came to see. For a nature of such
stubborn fibre the commonplaces of religion had no efficacy. And with
that stubbornness there was allied a certain indomitable honesty, which
perceived their essential falsity. Let it stand to Masterman's credit
that he was unwilling to blame God for his own misdoings, or to ask for
a release to which he knew he had no right. He would bear his own
burden, simply because, in the long run, that was what all men had to
do, religion notwithstanding. And, whereas the attempt to shift his
burden upon God would have fed his weakness, the very effort to bear it
alone increased his strength.
One evening, when the gentler mood was on him, he drew from Arthur his
story of his own doings since the day he left London. Up to this time
he had not manifested the least interest; it was a subject he had
purposely avoided. When Arthur described the life upon the ranch, he
had many questions to ask.
"Then you worked with your hands, did you?"
"Of course, father. No day labourer ever worked harder."
"And you liked it?"
"Yes, I liked it. It was hard enough at first; but I soon got used to
that, and I liked it."
"Well, I wouldn't have believed it if you hadn't told me. It seems
sort of queer when you come to think about it."
"What's queer about it?"
"Why, this. I never meant that you should do anything of that kind,
schemed to avoid it--sent you to Oxford, made a gentleman of you, as
the saying is; and why did I do it? Because I'd had a hard life, and
didn't want you to have it. And here you go and do just what I did at
your age--work like a common labourer. Seems a kind of destiny in it,
as if it had to be."
"Then destiny has been kind, father, for I have never been so truly
happy as at Kootenay. I would a thousand times rather work with my
hands, and eat the fruit of my labour, than get the softest job a city
could offer me."
"Don't you get thinking that living in a city is a soft job, for it
isn't. But I know what you mean. There's a kind of satisfaction in
working out of doors with your hands; that's what you mean, isn't it?
Well, I used to feel that way--once. I can mind how I used to whistle
at my work, and had a jest for my mates, and got more real pleasure out
of a pot of ale and a plate of bread-and-cheese than I've ever had
since, in fine living.... I don't know but what that was the happiest
time of my life, after all; though of course I didn't think so then. I
can mind the little house I lived in, and the patch of garden. I'd be
working in that garden by five o'clock on a summer morning, and again
late at night, after work. Seems to me, as I look back, that in those
days I hadn't got a real care. It's a queer thing to think about.
Makes you feel as if life had fooled you after all. But I reckon
that's about what life is for most of us--kind of game of blind hookey.
Well, I've lost the game, that's evident; and it seems as if you'd won
it."
It was a curious confession from such a man. Arthur recollected that
Bundy had said much the same thing. He also had spoken of a little
house with mignonette under the window, with its unforgetable memories
of content and peace, and had summed up his life in one little bit of
dearly bought wisdom--"We don't know what we want, and, with all our
trying, get the wrong thing after all." Had his father also made that
sad discovery, and made it too late?
All that evening Masterman was very quiet and subdued. He talked at
intervals, and in snatches, of various things in his own past life,
speaking of them with ironic sad composure, as of things which lay a
long way off, in which he had ceased to be interested. And yet there
appeared to be some method in this vague reminiscent talk, some point
toward which his thoughts were working, something that he found it
difficult to say.
At last he reached his point. "When you and me parted--" He stopped,
as though swallowing something bitter, and began again. "When you went
away, do you remember you said something to me? You said I was
dishonest. You didn't ought to have said that."
"O father! don't speak of that!"
"I reckon it's got to be spoke of. I want to know what you think of me
now."
"Father, you have no need to defend yourself to me."
"Haven't I? Well, I suppose that's kindly meant, and I ought to be
grateful. Only I'm not; and I'll tell you why. Do you know why I'm
sitting in this empty house, feeding on the pig's swill that old lady
in the kitchen calls food? Perhaps you think I like it? Well, I
don't. Do you know why there's no furniture in the rooms? Do you know
why I'm a beggar? Do you know why the men I knew in the city turn
their faces away when I pass, why the men I used to lunch with won't
speak to me and are too busy to see me when I call? Well, I'll tell
you. It's just because I've been too honest. I had no call to give my
fortune to the creditors of the Amalgamated. They hadn't a pretence of
right to it. It was mine, every penny of it. But I did it, just
because I was honest, and proud of my honesty. There's not half a
dozen men in the city would have done that. Those jeering scoundrels
who pass me in the street as if I was dirt, and laugh and whisper to
one another, 'That's poor old Masterman, poor old bankrupt Masterman;
and lucky he ain't in gaol'--there's not one of them as would have done
it. But bankrupt Masterman did it, and he knew he had no call to do
it. He was too proud to let any man call him a thief. If he hadn't
done it, he'd be riding in his carriage now, and folk would ha' said,
'Mighty smart man, that Masterman,' and they'd have thought the better
of me. Well, that's what I want you to remember. No, I don't want you
to answer me. I'm not concerned to know what you think about it. I
know I'm down, but I've got my pride still, and I don't care what
people think about me. I've been robbed of almost everything, and I
needn't have been but for this--that I'm honest!"
He spoke with extraordinary heat, striding up and down the room, his
face dark and harsh. He was again the Masterman of the old days, full
of fierce passion, proud, strong, not to be contradicted. But amid all
the harshness of that strong face there shone something new, something
never seen there before, like light flashed fitfully through dark
clouds--an element of dignity that was almost nobleness. Arthur gazed
upon that spectacle in a sort of silent wonder. And once more the
sense of elemental bigness in his father came to him with vivid force.
Here was a nature that overtopped his own at all points. It was great
even in its faultiness, and who could estimate its crude astounding
virtues?
There was no return of this mood. The next day Masterman spent several
hours out of doors, coming home late at night, weary and silent.
On the morning following, Arthur heard him moving up and down a
little-visited garret of the house.
He was there a long time. Presently he called, "Arthur!"
Arthur obeyed eagerly, his ever-active fear that his father might be
tempted to some dreadful act giving wings to his feet.
He found his father kneeling beside a common deal box, the contents of
which were flung upon the floor. These contents appeared to consist of
old discarded clothing, among which were discernible a blue cloth cap,
a rough jacket, and a pair of stained corduroy trousers.
"Do you know what these are, Arthur?"
"No. What are they, father?"
"They're the clothes I used to wear when I was a workman. I've always
kept them by me--sort of souvenir, you know. Well, I'm going to wear
them again."
"But, father, I don't understand,"
"Don't you?" he said grimly. "Well, I'll tell you. I'm going to work
again. Going back to what I was forty years ago. It's as good as a
story, isn't it?"
"But you're not going to be a common workman. You surely don't mean
that, father."
"That's just what I do mean. You can work with your hands, and so can
I. I reckon it's our destiny. Grimes has given me a job--you remember
Grimes, don't you? He's a bit of a builder at Tottenham nowadays, and
calls himself a contractor. Well, he's given me a job, sort of
foreman, at two quid a week, and good pay, too. It's a sight more than
I'd have done for an old bankrupt fellow, close on sixty. I'm going to
work for Grimes. I begin to-morrow, and you'll have to put up with the
fact the best way you can that your father's no longer Archibold
Masterman, Esq., as might have been Sir Archibold, but just a common
workman."
XXII
MRS. BUNDY PHILOSOPHISES
"I can't see what your father wanted to do it for. He had no call to
do it. It's a most extraordinary piece of perversity."
The speaker was Bundy, and the scene was his new house in Kensington.
After his many wanderings and adventures, Bundy appeared to have found
permanent anchorage at last. His final apotheosis had begun, and a
prophetic eye perceived that it was likely to include all the elements
of eminent British respectability. He had begun to collect pictures
again, was planning a library, drove daily in the park, was already
known as a generous patron of many well-intentioned charities, and had
even lectured in a parish-room on the wonders of the Yukon. There was
ground to believe that in course of time he might even become a
churchwarden, and it was only a total fluidity of opinion on local
politics which denied him a seat upon the Borough Council.
Even the boys had suffered a transformation into something rare and
strange. They no longer lassoed dogs upon the plains of Texas in the
back-garden, and their interest in Indians had declined. They wore
white collars which were fresh every morning, practised a difficult
propriety, and walked gravely to church on Sundays, top-hatted and
circumspectly clothed. There could be no manner of doubt that the
short-lived glory of irresponsible poverty was fast fading into the
light of common day, and that shades of respectability were closing
round these growing minds.
And as for Mrs. Bundy--dear, slovenly, warm-hearted Mrs. Bundy--the
historian relates with sadness that even she was tamed. Her force of
speech remained, her sincerity, her lovableness; to the end of her days
she would remain the sort of woman who addresses angry
umbrella-emphasised allocutions to drivers who flog their horses, who
gives hospitality to stray dogs, and opens her impulsive heart to the
sorry fabrications of every histrionic beggar. But she had returned to
unoccupied woman's first love, which is dress. Exiled from her
kitchen, she had plunged recklessly into the study of fashion-papers.
To hear her disputing with dressmakers, upholsterers, and
house-decorators, to follow her in her many animated controversies with
servants and a long succession of nefarious butlers, gave assurance
that the wonted fires still burned ardently in her veins. But she was
tamed. Wealth had riveted upon her golden fetters. She submitted to
them, not without reluctance. Perhaps, if the entire truth was told,
she was much happier as the mistress of the kitchen in the old house in
Lion Row than as the mistress of a mansion in Kensington.
It was in the library of this house at Kensington that Arthur sat
discussing the situation with his old friends. It was a spacious room,
furnished after a plan which a celebrated firm had described as
mediæval. The mediævalness of the room appeared to consist mainly in
an imitation stucco ceiling, and in modern oak-panelling which declared
its newness by uncanny loud explosions, as the wood cracked under the
influence of heat. Before the open hearth Bundy stood oracular, with
his hands behind him spread out to the warmth; and Mrs. Bundy sat at
the table, mending socks--an example of the survival of primeval
instincts.
"No, I don't see it at all," said Bundy. "Your father's wasting
himself. There are plenty of men who would have helped him to recover
his position. I would have given him anything he liked to ask, and
been glad of the chance."
"I know you would," said Arthur. "And he knows it too."
"Then, why won't he let me?"
"I suppose because, as you say, he's too proud. But there's something
else too, something deeper, I think."
"And what's that, pray?"
"Well, I don't know how to describe it, but it's more than mere pride
and perversity. I think it's a kind of return to type. He began life
as a workman, and he's gone back to it. It's his way of showing the
world he doesn't care what it does to him."
"And what's that but pride?"
"Perhaps so," said Arthur wearily. "I've long ago given up judging my
father. I only know that I never thought so well of him as I do now."
"Well done!" cried Mrs. Bundy. "That's what I think too."
"Well, I can't see it," said Bundy. "Tell me again how he's living."
"He's taken a small house at Tottenham, almost a cottage. Grimes gives
him two pounds a week. He works from six in the morning till six at
night. Next week I'm going to live with him."
"Yes, that's the worst part of it!" cried Bundy. "Your life is to be
sacrificed too. With your splendid education you ought to be making a
figure in the world. At all events you ought to be back upon your
ranch, if that's the kind of life you mean to live. You must know
that."
"Yes, I know it. But I can't go back as long as father lives. I have
to make amends to him for past unkindness. And, remember, he has no
one left but me."
"What about Helen?" said Mrs. Bundy.
"That's one of the things I came over to tell you about. I have a
letter from her. You had better read it."
The letter was dated from Paris, and read as follows:
"DEAR ARTHUR:
"I hear that you are back in London, so you know all about the _mess_
father has made of his affairs. You were lucky to be out of it, for it
was a dreadful disgrace. I thought I should have _died_ of shame.
Just, too, when he was going to be knighted, for that's come out since,
you know. He must have known all about it--I mean the disgrace--long
before it came. And yet he never told me one word, but let me think
things were all right, and was always talking to me about the house he
meant to build, and the place in society I was to have. I can see now
that it was all lies, and I will never forgive him. I suppose you will
say I ought to sympathise with him, and all that kind of _rot_: you
always did pretend to be so mighty good. Well, I don't, and I won't
forgive him. And I dare say you'll say I ought to have stayed with
him, and all that kind of thing. A pretty idea! As if I could have
put my head out of doors, with everybody talking about us, and father's
name in all the papers. I did go out once, and the Collinson girls,
_proud, conceited things_, cut me dead, though I went to school with
them. I wasn't going to stand that, so, after mother's funeral, I went
away to one of my _true_ friends in Paris. I didn't tell her what had
happened, you may be sure. And she doesn't read the English papers,
_thank God_. Her name is Adèle Siedmyer. She went to school with me,
and her father is rich. She gave me a good time, I can tell you, and
not a word said. The Siedmyers live in a beautiful house, much better
than that _old_ Eagle House, which I always detested. Well, now, I've
something to tell you, which is quite _important_. There was a nice
old gentleman who used to come to dinner at the Siedmyers', and I soon
saw that he was very fond of me. They told me he was seventy, but he
doesn't look more than _fifty_, for these Frenchmen know how to dress
and keep young, which Englishmen never do. He told me all about his
life--he'd been twice married, but his wives had treated him
_abominably_--and I felt very sorry for him. I forgot to say he's
something in the Stock Exchange--the Bourse, they call it here--and the
Siedmyers thought no end of him. Well, I dare say you'll guess the
rest. He asked me to marry him. I thought he put it so _cleverly_; he
said it was the _entente cordiale_. I laughed at first, and then I
cried a good deal; for it seemed hard that I should have to marry an
old man, even if he is only fifty and a _good figure_. But what was a
poor girl to do? Adèle and the Siedmyers persuaded me, and really it
did seem to me quite _providential_, just in the midst of this
disgrace; and it's not as though he didn't love me, for he's perfectly
_infatuated_ over me. I know you'll sneer, you always were good at
that. But I don't care. There's one thing I _always_ made my mind up
to--it was that I wouldn't be poor. And, as I said, it did really seem
quite _providential_, just when I couldn't hope to marry well in
England, because of father's _wickedness_, that M. Simon--that's his
name--should fall in love with me. I was dreadfully afraid at first
that he'd ask awkward questions about father, but he never did, though
he must have known _something_. Of course I didn't tell him--not
likely. So the upshot of it is that we were married last week. So now
you know. I thought I ought to tell you, and you can tell father, if
you like. You needn't expect me _ever_ to come to London
again--horrid, hateful city! If you like to come over to Paris some
time, of course I'll see you; but I won't see father! I draw the line
at that. And I am sure he won't expect it after all the _cruel_ wrong
he's done me. I should think he would be too _ashamed_. If you can
find any of my little knick-nacks in my drawers I wish you would pack
them up and send them over. But I dare say they're gone--very likely
the servants took them; and it doesn't _really_ matter, for I've
everything I need. Thank God, I shall not be poor now, in spite of
father's _wickedness_.
"Your sister,
"HELEN.
"P.S.--We are living at the Hotel Continental, _for the present_. If
you were only sensible I would say come over, and meet Adèle Siedmyer.
She will have lots of money when her father dies. But I suppose you
prefer _digging_ like a labourer in that _nasty_ Canada. There's no
accounting for tastes, is there?"