away while Mrs. Bundy read it, for he was heartily ashamed of it. Its
complete selfishness and shallowness, its spite, its rancour, its hard
worldliness, above all, its nauseous pietism, had filled him with
disgust. He was surprised therefore when Mrs. Bundy put it down, with
the exclamation, "Poor child!"
"Why do you say that?" he cried. "A letter like that puts its writer
beyond pity."
"Ah, Arthur! I see you've not yet got out of the bad habit of judging
people harshly. My laddie, don't let your heart grow hard against your
sister, even though she is to blame. I'm not saying that that isn't a
bad letter, and it comes from a hard, cruel heart. But I mind Helen as
a little girl, as sweet and bright a child as you might meet in a day's
march. It wasn't her fault that she was shallow; that's the way she
was made. Yes, she was shallow, and only meant to sail in shallow
waters, and when the deep waters overtook her, she was frightened to
death. That's the letter of a poor, terrified girl who doesn't know
what she's saying."
"I didn't think of it like that."
"No; it wasn't to be supposed you could. It isn't a boy that
understands the heart of a poor, terrified girl."
"But it's the meanness of it--no word about my father but cruel
accusation."
"Yes, it's mean; fear makes weak people mean."
"That's right," interjected Bundy. "I've seen a man, when thoroughly
frightened, pour out all the black things in his heart, without the
least idea of what a cad he looked to other people."
"Ah! and that's not all," went on Mrs. Bundy. "You think she's beyond
pity. Why, she never had a better right to pity than now. She's sold
her youth to that old Frenchman--I never did believe in Frenchmen--and
she's got to pay for her folly, and it'll be a hard, long price before
she's through with it, be sure of that. December and May--I never did
know any good come of that kind of marriage yet. No, no. Your
father's to be pitied, but he's got his pride; and you are to be
pitied, but you've got your youth and freedom; but, if you ask me who
is to be pitied most, it's that poor motherless girl. She may have a
hard heart, but it can bleed; yes, and life will make it bleed before
long, I doubt."
And so from Mrs. Bundy Arthur once more learned that lesson in life
which he had found so difficult to master, the lesson always difficult
to youth, and perhaps the most difficult of all to those whose ideals
are highest--the lesson of charity, of tolerance, of lenient judgment
toward the faulty. Mrs. Bundy had once before shown him the better
road, when she had made him acquainted with virtues in his father which
he had ignored; he had learned something of what charity meant from
Vyse upon the _Saurian_, and Horner in New York, each with his catholic
axiom that Englishmen ought to stand by one another; he had remarked
Vickars's altered attitude to life, his sense of life's complexity, and
his allowance for faults in men, for which their own will was but
partially responsible: four times the Angel of Charity had stood beside
him, and each time he had turned his face away. He had not allowed
Mrs. Bundy's plea; he had accepted Horner's kindness, but without any
accurate conception of the rarity and real beauty of his character; he
had heard Vickars's confession, and in his utmost heart had thought him
an apostate prophet. And now the same test met him again in the case
of his sister. He saw her hardness and shallowness with more than
sufficient accuracy; what he had not seen was her weakness, her terror
under sudden disaster, and the tragic folly to which she had been
driven by her terror. It was left to Mrs. Bundy to show him that.
Suddenly he saw it; and he saw much besides. He saw that there is a
vision of the mind and a vision of the heart; that the one is judging
vision, the other sympathetic vision; that the one sees the surface
only, the other the depth; and that therefore the vision of the heart
is the only true vision. Of the four persons who had instructed him,
three were quite simple persons, without the least claim to
intellectual superiority; the other a man of genius, who had become
humble by contact with human sorrows. And there was a fifth--there was
Bundy himself, an adventurer whom he had secretly despised and
ridiculed, but from whose hand had come salvation in his own hour of
direst need. And the bond between these persons was quite simple; they
had warm, human hearts, and in the difficult hours of life they were
governed by warm impulses. Ah! that had been his error; he had looked
at life with the mind, rarely with the heart. He had set himself up to
judge others, and now he was judged. He had not pitied his sister; it
was left for a stranger to do that; and in that moment he saw, as
clearly as though expressed in tongues of heavenly flame, the divine
grace resting on the head of Mrs. Bundy, and himself standing in the
dark shadows cast by his own proud egoism.
"O Mrs. Bundy!" he cried, "I have been wrong--quite wrong; you have
made me see it!"
And, having no mother, he was not ashamed to turn to this motherly
heart for comfort. He knelt before her, and laid his head upon her
lap, as he had often done in childish troubles; and her kind hands were
upon his head, and her kind voice soothed him.
"There, there, laddie, that's all right. You've been badly hurt
yourself, and you've been very brave over it. It's not easy to keep
sweet-tempered when you're hurt--you know that, don't you, Bundy?
Many's the time and oft I've said hard things I didn't mean, because my
heart was bleeding. We all do it sometimes. But I think God turns His
head away and doesn't listen. Perhaps He couldn't go on loving us if
He did. And you know what the prayer says: 'Forgive us our trespasses
as we forgive them that trespass against us.' I never understood
anything about theologies, and that kind of thing; but I know _that's_
true. It's true because we can't go on living without it. So that's
over, my dear, and don't you think any more about it."
And so she drew the bitterness out of his heart, and kissed him, and
finally laughed at him through her tears, calling herself a foolish old
woman to be supposing she could teach a big, clever fellow like him,
until they were both laughing into one another's eyes like a pair of
lovers.
"Well, now, we'll write Helen, and wish her joy. And, Bundy, you're
going to Paris next week, aren't you? You will go to see her, of
course. And we must send the poor child a present. It's a mercy,
after all, she hasn't got into worse mischief than getting married to
an old Frenchman. And perhaps he may make her a good husband, there's
no telling--even though he is a Frenchman. And now I've a surprise for
you. What do you think it is?"
"Something pleasant, no doubt."
"Well, it ought to be. Vickars and Elizabeth are coming to lunch. And
you must stay, of course. And after lunch you can talk to Elizabeth,
and we old folk will go away and talk about you, and see what can be
done for you."
"Yes," said Bundy. "It's all very well for your father to work for
Grimes; but you have to get to work too. Ah! there's the bell.
That'll be Vickars, so we'll postpone that business."
It was a delightful lunch. For the first time since his return to
England Arthur attained a real cheerfulness. In this atmosphere of
warm affection it was impossible to think too urgently of past griefs.
And it did seem as if the black shadow was at last rolling off, like a
rain-cloud with trailing skirts edged with pure light.
Vickars, to his surprise, took quite a cheerful view of Helen's
marriage.
"What Helen always needed was _duties_," he remarked. "Duties give
poise and ballast to life. I suppose, ever since she left school, she
has had no real duties to fulfil, and nothing makes people so selfish
as a total absence of some kind of daily duty. If marriage does
nothing else, it does impose duties on men and women. It takes them
out of themselves, makes them look outward instead of inward, which is
always a great thing."
"Then you don't think she has made a mistake?" said Arthur.
"No one can know that. But there's a kind of instinct in people which
often guides them to what is right for them, though to an outsider
their actions may appear quite foolish and incomprehensible. They
unconsciously know what's good for them, just as animals know the kind
of food that suits them best. Not a very complimentary analogy, is
it?" he added, with his whimsical smile.
"No; but I see what you mean, I think."
"It doesn't need much seeing, for it meets us everywhere. Have you
ever watched a dog in a field? He knows exactly what grasses are good
for him, and he finds them. We don't know in the least the principle
of his discrimination. Well, it's like that with men and women. They
make their own choice, and it often seems to us a matter of folly or
caprice. But, in nine cases out of ten, if they are left to
themselves, they do somehow manage to choose what's best for them."
"And you would apply the same principle to my father?"
"Precisely. He is probably doing the only thing that was left for him
to do. He knows what is the best medicine for his wound, and no one
else knows anything at all about it."
"Poor father! At this moment, while we are feasting, he is working in
bitterness of heart."
"Well, you don't know that. Very likely he is forgetting his
bitterness of heart in his work, and if he were here he would remember
it."
"And what about yourself?" cried Arthur. "If men really guide
themselves by instinct, and do it with efficiency, there's a poor
occupation for the man who sets out to reform them."
"I know it, my boy. Didn't I tell you I've given up thinking that I am
competent to guide the world? Don't remind me of an old vanity of
which I am ashamed. I guide the world! Why, God Himself appears to do
that with difficulty."
"Can one man do nothing then for another?"
"Of course he can. But he won't do it by shouting in the market-place.
The only thing he can really do is to live in such a way that other
people see that his way of living is better than their own. Let him
live--not just talk about living."
"And what about reform, all that bright dream of a reconstruction of
society which----?"
"Yes, I know what you are going to say. And my answer is, that reform
comes by example, too. One man who shows others how to live by living
accomplishes more than all the books that were ever written."
"You needn't think father means to stop writing, for he doesn't," said
Elizabeth, with a smile.
"No, I shall write, because that's my _métier_--the grass that suits me
best. But there's this difference. I used to think, when I had
written a book, that I had done all that was required of me. Now I see
I must live my books. There's far too much writing in the world, and
far too much preaching; there's never been enough living."
"I'm sure you've discussed that point long enough," said Mrs. Bundy.
"Come and look at my new conservatory. Do you know I've turned
orchid-grower? I really prefer roses; but Bundy wants orchids, just
because they're expensive. It's a terrible thing to be rich, because
you've got to have what other people want, instead of what you want."
They went into the conservatory, and presently, under the skilful
management of Mrs. Bundy, Arthur found himself alone with Elizabeth.
They sat there a long time, hand in hand, in sympathetic silence. For
these two had reached that most perfect union of spirit, which is quite
beyond the common mediations of language. Love for them had found its
rarest form, a complete repose. From the first they had rested on each
other, and, by a kind of spiritual clairvoyance, had read the deepest
secrets of each other's thought. They had no need to reiterate the
lover's hungry question, "Do you love me?" Such a question implies
dubiety, and they had no doubts. Elizabeth's hand, laid in his, said
everything; her lips, yielded willingly to his, would have been
profaned by speech. And in those long sacramental silences there was
something holy--an ardour of the spirit, for which language had no
symbols.
They returned at last into the library, where they found Vickars and
Bundy engaged in conversation.
"You have quite made your mind up to live with your father?" asked
Bundy.
"Yes. I could not leave him alone."
"Very well, then. No doubt you're right. Well, listen. I once asked
you to be secretary to the Dredging Company in New York, and you
refused. I want you now to act as my private secretary for a few hours
every day. In that way you will be earning something, and you can go
on living with your father as long as you think fit."
"And I cheerfully accept," said Arthur.
"Then we'll take that as settled. And if you can persuade your father
to come back to the life which I think he is better fitted for, why do.
He may count on me."
"I don't think he will ever do that. But I am sure he will be glad to
know you thought of it."
"Poor fellow," said Bundy, his eyes full of tears. "The world has used
him hardly. It somehow doesn't seem fair that I should be here and he
there." And then, with a trembling voice, came the old sentiment.
"But it's great, all the same, the way he takes things. Your father's
a great man."
"I think so too," said Arthur. "He's the greatest man I ever knew, and
you are the best."
XXIII
THE LAST HOME
The summer passed in heavy, brooding heat; the autumn brought long days
of diminished sunshine; and at last the winter came, with rain and fog.
London looked its worst, dull, drab, dishevelled, and nowhere was its
grim squalor more distressing than in Tottenham.
A district of mean streets, formless and chaotic, sprawling aimlessly
in a sea of mud; houses gray and dingy, exuding dirt; other houses, new
and cheaply built, already overtaken by decay, huddled in shivering
wretchedness along roads deep in mire; churches with the paint peeling
from their doors; paltry ill-stocked shops visibly struggling for
existence; a few smoke-stained trees; a smoke-stained sky; and tribes
of men and women moving to and fro dejectedly, with backs hunched
against the driving rain, or faces showing pallid in the fog,--such is
Tottenham. It is a district without grace, without charm, with no
interruption in its uniformity of dullness. The disparities caused by
social rank, which elsewhere give some semblance of external variety,
are not found here. Poverty sees itself reduplicated at every turn; it
looks into its own face, and sees no other. A district no man chooses;
into which he may be thrust by dire misfortune, in which he may dwell
with resentment, with a heart swollen with regret, with a mind
embittered; but which excites in him no respect and no affection.
London, with its glories and adventures, shines afar; it shines
splendid and contemptuous. For here there are no adventures; memories,
but no prospects; life without ardour; struggle without hope; toil
without release.
It was in this district that Masterman had chosen to live. Its tragic
dreariness presented a subtle correspondence with his own temper.
Having sought wealth for so many years with a fierce intensity of
passion, he now embraced poverty with an equal ardour. The world had
humiliated him, and, as if to show how little he cared for the world's
verdict, he added to his humiliation features which the world had not
intended. He hungered for renunciation, not as saints have hungered,
but with the bravado of a broken heart. He would show himself
unsubduable; that was his main thought. And in what more striking way
could he do this than by a complete indifference to the world's
opinion, a voluntary descent into indignity? To toil in harsh labours,
to eat poor food, to live in the meanest way, without complaint,
without visible resentment,--this was his challenge to the world, by
which he declared his complete contempt for the world's judgment and
opinion.
This had been his sole motive for rejecting the proffered generosity of
Bundy. And there were others beside Bundy, the friends and
acquaintances of his prosperity, who would gladly have given him a
helping hand. But, since he could not wholly recover his old position,
he scorned a partial reclamation. To move before the eyes of these
former friends shorn of his power, narrowed, limited, perhaps pitied,
was a thing impossible. Better far to leave the arena for ever, and
leave it with a proud disdain. Exile was less painful than toleration.
The exile may at least keep his pride; but what pride is possible to
the broken supernumerary who "lags superfluous on the stage"?
"No," he said, when Bundy pressed him to accept his help, "I can't do
it. I know you mean it kindly; but I can't."
"But why not?"
"You wouldn't understand if I told you."
"I understand you're the most obstinate man I ever met," said Bundy,
with a touch of indignant heat.
"Obstinate? Well, p'raps so. We'll let it go at that. Yes, I'm
obstinate."
And his smile was so grim and tragic that Bundy said no more.
It was one of the curious features of his situation that the house he
chose to live in at Tottenham was a triumph of architectural mendacity;
the same kind of house, in fact, as those with which he himself had
disfigured London, but some grades lower than his own flimsiest
performances. The doors were badly hung and would not close; the
wainscots, fashioned of green wood, were already shrunken; the window
frames rattled and let in the cold air; the chimneys smoked; the
ceiling plaster was already in process of disintegration; there was
nothing in the house that was not eloquent of fraud. Perhaps he had
been moved by the spirit of irony in the selection of such a house as
his final habitation. He might have lived elsewhere; but nowhere else
could he have gratified his perversity with such completeness. Grimes
employed him; well, let him live in one of Grimes's houses too; in
doing so he anticipated the world's laughter by laughing himself.
"He's a holy terror, is Grimes," he would remark. "I thought I knew
how to build a thirty-pound house myself pretty well; but Grimes beats
me hands down. He can give me points every time."
And then he would recapitulate with sardonic skill all the building
tricks of which Grimes had been guilty, specifying each with bitter
humour.
"I did sometimes use sand in my mortar; but Grimes uses mud--mere road
mud at that. And I did put down drains of some sort; but Grimes beats
me there--he don't appear to have heard of drains. And his
party-walls, holy Moses! I believe if I spat at them they'd fall down."
When Arthur came home in the evening, he would meet him at the door
with ironic warnings.
"Here, mind you shut that door quietly. If you bang it, it's my belief
the whole gimcrack will be about your ears. And be careful you take
your boots off before you go upstairs. Those stairs weren't meant for
boots. And, whatever you do, don't you be leaning against the walls.
They kind o' shake every time a fly walks over them. I guess it
wouldn't need much of a Samson to pull _them_ down. He wouldn't need
to touch 'em; I reckon a sneeze would do the trick."
"Father, I can't bear to see you so bitter."
"Bitter? Oh no, I'm not bitter. I'm amused, that's all."
"I wish you wouldn't live here, father. There's no need. Let me find
another house. Between us, we've money enough."
"Well, Arthur, you see I kind of like living here. It's exciting. You
never know what's going to happen. And, besides, it's instructive.
I'm studying the methods of my friend Grimes, in case I should want to
start again presently as a contractor. I'm learning every day.
There's more than meets the eye in this contracting business; and,
since I've worked for Grimes, I begin to think I never knew a thing
about it."
Remonstrance was so clearly useless that after a time Arthur ceased to
attempt it. He accepted his father's bitter humour, thankful for the
humour, if hurt by its bitterness. He even contrived to laugh at times
when his father grew increasingly sarcastic over the iniquities of
Grimes; but it was the kind of laughter that was more painful than
tears.
More than once he tried to persuade his father to leave London
altogether. He pictured to him the life at Kootenay, the quiet, the
freedom, the exhilarating sense of triumph over crude nature, with all
the skill and eloquence at his command. At times his father would
listen with interest, asking many questions, but always at the end he
would say, "No, no; it's too late for that. I'm a have-been. I can't
begin again. And, besides, it would look like running away, and I
won't do that. A man has to take his medicine, and I'm going to take
mine."
At times a strange religious vein showed itself in his conversation.
He never went to church now, and, indeed, entertained a strong rancour
against what he called "church-folk." Scales had been an officer in
the church, and was a rascal. The church-folk had all deserted him in
his downfall. Clark, indeed, had called upon him, but had nothing to
say. It was all a kind of play-acting, very pleasant if you'd nothing
better to do, and that was all. "Churches are meant for comfortable
people. All very well while you've money in your pocket, and a good
coat upon your back, but they aren't for the like of me," was one of
his sayings. "The Church don't know anything about real life," he
would remark, "and it doesn't want to. If it once saw things as they
are, it would be frightened out of its wits. So it draws the blind
down, and won't look. It's like folk sitting round a good fire on a
winter night, and when the rain's coming down and a gale's blowing.
The more the gale blows, the more comfortable you are. What's the good
of looking out of the window? Why, they might see some poor wretch
like me, and that would make them unhappy. Better not look. Stir the
fire up, and forget all about it."
"I don't believe the church-folk think like that, father."
"Oh yes, they do. I've done it myself, and I know."
And then, amid these bitter criticisms and confessions, that curious
authentic religious vein would struggle into light. He would often sit
up late reading those portions of the Scripture most characterised by
melancholy wisdom.
"Listen to this," he said on one of those occasions: "_'He that
buildeth his house with other men's money is like one that gathereth
himself stones for the tomb of his burial.... Weep for the dead, for
he hath lost the light; and weep for the fool, for he wanteth
understanding; make little weeping for the dead, for he is at rest; but
the life of the fool is worse than death.'_ The man who wrote that
knew something about life now, if you like. Couldn't pay his mortgage,
as like as not; been a bankrupt, I guess. Just wanted to die, and be
done with it all--like me. Yet God let him have a hand in writing the
Bible--queer thing that, isn't it? And God must have known the kind of
fool he was. That's what I like about the Bible; it don't shirk
things--tells you the truth every time. It's a big thing is the
Bible--big as a rock; and the Church is just a little limpet sticking
on it. Don't see how big it is; probably can't see it." And then,
with a sudden pale illumination on the strong worn face, "Well, I guess
God's got to put up wi' me. He's big enough to understand the sort I
am. And I'm not for apologising to Him. I reckon He don't want me to."
Gradually there seemed to settle on him a languor, which expressed
itself in a kind of patience which Arthur found infinitely pathetic.
He went to his work before daylight, came home weary, and often wet
through, ate his coarsely cooked meal in silence, but made no
complaint. He had ceased to take interest in the outer world. He
received the news of Helen's marriage without remark, and displayed no
curiosity. Once only he was roused to any interest in her. Bundy, in
one of his numerous journeys to Paris, insisted on taking Arthur with
him, and Arthur told his father that he would no doubt see Helen.
"Paris, did you say? Ah! I was there once. It was there they took
me. So she's living in Paris, is she?"
He left the room and went upstairs. Arthur could hear him moving to
and fro for a long time. When he came down, he held a little parcel in
his hand.
"I suppose my creditors ought to have had this," he said. "Only they
didn't get it."
"What is it, father?"
He slowly undid the parcel, and put upon the table a small gold watch.
"It didn't rightly belong to the creditors, either," he said in a low
voice. "It was hers."
"Whose, father?"