a bit. I can mind how pleased she was. Lord! it seems like yesterday.
And then her face kind of clouded over, and she said, 'But can you
afford it?' That was just like your mother--always afraid I couldn't
afford things."
He became silent, and stood with wide intent eyes, as if he saw that
far distant past limned upon the air. He had never spoken of his dead
wife before. The mention of her name invoked God knows what sweet and
painful memories.
"Thought I couldn't afford it," he repeated softly. "Put it away in a
drawer, didn't like to wear it, thought it too good for her. Some
women are like that--not many, though. I guess Helen isn't like
that...." And then, with a sudden lifting of the head, as though he
emerged from a sea of dreams, "Well, I want you to give the watch to
Helen. I haven't given her a wedding-present. That's about all I have
to give. I hope she'll value it."
In due course Arthur gave the watch to Helen. She glanced at it with
an air of insolent depreciation. "It isn't likely I'm going to wear an
old thing like that!" was her sole remark. She also put it in a
drawer, where it was forgotten. When she left the Hotel Continental, a
year later, it was lost. She never missed it.
It was on his return from this journey to Paris that Arthur noticed for
the first time a distinct physical change in his father. The big frame
remained, but the flesh was shrunken.
"Aren't you well, father?" he asked.
"Oh yes, I'm well--a bit thinner, that's all. I'd begun to run to fat,
you know, sitting about in offices. There's nothing like hard work to
take your flesh down."
That night, as they sat beside the fire, he talked with an interest he
had never shown before about Arthur's prospects in life. He drew from
him a particular account of his work upon the ranch, the scenery, the
business possibilities in fruit-growing, and so forth.
"I suppose now men get rich out there pretty quick, don't they?"
"A few."
"But there's gold and copper in those hills, isn't there?"
"So they say. There are old men who have been looking for it all their
lives, though, and they haven't found it."
"But you might find it, eh? You've education, and that counts for a
lot anywhere. And you've brains--you could organise things. I
wouldn't wonder if you were rich some day."
"I don't want to be rich, father. The rich people appear to me the
unhappiest people in the world."
"Ah, that's true, too! It's the same everywhere. You see, if a man's
_born_ rich, he grows up to it, and knows how to behave. But when he
_gets_ rich, he generally makes a mess of things. Isn't used to it,
and it goes to his head like wine." A long pause--and then, "What's
the verse about choosing the better part? Well, I reckon you've chosen
the better part. I didn't think so once, but I've begun to see a lot
of new things of late, and that's one of them."
"Then you forgive me for going away, father?"
"Oh! I don't know about that. Isn't it enough if I say that I think
you did the wise thing? It's pretty hard for me to say that, and you
must be content with it."
He talked on for an hour or so, in a quiet, musing voice, recalling the
histories of men he had known, most of them dead. He recalled their
struggles, their ambitions, their infrequent victories, their frequent
defeats, their occasional rise into social eminence, and the domestic
infelicities that poisoned their success. It was a sorry record, a
kind of epitome of modern covetousness, through which wailed the sombre
note of the Hebrew moralist, _Vanitas Vanitatum_! Arthur could not but
notice that he spoke no longer as a participant in the strife, but as a
mere spectator. He saw the frantic whirl of men in pursuit of gold as
something far off, unimportant, inherently mean and despicable. And he
himself spoke as a man completely disillusioned, a derider and a
mocker, whose dominant temper was ironic pity.
"Poor Sandy Macphail--I knew him when he earned a pound a week." And
then would come a caustic sketch of Sandy, lying for his life in some
crisis of his fortunes, "eating dirt," as he put it, to creep into a
big man's favour, dragging with him into social light a wife who was
the laughing-stock of unfamiliar drawing-rooms, and his cubs of boys,
who took to drink or gambling--ending with the grim comment, "Spent his
last years wheeled about in a chair, did Sandy--paralysed, you know."
Or it would be, "There's Steiner, South African millionaire, you know.
I met him once in my great days. Poor wreck of a man, nerves all gone,
took drugs, so they said. Committed suicide, did Steiner."
It was a long, almost involuntary unfolding of the filaments of memory.
Man after man appeared in that phantasmagoric vision, foolish,
pitiable, misguided, and sank out of sight pierced by the shaft of some
ironic phrase.
"Well, I'm out of it all, and a good job, too," he concluded. "They'll
be saying the same things about me when I'm dead. My! it's twelve
o'clock! An old bankrupt fellow that works for Grimes ought to ha'
been a-bed long ago. These are no hours for the British working man."
The next day was Sunday. To Arthur's surprise his father appeared
after breakfast clothed in the fashion of his former life. The worn
serge suit and low hat were laid aside; they were replaced by a black
frock coat, a white waistcoat, and a top hat. He looked once more the
city magnate--rather faded. And in some subtle way the better clothes
had affected the physical aspect of the man. He no longer stooped; he
stood erect, held himself well, had something of his former air of
command.
"I've a fancy for a walk," he said. "Do you care to come?"
It was one of those mild and exquisite days which are the stars in the
dreary firmament of winter. A soft wind blew out of the south-west,
soft clouds moved across a blue-gray sky, and the air was pure and
sparkling. Even Tottenham was touched with the spirit of a brief
vivacity. The normal cloud of dinginess was miraculously dissolved,
the sunlight glittered on the rain-pools, and a Sabbath calm lay upon
the streets. It was the kind of day which the country-man calls "a
weather-breeder"; which the less wise Londoner hails as the first
pledge of returning summer.
They wandered forth, apparently without aim, but steadily moving
westward. They reached Hyde Park, where they sat for some time
watching the gaily dressed people who flowed past like a coloured
river. Here and there Masterman discerned a known face, and made brief
comments on it. From Hyde Park they turned toward the city. Through
the mitigated clamour of the Strand, and the almost total silence of
Cheapside, they passed, till they came to the network of lanes and
alleys round the Mansion House. They were strangely hushed. Where,
day by day, so many thousands passed, driven by eagerness and haste, in
an unnoticeable throng, a single footfall now roused clamant echoes.
"It's a queer thing, but I've never been in the city on a Sunday
before," Masterman remarked. "I couldn't have believed it was so
silent. It's like going to sleep in a thunderstorm, and waking up in a
vault, with the coffin-lid nailed over you."
He paused at last before the high narrow building where he had had his
offices.
"Wonder whether the caretaker's here. Let us see."
A little dark man answered the door.
"Why, it's Mr. Masterman!" he cried in astonishment. "Come in, sir!"
"So you remember me, Perkins?"
"Of course, sir. And there's no one sorrier than me for what has
happened."
"Who's got my offices now?"
"They're still to let, sir. P'raps you'd like to see them."
"Yes, I should."
They went up into the rooms. Masterman's name was still upon the glass
door of the outer office. The desk that he had used was in its place
beneath the window. But there was dust upon the furniture, dust upon
the windows, and a kind of ghostly loneliness in the deserted rooms.
"I've a fancy for sitting at that desk again, Arthur."
He sat quite silent, his hat tilted back, his fingers drumming on the
elbows of the chair.
"Let us go, father. It's too lonely."
"Yes--lonely," he said in a low voice. "The place that knew you knows
you no more for ever. It's a queer sensation. No more--for ever!"
They left the room, went downstairs; and Arthur noticed with
astonishment that Masterman gave the obsequious Perkins a sovereign.
"Oh! you needn't look like that," said Masterman. "I can afford it.
And if I couldn't afford it I should do it. Perkins still has his
illusions concerning me, and it isn't worth while destroying them. He
very likely thinks I'm going to rent the offices again. Well, let him
think it."
They left the city and turned northward. The evening had fallen when
they reached Highbourne Gardens. The church shone with lighted
windows, and on the misty air there floated out the sound of
hymn-music. Eagle House reared a dim bulk through the mist. A
white-painted board, just beside the gate, informed the public that the
house was to be sold.
"Come away," said Arthur. "I can't bear it!"
For at last he saw that in this aimless wandering there had been an
aim; his father was revisiting old scenes to take farewell of them.
"Hush!" said Masterman. "Listen!"
As they listened, the hymn-music became recognisable.
Swift to its close ebbs out life's little day;
Earth's joys grow dim, its glories pass away;
Change and decay in all around I see...
The hymn ceased.
"Give me your arm, Arthur; I feel a little faint. That's right. Now
let us go back."
The rain had begun to fall, and the wind was rising. It was nine
o'clock when they reached Tottenham, and both were wet through.
The next day he went to his work as usual. The weather was miserable.
A raw north-east wind blew, bringing with it snow. The snow became
sleet, and the wind changed to the south-east, bearing on its wings
continuous rain. After the rain came black, impenetrable fog.
Tottenham was submerged beneath the clammy vapour.
On the Thursday, when Arthur returned from Bundy's, he found his father
huddled over the fire, coughing violently.
"Are you ill, father?" he asked in alarm.
"Oh! just a cold. Nothing to be troubled over."
But the next morning he did not rise from his bed. Bronchitis had
declared itself. A local doctor, hastily called in, hinted at some
injury to the lungs, and spoke guardedly of a possible weakness of the
heart. From that hour Arthur never left his father's bedside.
Mrs. Bundy no sooner heard the news than she flew to the rescue. The
astonished street beheld a carriage with prancing horses at the door,
from which emerged a lady in a long sealskin jacket, who entered the
humble house, and did not return. She had established herself as
Masterman's nurse, glad to exchange the idle trivialities of Kensington
for these hard duties of helpful service. Bundy sent his own
physician, a famous specialist, who took Arthur aside, and asked him
gravely what his father's habits of life had been. When Arthur told
him who his father was, and how he had lived since he came to
Tottenham, he became yet more grave.
"I think I see," he said. "You won't mind my saying that a sudden
change of life at your father's age was a great mistake."
"My father would have it so."
"I understand."
"Is there any danger?"
"There is always danger where there is serious illness. I ought to
tell you, your father's condition is precarious. There is such a thing
as a man's loosening his grasp on life--doing it purposely, I mean.
Against that condition the best medical skill is useless."
"Then you think he will die?"
"Yes; his troubles are nearly over."
Arthur returned to the sick-room with a sinking heart. It seemed an
inconceivable thing that that strong frame, the vehicle of so many
energies, should be in process of dissolution. It had fulfilled the
intention of its Maker for so many years, borne heat and cold, the
strain of struggle and fatigue, with such a perfect adaptation, with
such indefatigable vigour, its every atom mutely obedient to the
guiding will; and now it must be numbered with the spent forces of
creation. It must return to the womb of Nature from which it sprang,
and become part of the innumerable dust of perished generations. Such
was the law of waste that ruled the world--an awful thought to a son
beside a father's death-bed. And against the certain working of that
law, what had man to place but frail and feeble hopes; what, at best,
but the solemn asseveration of a faith daily contradicted by the
incontrovertible realities of physical dissolution, by the stark facts
of departure, disappearance? ... An awful thought, indeed, before which
the stoutest hearts have trembled.
His father lay quite silent. He had not spoken for many hours. There
was no sound but the soft hissing of the steam in the bronchitis
kettle, and the dropping of a cinder on the hearth.
Towards dawn he spoke.
"Well... well! ... Seems as if it was all a mistake.... A-striving
and a-struggling, and nothing come of it. Folk'll laugh.... Him as
had the city at his feet, working for poor old Grimes. It's a poor
end!--a poor end!"
"Father, don't you know me?"
"It isn't Helen, is it? No, she went away. Poor little girl!"
The mind pursued its own sad communings.
"Well, I guess God's got to put up wi' me. He's big enough to
understand. He don't want apologies. I am what I am."
The grayness of the dawn filled the room.
Suddenly he raised himself slightly on his pillow. He grasped Arthur's
hand. There came into the tired eyes a new light, a long, intense
wonder-look.
"_Mary!_"
It was his wife's name.
Then the strong face grew slowly empty of expression, the eyes closed.
Archibold Masterman had laid himself down to rest among the generations
of the dead, and all his love and hatred had perished with him, neither
had he any more a portion in anything that is done under the sun.
XXIV
THE NEW WORLD
Against the main-line platform of Waterloo Station the special
boat-train was drawn up. It was half-past eight in the morning.
Almost momently suburban trains arrived, discharging their crowds of
workers, who passed in long files toward the portals of the station,
and were swallowed up, like so many tiny streams, in the great sea of
London. Some of them turned their eyes curiously, perhaps a little
yearningly, toward the boat-train; but for the most part these arriving
throngs passed on with sedate, indifferent faces. The boat-train
represented liberty--it was the symbol of things free and large; but
their thoughts did not go so far as that. For them, life offered no
release; there was no discharge in their warfare; to the end of their
days they would tread the city streets, push their humble fortunes as
they best could amid its clangour, and sink into rest at last beneath
its gray skies.
Yet this morning the skies were not gray. The magic of June lay upon
the city. The toil-worn metropolis had dressed itself in shining
raiment, as if it would fain remind its departing sons that it also
could be fair; as if it meant that this last vision of its fairness
should be for them a rebuke and a torturing memory through all the
years of absence.
A man and a woman crossed the platform, closely observing the labels on
the windows of the carriages.
"Ah! here it is! 'Masterman and party,'" said Bundy.
"They should be here by this time, shouldn't they?" said Mrs. Bundy.
"No, there's plenty of time--nearly half an hour."
They stood beside the train, talking in eager tones.
"You ordered flowers for their cabin, didn't you?"
"Yes; and I've done something else. I've got a suite of rooms for
them. But they won't know that till they get aboard."
"Ah! I'm glad of that! I suppose it's the last thing we can do for
them."
"Pray don't be melancholy," said Bundy, with an attempt at
cheerfulness. "They're going to be very happy. Let us see them off
with smiles."
"Ah! it's very well to talk. But these partings make me miserable. I
couldn't have loved Arthur more if he'd been my own son. But he won't
want me any more now. He'll have Elizabeth."
"Well, aren't you glad of it?"
"Oh yes, I'm glad. It was a beautiful wedding. And she is a sweet
girl. But there's nothing makes you feel so old as weddings, somehow.
They make you realise how much of life lies behind you."
This intimate talk was interrupted by the increasing crowd that
thronged the platform.
"Well, cheer up! Here they come!" said Bundy.
And Mrs. Bundy, instantly superior to grievous meditations, ran to meet
the little group, with smiles and tenderness. She made no scruple of
kissing Arthur openly, embraced Elizabeth with fervour, wrung Vickars's
hand, to the last moment bought them books, papers, and magazines, and
whispered various occult directions for the attainment of health and
happiness into Arthur's ear, much as she had done years before when he
went to school for the first time. And then came the crowded
sensations of the moment when the shrill whistle sounded, the wheels
moved, and the train sped into the spacious sunshine.
For Arthur, newly married, was leaving the city of so many tragic
memories for ever; Vickars also had decided to accompany Arthur and
Elizabeth to Kootenay. Each felt that with the death of Masterman the
last tie to England was snapped.
As the train flashed on past trim suburban villas, into the greenness
of the open country, they talked in hushed tones of the life that lay
behind them.
"One feels a little like a recreant at leaving it all," said Vickars.
"It is such a big thing, this London. And, when all's said and done,
there's far more heroism packed into those struggling, drudging London
lives than is found in a thousand battlefields."
"You've done your part, father. You, at least, need have no
compunctions," said Elizabeth.
"I've done a little--how little! You didn't think, when I was speaking
of heroism, that I meant myself, did you, my child?"
"I only meant what I said, father. You have done your part."
"Ah! an easy part," he said meditatively. "I have sat apart, aloof and
sheltered, writing books. That is but an easy and little thing."
He was silent for some moments, watching the green unfolding of the
country, the quiet farms and cottages, the ancient churches lifting
gray towers above their guardian elms, the bright water-courses, the
level roads and sun-washed fields.
"It comes to me," he said presently, "that there's another kind of life
which I have never fully understood. A man comes to London, young,
strong, eager, and is speedily infected with a passion for success. He
is exposed daily to a hundred gross temptations. If he had some
original fineness of nature, it is soon blunted by the conditions of
his life. He fights for standing-room because that is the first law of
his existence. He then fights for conquest, and he conquers. At last
he receives a fatal wound. But his courage does not fail him. He
stands lonely and weak, fighting to the last. In the hour of his
adversity he is wholly unconquered. That is real heroism. The final
virtue of life is courage. He has this courage, and it is so great
that it eclipses the memory of his faults."
"You are thinking of my father?" said Arthur, in a low voice.
"Yes. I who sat apart, criticising the world, am the sham hero. He
who endured the crucifixion of the world is the real hero. Suffering
does not necessarily ennoble men; but to suffer bravely is always
noble. Ah, Arthur! when I think of that lonely grave which lies behind
us, I say, not 'what bitterness is hidden there!' but 'what fortitude!'
With all its faults, the life hidden in that grave may teach us all a
lesson."
And that was the epitaph of Archibold Masterman.
The train sped on. The ancient towers of Winchester rose and sank; and
were not they also the memorial of a Life not alone pure and gentle,
but of a divine courage? ... And in that Life, as in multitudes of
soiled and human lives, was not the final efficiency found in the
fortitude that endures?
"That is the real heroism," said Vickars. "At least it is clear that
without this fortitude no kind of heroism is possible."
Through the trees the gray hospice of St. Cross was visible for a
transient moment. The high chalk downs succeeded, the green marshland,
the broad estuary with its tossing boats and wide glimmering waters.
An hour later a great ship loosed her moorings, and turned her bows
toward the wider waters and the New World.
THE END
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