Without seeing any one at Monkton’s but the servant, or even disclosing
his identity, Sainty was able in a very few words to establish the
correctness of his surmises. Arthur had not been there for weeks. ‘I can
get you ‘is address, if you’ll wait a minute,’ the man said; ‘’e’s down
at ‘is own ‘ome; I forwarded some letters to him a day or two back.’
‘Oh, thanks; if he’s there, I know the address and need not trouble
you,’ and Sainty turned again to his hansom. He reflected that to find
Miss de Vere was to find his brother, and supposed, in his innocence,
that he had only to apply at the theatre to learn the young lady’s
address. But when he presented himself at the stage-door and blushingly
demanded it, he was informed that Miss de Vere was not acting at
present, and that, in any case, they were strictly forbidden to give the
private address of any of their ladies or gentlemen. A letter sent to
the theatre for Miss de Vere would be forwarded.
This was an unlooked-for check, and he wondered blankly what he was to
do next. He sent away his cab and began to wander slowly westward again;
he could think better on foot. He was walking sadly along Pall Mall,
when he was passed by a young man with wonderfully broad shoulders and a
wonderfully small waist, who paused, looked at him, and finally held out
his hand. Sainty recognised Algy Montgomery.
‘Hulloa!’ said the guardsman, with the smileless gloom of the
fashionable London young man. ‘Where are you off to? I’m just on my way
to call on my stepmother; I understand she says I never come near her.
Why don’t you come along and see your revered grandmother?’
Sainty had been trying to make himself go and ask Claude for the address
he wanted; he had not once set eyes on his cousin during the past year,
and to appeal to him again for help was a bitter pill. Think as he
would, he could evolve no other way of arriving at his end, and this
chance meeting and invitation to Sunborough House seemed like a leading.
He would go and see the duchess--what more natural? and if Claude
happened to be there, how could he help it?
‘All right,’ he said; ‘I don’t mind if I do.’
The pair walked in silence for a few seconds, Lord Algernon trying to
accommodate his long stride to his companion’s limp.
‘Come up to look after your young brother?’ he asked presently, through
the cigar which he held tightly between his teeth. ‘He’s making no end
of an ass of himself with Topsy de Vere; he never leaves her for a
minute----’
To talk casually to a comparative stranger of what was gnawing his
vitals was gall and wormwood to Sainty, but he grunted some sort of an
assent, and then asked as indifferently as he could, ‘You don’t happen
to know Miss de Vere’s address, do you?’
Lord Algy laughed. ‘No, for a wonder, I don’t,’ he said; ‘but I tell you
who ought to--your precious cousin Morland. I fancy he knew his way
there quite well at one time.’
‘Oh! did Claude----’
‘Got tired of the lady; or perhaps found her rather too expensive (I
suspect his grace don’t do his secretary particularly well), so passed
her on to the little cousin. Sharp fellow, Morland.’
The duchess, whom presently they found having tea in company with Lady
Rugby and Lady Eva, had also a word to say of her prodigal grandson.
‘Arthur _s’encanaille_,’ she remarked. ‘He is bad form; he lets himself
be seen everywhere with _cocottes_; the young men of to-day have no
_tenue_--none. Formerly, yes, I don’t say men were any better--they
have always been monsters; but they did not throw _ces demoiselles_ in
the face of the world.’
Lady Eva murmured something to the effect that Arthur was a dear, and
dropped a platitude about wild oats.
‘Oh, I don’t want a boy to be a _merle blanc_,’ her mother rejoined.’
Sainty would be all the better if he were just a little naughty,
wouldn’t you, my child? I don’t suppose Algy here, or your own boy, are
models of virtue, but there are ways of doing things. By the way, where
is Claude? Ring the bell, Algy, and we will see if he is in; he will
like to see his cousin.’
Sainty did not feel at all sure that he would, but when Morland
presently appeared in answer to the duchess’s message, he was as easy
and unembarrassed as usual; it was Belchamber who was awkward and ill at
ease. There was, perhaps, just a shade of reproachful tenderness in
Claude’s greeting, an eloquent glance, a silent pressure of the hand, as
who should say, ‘You may be as cantankerous and unreasonable as you
like, my patience with those I love is practically inexhaustible.’ At
the merest hint from Sainty that he had something to ask him, he carried
him off to his own room, and when the request for Miss de Vere’s address
had been stammered out, produced a little address-book from a locked
drawer, and began to search in it with a great appearance of assiduity.
‘Here it is--no, let me see, she left there, that’s her old address; how
stupid of me. Ah! this is it, a flat she took; I remember now. But she’s
always moving, I don’t guarantee that you’ll find her there; but they’ll
be able to tell you if she’s flitted again.’ His voice was dry and
business-like; Sainty wanted an address, he was trying to help him to
it, as he would try to do anything he wanted. Why he had need of it was
no affair of his. Claude prided himself on his power of implying much
that his tongue never uttered.
He wrung Sainty’s hand at parting. ‘Good luck to you,’ he whispered.
‘_I_ could do no good; may you be more fortunate! And oh! by the way, I
wouldn’t mention _me_ there; I’m not popular in that quarter. Cynthia
has taken one of those absurd unreasoning dislikes to me that
half-educated people do, and has set Arthur against me. I suppose she
was afraid I might try and get him away from her. It’s a bad business.
Well, _addio_, and best wishes.’
Oddly enough, Claude was right in his surmise that Miss de Vere might
have moved, but Sainty did at last discover her present abode, and
arriving there about noon of the following day, found that she had gone
to a rehearsal, ‘but the gentleman was in.’ Sainty was not sorry to find
Arthur alone. The boy was at first of course very much on the defensive;
the elder brother had to walk most warily among the eggshells of
suspicion and susceptibility, but he soon discovered that his coming was
not altogether unwelcome. Arthur did not attempt to disguise the fact
that he was living with Cynthia; ‘he had made her give up her flat, and
had taken these rooms for her; they had the whole house, and the people
of the house looked after them; it saved the bother of servants; he was
answerable for the rent and the housekeeping; naturally he couldn’t live
at her expense; otherwise she wouldn’t take a penny from him, she was
very high-minded; it was as much as ever she would let him give her a
little present now and then. Anything she made professionally was no
business of his; she had gone about a new engagement this morning.’
‘But how do you do it? Surely to take a whole house like this on the
footing of lodgings is the most expensive arrangement you can make.’
‘It ain’t done for nothing, I can tell you,’ Arthur said ruefully. He
was not sorry to unburthen himself a little to his brother. Sainty had
had no idea to what extent a young man of family could live on credit in
London, for a time at least. By carefully never paying ready money where
it was not absolutely necessary, it was astonishing what a lot you could
do.
‘But what’s it all going to lead to?’ Sainty asked. ‘Do you propose to
give up the army, never do anything--just live on here with her from day
to day? Even supposing you were me, and had all the money you wanted,
would this life satisfy you?’
‘I believe you, my boy,’ said Arthur heartily.
‘It may for a time; it won’t, it can’t, for long,’ Sainty said eagerly.
‘And mother? Don’t you care about her? Mother’s awfully cut up about
your not passing your exam. There’s another coming on in the autumn;
it’ll be your last chance. Don’t you mean to try?’
Arthur’s brow grew dark at the mention of his mother. ‘By Jove!’ he
said, ‘you don’t know the things she said to me. She _can_ let you have
it, when she isn’t pleased, the mater can.’
‘Well, you must admit she had some reason _not_ to be pleased,’ said
Sainty.
‘Lots of fellows muff the first time,’ said Arthur lamely. ‘I’ve got
another try.’
‘But are you any more likely to pass the next time? Are you doing a
stroke of work for it?’ And he narrated to Arthur how it had come to his
knowledge that he had not been at Monkton’s for weeks. ‘I happened on
these,’ he said, producing the letters he had found in the hall at
Belchamber, ‘but mother might just as well have found them. She doesn’t
know yet that you’ve dropped work altogether, but she must find it out
soon. Monkton may write to her any day and ask when you are coming
back.’
‘Damn it all! I hadn’t thought of that.’
‘No. You never think of anything half an hour ahead, do you?’
Then Sainty told him how people were talking about him--his grandmother,
Aunt Eva, Algy Montgomery (he did not mention Claude). ‘Don’t you see
that in a dozen ways the whole thing may come out to mother at any
moment?’
Arthur was very stubborn, took refuge in the reiteration of his devotion
to Cynthia and his determination not to be parted from her. Once or
twice Sainty almost lost patience.
‘You say you _won’t_ leave her, and you _won’t_ do this or that or
anything you don’t choose,’ he said with some warmth; ‘but what are you
going to live on? You own you’re up to your ears in debt, and that
people are getting impatient. What can you do if mother cuts off your
allowance?’
‘I’m of age; I’ve got my own money.’
‘Five hundred a year! You can keep up this sort of life so easily on
that, can’t you? You know you can’t touch the principal. I don’t suppose
the next two years’ income would begin to pay what you owe now.’
Arthur looked doubtful; he began to see the weakness of his position. He
tried a few platitudes about ‘working his fingers to the bone for
_her_,’ at which Sainty, miserable as he felt, couldn’t help laughing.
‘You’ve never done a stroke of work in your life,’ he said, ‘and you
would find it so easy to get employment, wouldn’t you? You would be so
valuable in a house of business!’
He wisely refrained from any suggestion that the lady’s affection might
not be proof against the trials of poverty.
Finally, after long argument and entreaty, Arthur was persuaded to say
he would go to a new crammer in the country till after the next
examination, and would do his best to pass. ‘It is no good my trying to
work at Monkton’s,’ he said candidly; ‘I should always be bolting back
to Cynthia. You can’t think how good she is; she’s always telling me I
ought to work and pass my exams, and please you. Don’t try and make me
give her up or say I won’t have anything more to do with her, or any rot
of that sort.’
Sainty, too glad to have carried his point about the work, was ready to
promise anything--payment of debts, help in the support of the lady, in
short, whatever Arthur liked to demand. ‘And first of all,’ he said
pleadingly, ‘you will come down home for a few days before you go to the
new place. Poor mother’s sore and wretched at the way you’ve treated
her. She doesn’t _show_ much, but she feels a lot, and you’ve always
been her favourite. Come and be nice to her for a bit before you take up
your work again.’
‘By Jove! you make me do everything you want,’ said Arthur tenderly.
Sainty could not help smiling at the thought of how very far this was
from being the case, but he was thankful for small mercies. He
reflected that he had been lucky in hitting on a propitious moment, when
the narrow matters of the house had begun to press rather importunately
on Miss de Vere’s lover. To grant a favour, accepting the money he
needed as a condition, was in every way pleasanter to Arthur than having
to sue for help.
Sainty declined to stay and lunch and see Miss de Vere. ‘I want to get
home this afternoon,’ he said. ‘Mother’ll be so glad to know that you
are going to work and do your best to pass; and also that you’ll come
home for a bit. You haven’t been at Belchamber since November, and this
is May; I don’t think you’ve ever been away for so long at a stretch
before.’
He travelled down to the country that same afternoon with a lighter
heart than he had carried for many months, pleased to find he still had
some influence over his brother, glad to be reconciled to Claude, and
rejoicing in the pleasure he should be able to give his mother in the
announcement of Arthur’s visit and his promise of industry and
reformation. He pondered anxiously on the question how much he need say
of the temptations and distractions of London life, to explain Arthur’s
desire to leave Monkton’s and once more try a country crammer’s, and
concluded that there was no necessity to breathe a word of the nature of
the occupation that had kept his brother from working in town. He only
trusted other people might be equally reticent. He had telegraphed,
before leaving London, to his mother that he would be back to dinner,
and as soon as he arrived at Belchamber he was met by a message that she
would like to see him at once in her own room. It was in vain that he
told himself she was naturally impatient to hear what news he brought;
it was with an uneasy foreboding that he approached her door, and he had
to pause and brace himself before he summoned courage to turn the
handle.
His first glance at his mother confirmed his worst anticipations. She
was walking up and down the room, so that her back was towards him as he
entered; but the white set face she turned on him as he closed the door
showed him at once that she knew everything. It was terrible to see this
silent, dignified woman so ravaged and shaken out of her habitual
self-control. Even at that moment he noticed with surprise the curious
staginess of her movements and method of speech. It was true, then, that
people in times of strong emotion did really behave in this way; and
these gestures and phrases which he had always supposed to be pure
literary and theatrical conventions derived from something in nature
after all.
‘So,’ she cried, sweeping round upon him, ‘I find what I have long
suspected was true: my boy, who, if he was thoughtless and a little
idle, I thought was a pure-minded, healthy boy, has been degrading
himself with loose women; and this has been going on for a year past; it
has been common talk; every one has known it; every one but his poor
blind idiot of a mother. We must never know anything, of course; our
sons may be drifting to perdition, but there is no one who will come and
tell a poor woman. People stand by and laugh; I suppose they think it
funny; all the godless, indecent, modern books say so. No one, no one
will say a word till it’s too late, too late to do any good.’
She was in a white heat of rage, tearless, tragic, almost distraught,
all the mother and the puritan in her crying out in revolt against the
eternal mystery of the flesh, the triumph of the senses in the young
male. Yes, in the abstract she knew of it, recognised that men were
sinners and full of carnal appetites; but that _her_ boy, her child whom
she had nursed and tended, whom but a few years back she had held upon
her knee, that this pure, bright young creature should voluntarily turn
from her to smirch its white raiment in the slough of sensuality--it was
not to be believed. If sacred art represented the mother of the one
sinless son with seven swords in her heart, what symbol can adequately
depict the woes of the mothers of men?
Sainty, with his quick sympathy, divined something of all this in the
awful moments that he stood for the first time face to face with his
mother. His curious, guarded, sheltered youth, his unhealthy, abnormal
perception of other people’s feelings, as well as the something feminine
and maternal in his relation to his robuster brother, combined to give
him a vision of an agony vouchsafed to few of his sex. He saw his
mother, his cold, chaste, proud mother, stricken at once in her
motherhood, her pride, her chastity, and yet he understood the situation
as she could never understand it, as it could never be possible for him
to make her understand. His whole heart yearned over her with a pity he
seemed to have been specially created to feel in its full force. He made
a step towards her with his arms held out, but she turned on him as if
she would have struck him.
‘And _you_,’ she cried, blazing with denunciation, ‘_you_ come to me
with a lying pretence of sympathy; you who have talked to me a dozen
times of your anxiety about your brother, and seemed at one with me, so
unselfishly, nobly distressed about him. You have known of this all
along, have aided and abetted him in his infamy. You, who are too
sexless and poor a creature to have known his temptations, have helped
him in cold blood to his undoing, and with this in your heart have come
to me to consult what was best to be done for him. Oh! you were always
subtle and sly when you were hardly more than a baby.’
‘Mother, mother! for God’s sake stop; you don’t know what you’re saying.
What do you mean?’
‘Oh! you don’t know, do you? Do you deny that you have known this all
along? A year ago, didn’t you go up and sup and carouse in this
creature’s company and that of her vile companions? Answer me that. Yes
or no? Did you, or did you not? You see, you can’t deny it. For all I
know, you have been with them often. Is it from her house you have come
to me now? to me, the mother of you both!’
‘Perhaps I have been wrong, mother, but I don’t deserve this at your
hands. I have done what I could. I have just come from Arthur. You know
he is not very manageable; I have not had an easy part to play. And I
have got him to promise to come away; he will come home and----’
‘Has he said he won’t go back?’ She flashed it at him like a whiplash,
and her gesture spoke impatient contempt as he answered--
‘No, I can’t make him say that, but I hope much from home influences;
when we get him here, surrounded by all that will speak to him of his
childhood, of all he owes to you----’
She cut him short. ‘You temporise with evil. Your arguments are those of
the worldly wise.’ She was regaining her calm; argument was steadying
her, and the old habit of rebuke brought back the judicial tone to her
voice. ‘There are only two ways,’ she said, ‘right and wrong. You cannot
palter and hold diplomatic parleys with vice. I am willing--I should
_like_--to believe that your motives have been good, but I hope you see
the harm you have done by your attempts at compromise. Why, oh why,’ she
broke out again, ‘knowing all this, haven’t you told _me_? Surely _I_
was the person to know, to be consulted on the subject.’
‘I wanted to spare you, to save you pain. I may have been mistaken; I
haven’t seen very clearly what was best, but I hoped to get him away,
and that perhaps you might never have the sorrow of knowing. I knew how
bitter it would be to you.’
‘Oh! this eternal deceit! When will you learn that there can be no
question of “not seeing what was best”? My early training of you must
have been strangely defective, if at your age you can’t tell good from
evil. How can it ever be anything but right to tell the truth?’
‘It is no new burthen I’ve had to bear,’ Sainty answered, ‘to be alone
in my knowledge of what was going on. For years I’ve stood between
Arthur and your knowledge of the scrapes he was in.’
‘You have, have you! So there has been a conspiracy between you to keep
me in the dark. I don’t want to be unjust to you; you have not a strong
or courageous character; you may have honestly believed you were being
kind; but see what has come of your duplicity. Had I known, I might
have said a word in season. Arthur would always listen to _me_.’
Sainty thought of the tempests that had raged when Lady Charmington had
said a word in season in the autumn on a much less ticklish subject, but
he forebore to press this home.
‘Well,’ his mother resumed, with a certain grim ferocity, ‘I’ve written
now. _I_ am not subtle or diplomatic, I have borne my testimony quite
simply and faithfully.’
Sainty’s heart sank. He thought of his long and anxious contest, of how
hardly at length he had prevailed. Of his mother’s methods of plain
dealing he had just had a specimen; he knew, none better, Arthur’s
impatience of the smallest interference, and the spirit in which he
would receive even the tenderest animadversion on Cynthia.
‘Mother!’ he cried, ‘what _have_ you said?’
‘Said! What should I say? _I_ haven’t temporised and beat about the
bush. I have said plainly that he was living in mortal sin, and
imperilling his soul; and I’ve bidden him leave that woman at once, or
never see me again.’
Sainty sank into a chair and covered his face with his hands. He saw all
he had striven for, all he had effected, swept away at a touch; he saw
too that the mischief was done, and irrecoverable; there was no good in
saying a word. The despair his attitude expressed must have touched some
tenderer chord in his mother. She came across to him, and laid her hand,
not unkindly, on his shoulder.
‘Pray,’ she said sternly. ‘Pray to God for help; He alone can turn this
wretched boy from his evil courses. Vain is the help of man.’
Sainty never knew how he got through the next two days. He had put a
strain upon himself far beyond his feeble strength; the two railway
journeys would in themselves have told on him, but the unresting
hurrying hither and thither in London, the emotion of meeting Claude
again, the terrible nervous excitement of his long argument with his
brother, and then, on the top of all, when he was worn out in body and
mind, the shock of seeing his mother as he had never seen her, the
bitter disappointment of finding all he had done rendered useless at a
blow, crushed him utterly. He was glad to take refuge in physical stupor
and exhaustion from the bitterness of his own reflections.
In the morning of the third day, when he was gradually coming back to a
sense of what had happened, his mother came to his room with an open
letter in her hand. Her face was grey and drawn, and she seemed suddenly
to have become an old woman. Her voice was hollow and unnaturally quiet.
‘Read that,’ she said, and tossed the letter on to his bed. Then raising
her hand, which shook as she held it up, ‘I curse him,’ she said, still
in that same even, horrible tone. ‘Remember that you have heard me curse
my son’; and she went slowly out of the room.
With trembling hand Sainty drew the paper to him; he recognised Arthur’s
schoolboy scrawl. The letter was meant to be very dignified.
‘My dear mother,’ the boy wrote, ‘I have received your letter; I will
not notice your insults to a woman I love. You say I am living in sin.
Very well, then--so be it. I will do so no longer. I came of age last
week and am my own master, and curse me if I’ll take it from you or any
one. I have to announce to you that I was married yesterday at the
registry office in Mount Street to Miss Cynthia de Vere.’ He had begun
another sentence, ‘Till you are prepared,’ but apparently thinking
anything more would weaken the effect of what he had said, he had run
his pen through the words. The letter wound up, ‘I am your son,
‘ARTHUR WELLESLEY CHAMBERS.’