No one can live at the height of great crises. After the storm, when the
wind has sobbed itself to sleep, the sun comes peeping shyly to count
the damage done, the draggled, flattened flowers begin to lift
themselves and look about, the fallen trees are sawn up and carted away.
Sainty might take to his bed, and lie there groaning at the wreck of all
his hopes and plans for his brother. Lady Charmington might say dreadful
violent things, and indulge in the cheap gratification of cursing her
son. But sooner or later Sainty must get up and dress, must come
downstairs and see the agent and the butler, and his mother must wash
her hot eyes and flatten down her hair, must order dinner, and scold the
maids, and sit at the head of the table as though nothing were amiss.
And it is just this that saves us from madness; the more we have to do,
the less time we can afford for sitting down with our sorrow in darkened
rooms, the better for us. Kings and business men, and the labouring
classes generally, whose work must be done no matter what happens, have
a great advantage over leisured mourners. Sainty crept out, battered and
disheartened, to face a new world which yet had a great deal in common
with the old one. He had to provide himself with a new set of motives,
desires, objects in life. But outwardly nothing was changed. The very
book he had put down when he left the library to find the letters for
Arthur in crossing the hall, was still on the same table with his
paperknife laid between the leaves to mark the place.
He never knew how his mother had come by her information. Sometimes he
thought of Lady Eccleston, sometimes of the duchess. Her reference to
the supper and his own presence at it had suggested a sickening
suspicion of a new treachery on the part of Claude, but he finally
decided that this was unlikely. A dozen other people might have seen him
going in, and gossiped about his presence. Claude had mentioned that he
was supping with Johnny Trafford; it might have come round through his
aunt Susie. He did not want to think any worse of his cousin than he
need, and he did Claude the justice to recollect that if he never shrank
from doing a mean action when he had anything to gain by it, mere
purposeless mischief was not in his traditions; indeed, he would rather
take trouble to keep things straight. He was not one of those who turned
explosive truths loose in the world--who ‘thought people ought to know’;
on the contrary, on general principles he was all for people _not_
knowing, especially awkward facts about their own relatives. On the
whole, the causes of the catastrophe seemed to Sainty far less important
than the consideration of what, under the circumstances, was left for
him to do for his brother.
Lady Charmington, on his screwing up courage to ask if she had any views
on the subject, forbade him peremptorily to mention Arthur’s name to
her.
Lord Firth said the young ass had done for himself irretrievably, but
agreed that he couldn’t be left to starve. He was much inclined to
think, however, that the younger brother’s £500 a year, which was all to
which he had a legal claim under his grandfather’s will, was quite
enough for him. ‘If you give him any more, he’ll only chuck it away.’
‘Uncle Cor,’ Sainty said, ‘what’s the good of talking like that? You
know as well as I do that Arthur will never live on £500 a year. I see
nothing to be gained by pretending that he will. _I_ could easily, but
_he_ never will. And do you suppose I could serenely sit in this huge
house, and spend £50,000 a year, and know my brother was in want?’
‘Whatever you give him, you may be sure he’ll spend double,’ said Lord
Firth; ‘so I should recommend your not beginning with too large a sum;
you had better keep something for the debts you will assuredly be
called on to pay from time to time.’
‘I’d so much rather give him a decent allowance to start with, one that
he _could_ live on and _not_ get into debt.’
‘You rebuked me just now,’ his uncle replied blandly, ‘for not looking
facts in the face. Might I suggest that the aspiration you have just put
forward is based on a hypothesis quite as visionary as my proposal that
Arthur should live on £500 a year.’
Sainty was forced to admit the contention. He wrote, therefore, a letter
from which he tried as far as possible to banish all useless
recrimination, offering to pay his brother’s debts if he would send him
the bills, and to allow him a thousand a year; to which Arthur in due
course returned a most characteristic reply, beginning with a
magnificent declaration that he wanted nothing of people who were not
prepared to recognise or receive his wife, and repetitions of his
readiness to ‘work his fingers to the bone for her,’ and ending with a
bitter complaint of his brother’s meanness in not making him a larger
allowance. In due course, however, the bills arrived, and made Sainty
gasp; nor did he find when he placed the first quarter’s allowance to
his brother’s credit that it was returned to his own.
There is a certain repose in the fact that the worst which one has
dreaded has happened. To some temperaments anxiety is far harder to bear
than sorrow, and the mother who killed her baby because she was so
dreadfully afraid that it would die, presented only an extreme case of a
not uncommon frame of mind.
The sun shone, the birds sang, the early and late summer were not less
glorious than usual on the great well-kept lawns and terraces of
Belchamber. The places that have known us do not put on mourning for our
departure unless it withdraws from them some fostering care, and
Arthur’s effect upon a garden was mostly written in broken branches and
footprints on the flower-beds. When people have been more than usually
disappointing, we turn with an added tenderness to things, and Sainty,
whose regard for his beautiful inheritance had always been sentimentally
great, began to take a more intelligent interest in the possessions he
had been so anxious to renounce. Since it seemed that he could not shake
off his responsibilities, he would embrace them with fervour. He found
himself wandering about the great historic house and eagerly learning
all he could of the treasures it contained; and he started to rearrange
and catalogue the huge library, which had been much neglected and had
got sadly out of order. Soon finding this a task utterly beyond him
without expert help, he imported as librarian a young _protégé_ of
Gerald Newby from the library of his college, with whom he spent long
mornings exploring chests and closets where dusty folios had been
ruthlessly heaped together and left to rats and spiders. They made the
most wonderful finds of whole boxes of manuscripts, family papers,
parchments, letters. Among other things, they discovered one day the
original plans on which the grounds had been laid out, signed by
Perrault, and though there had been many subsequent alterations, Sainty
was delighted to find how much the main lines had remained intact. The
orangery with its enclosed garden, the bowling-green by the canal with
its formal pleached alleys, and the whole system of waterworks, ponds,
cascades, and fountains, were all more or less as the great Frenchman
had designed them. Here and there his long sweeping vistas across the
park had been cut by stupid little plantations of conifers, coverts for
game, and these Sainty was eager to remove, reopening the grand
perspectives. He planned, too, to restore the dignified simplicity of
the forecourt, with its great oval expanse of turf and five statues of
Flora and the Seasons, according to the original drawing. The statues
had been removed and dotted without method up and down the long
shrubbery, the great wrought-iron grille and gates carried away to one
of the lodges, the turf broken up with flower-beds and terracotta
baskets. It would be delightful to put everything back in its proper
place.
To these and many other schemes his mother lent an indulgent ear. She
had that curious instinctive taste in gardens and houses which so many
of her countrywomen combine with an utter absence of the æsthetic sense
in all that concerns the fine arts or their own personal adornment; she
was quite incapable of real sympathy with his joy in musty old documents
and letters, but alterations in the garden were more in her line, and if
she did not always think what he proposed an improvement, at least it
was natural and normal that a man should take pleasure in his own
possessions, instead of wishing to give them away and live in the East
End. Sainty consulted her about everything, not merely from long habit
of deference, but from real respect for her judgment.
A more powerful bond of union than any alterations in house or garden
were certain schemes for the benefit of their fellow-creatures. In their
more radical youth Lady Charmington and her brother had started many
such, a co-operative dairy-farm, settlements of model cottages, schools,
benefit clubs, and a system of old-age pensions that should not lessen
the self-respect of the recipients. Sainty’s interest in all these
matters was no new thing, though he had formerly rather carefully
repressed it. Now he took them up with a zeal not even second to Lady
Charmington’s own. It was not to be expected that he and she should be
always in absolute agreement, but on the whole they worked surprisingly
well together. There were concessions on both sides. On his they had the
ease of long habit, and he was astonished by a quite new tendency in his
mother to consult his wishes and defer to his opinions.
Though she never mentioned his brother’s name, Sainty had a conviction
that she knew by some means or other what he had done for Arthur, and
was silently grateful to him for defying her resentment. She helped him
to establish himself in the west pavilion, now become uninterruptedly
his own, and to arrange his few personal possessions that had come from
Cambridge. The old schoolroom became his study; he turned Claude’s room
into a workroom and place for extra books, with a writing-table for the
librarian if he wanted him near him; but Arthur’s chamber was left by a
tacit agreement as it had always been, and sometimes Sainty would wander
in there and look disconsolately on the sporting prints, the school
groups, the faded blue cap dangling from a nail, the old Eton bureau
decorated by a red-hot poker with its owner’s name, a very large ‘Chamb’
and a very small ’ers,’ owing to the artist’s miscalculation of the
space at his command. Sainty did not want Claude in the old schoolboy
quarters, and explained to that accommodating person that he needed more
space for his books, and thought his cousin would be more comfortable in
one of the many guest-rooms.
By and by other people besides Claude began to occupy these apartments
again. There were no regular parties during the year after Arthur’s
marriage, but gradually Lady Charmington took to asking a few people at
a time; his Aunt Susan and her sons, the Rugbies, the Ecclestons, Alice
de Lissac and her step-daughters. His mother even suggested that Sainty
should invite some of his own friends, and Newby came several times and
was satisfactorily interested in his many undertakings.
‘I like to see you taking your proper place,’ he said complacently, with
the air of an artist contemplating his own work; but the old spring of
grateful devotion no longer gushed responsive to Newby’s lightest word
of commendation. To begin to grow away from a friend is a terrible
experience, and few things are harder than to keep up the pretence that
no such change is taking place; but when the friend in question has been
less the equal comrade than the Gamaliel at whose feet one has sat, the
strain of preserving the old attitude is increased to infinity. There is
no furniture so encumbering as a fallen idol; we trip over it a dozen
times a day. Already the blush of shame had tinged the corner of
Sainty’s smile at Parsons’ lampoon, and now he was constantly to
experience similar compunctions. Gerald took a great fancy to Claude
and held forth to him unsparingly on many subjects.
‘Your cousin is a real Prince Charming,’ he would say to Sainty; ‘very
refreshing, and such quaint views of things, without the university
flavour one gets so sick of; he is of immense use to me.’
Morland listened to Newby’s lucubrations with an air of grave sympathy,
but made fun of him behind his back. Sainty was exasperated all round;
he hated Gerald’s making an ass of himself, hated Claude’s gibes at his
expense, hated himself for being amused by them against his will. Cissy
Eccleston, on the contrary, was always ecstatically giggling at the
young man’s witticisms.
The Ecclestons had begun to be a great deal at Belchamber; Lady
Charmington seemed to have endless philanthropic projects to discuss
with her friend, which needed the latter’s constant presence.
‘I have asked Lady Eccleston to run down for a few days,’ became a
recognised formula; ‘I want to ask her about the G.F.S. meeting’; or,
‘She has got to consult me about the concert at Middlesex House for Lady
Stepney’s Home for Inebriates; she wants the duchess to be a patroness.’
And Lady Eccleston ‘ran down,’ always taking care to thank Sainty
effusively for ‘letting her come’; ‘I had heaps to talk over with your
mother, and it saves such a lot of tiresome letter-writing; it _is_ good
of you to have us.’ In Lady Eccleston’s train came Lady Eccleston’s
daughter, and sometimes a son or two. Sainty had come to have quite a
friendly feeling for Tommy; he was such a good soul, so reposefully
commonplace, and so unfeignedly happy and grateful at Belchamber.
‘You don’t know what it is to a chap to get out of that damned London,’
he said fervently. Poor Tommy, not being very good at examinations, had
had to bow his neck under the yoke of a house of business, for which,
after the manner of English boys, his whole previous training had most
elaborately unfitted him. Sainty was glad to give him the pleasures
which would be no pleasures to himself, and Tommy responded with a sort
of wondering gratitude made up in about equal parts of admiration and
contempt. Once he rather tactlessly tried to express his regret over
Arthur. The Ecclestons were at the moment the only guests, and Sainty
said something about its being very dull for him having to go out
shooting alone.
‘Oh, that’s all right,’ said Thomas; ‘though, of course, I miss your
brother. Awfully good chap, your brother. I was deuced sorry he went and
muckered the whole show like that. Hard luck on all of you.’
Sainty winced, but he liked the boy for liking Arthur, and silently
pressed his arm.
‘Beg pardon,’ said Tommy, getting very red.’ Stupid of me to say that.
The mater would comb my hair if she knew.’
Lady Eccleston indeed was almost distressingly tactful on the subject,
stepping round it on elaborate tiptoe, as some people go about a
death-chamber.
She and Cissy were full of interest in all Sainty’s undertakings. They
watched with breathless excitement the works for reinstating the grille
and the statues, and allowed themselves to be patiently bored by long
readings from some of the old documents which Sainty was editing for
publication by the Historical Society.
When there were no other young people in the house, Sainty felt it no
less than his duty as host to try and entertain the young lady, and she
was always ready to accompany him on his drives about the place and
visits to the outlying farms and cottages. He thought of himself so
little in the light of a young man for whom a girl could possibly
entertain a warmer feeling than friendship, that it never occurred to
him to imagine any possibility of objection to these long expeditions,
practically _tête-à-tête_ with only a stolid little groom as chaperon;
and indeed the two mammas smiled very indulgently on them as they drove
off. He showed Cissy all over the co-operative dairy-farm and explained
the system of its working, and if her remarks did not display a very
thorough grasp of its aims, she listened with the politest attention to
his explanations. Whether the two widowed mothers, when left alone,
confined their conversation exclusively to topics of external
benevolence may be doubted; but anyway they always seemed to have plenty
to talk about, and to be quite able to spare their children; and
meanwhile Sainty drove along the avenues of the park, or the roads and
lanes of the countryside, with Cissy tucked in beside him and chattering
like a sparrow. The girl had a certain sense of humour, strictly limited
in scope, but diverting as far as it went. It is true that it mostly
took the form of personal ridicule, and Sainty was rather scandalised at
the frequency with which it was turned upon her mother, but he couldn’t
help laughing at some of the revelations. ‘And, after all,’ he thought,
‘she would not make fun of her if she did not love her; it is the
light-hearted thoughtlessness of a child.’
‘Mamma is very low to-day,’ Cissy said, bursting with laughter. ‘You
know, she takes the _Exchange and Mart_ and is always swopping something
or other. I don’t think she does very good business, but she likes the
fun of writing to people she don’t know, and the bargaining. Well, she’s
got an old black silk gown, quite good still, it was a good silk; she
bought it at Woolland’s at a sale (she goes to all the sales), but she’s
worn it three seasons and it’s old fashioned, and every creature we know
is sick of the sight of it, so she has been trying to get rid of it in
the _Exchange_, and what do you think she was offered for it this
morning? A goat! Think of us in Chester Square with a goat! Tommy says
we can keep it in the back-yard and he’ll milk it, and it will save the
dairy bill; but mamma is not amused.’ And Cissy went off into peals of
laughter in which Sainty could not help joining.
This power of making him laugh was the great secret of his pleasure in
her society. At most times they might not have had much in common, but
after all he had been through, her irresponsible frivolity was very
restful. His morbid conscientiousness seemed overstrained and absurd by
comparison, and he was ashamed to be frightened by life in the presence
of a creature who took it so lightly, displaying such a careless front
to the slings and arrows of a quite insufficient fortune. With more
humour than delicacy she gave him glimpses of many of her parent’s
little economies and contrivances. ‘I’ve got to be turned out smart, you
know, and we give awfully nice teas, lots of teas--even the little
Sunday dinners ain’t badly done; but no one dropping in unexpectedly to
lunch--no thank you! and if she and I dine out it’s cold mutton for the
boys and none too much of it. You’re awfully good to Tommy; it’s just
heaven for him being here, poor boy!’
‘It’s delightful being able to give any pleasure to any one. I have
never been able to make any one happy though I’ve tried.’
‘Oh, come, cheer up! I assure you, you are giving a lot of pleasure to
the Eccleston family at this moment; it really is ripping of you asking
the whole family. Did you know, by the way, that your mother has said
the two boys could come next week when Harrow breaks up, and that we
might all stay over Christmas?’
‘Yes, of course I knew, seeing that it was I who suggested it. I thought
if you had your little brothers here it would not be so dull for you,
and my friend Newby will be here, and Claude----’ The vivid colour came
and went so quickly under the fair skin that Sainty could not be sure if
it were Claude’s name that called up the faint flush. It might have been
caused by the pleasure Cissy’s next words expressed.
‘Oh, it was you! How angelic of you! As for me, I don’t think my young
brothers add much to my enjoyment of life, nor I to theirs; besides, I
am quite happy in this dear, beautiful place, and going all about your
improvements and things with you is so jolly; but I’m awfully grateful
to you all the same, and you will be more in mamma’s good books than
ever; and with mamma, you must know, “good books” is not a mere phrase.
She has a red book in which she enters all her friends according to
what they have done for her; not an ordinary visitor’s-list. She puts
down “Lady So-and-So--asked us to her squash, but gave a dance and did
not ask us”; or “Mrs. Snooks--dined with us, but didn’t ask us back:
Mem.--not again till she does,” and so on. It’s capital reading; if I
can get hold of it some day I’ll show it to you.’
‘Do you mind if we get out at the end of the shrubbery and walk home?’
Sainty asked; ‘I want to see how they are getting on with moving one of
the statues.’
‘Oh, do let’s! I should love to see Spring (isn’t she Spring, the fat
woman with the sort of trumpet with the apples? Oh no, of course,
Autumn) swinging in mid-air. They had just got the thing rigged up
yesterday afternoon when I walked my parent round there. I do hope they
haven’t got her into the cart yet.’
They visited poor Autumn, whose head was reposing in rather a ghastly
manner in a heap of straw on a trolly, while her trunk and cornucopia
hung perilously from the pulleys, and her legs still graced a florid
Dutch pedestal.
‘Isn’t she sweet?’ Cissy said. ‘I do think it’s so clever of you putting
them all back where they belong. I should never have had the energy to
take all this trouble once they were here and established.’
‘The worst of it is,’ Sainty admitted, ‘that now the thing is decreed, I
feel almost sacrilegious tearing them from the places where I have
always known them. If I had known what a business it was going to be,
and what a lot it would cost, I should never have had the courage to
undertake it.’
‘It must be lovely to have lots of money to spend,’ Cissy interjected
almost under her breath.
‘What I can’t understand,’ Sainty went on, ‘is the frame of mind of the
person who spent such sums on _destroying_ a good design; he must have
disturbed his own early associations as much as I am doing, yet without
the same reason for doing so.
‘I suppose he thought he was improving things, just as you do,’ said
Cissy cheerfully. ‘All the things people give such heaps for nowadays
are what our grandmothers put in the garrets. Probably the people who
come after you will think Faith, Hope, and Charity, or whoever the
ladies are, would look much nicer in the park, or on the roof, or at the
bottom of the big pond.’
‘The people who came after him!’ The phrase struck cold upon his ear.
Who was there to ‘come after’ him? Lady Arthur? Good heavens! Sainty
shuddered to think what _her_ notions of the æsthetic might involve. He
had a fleeting vision of Belchamber rearranged according to the standard
of taste suggested by the plush piano drapery so fatally baptized in
champagne.
This question of who was to enter into his labours and gather the fruits
of all that he was doing contained within itself the germ of paralysis.
The works for the outward beautifying of the place were the smallest of
his preoccupations; but what would his successor care for all his other
hopes, his projects for bettering the condition of the ‘poor about his
lands’? The thought that whatever he might effect would pass with his
own feeble and precarious life, and leave no trace behind it, was one of
the sharpest darts in the quiver of his familiar fiend.
They walked back to the house almost in silence, Sainty revolving these
unhappy thoughts, Cissy, for once, not chattering. Sainty stole an
occasional glance at his companion, wondering at her unusual quiet. Her
eyes had a far-away look, which gave a great sweetness to her face; he
feared to intrude on some tender maiden thoughts which he felt tolerably
sure had little to do with him or his concerns. As they came out upon
the lawn they saw Lady Charmington approaching from the village, bearing
a small tin-lined basket in which she conveyed cold slabs of pudding to
some of her dependants. Cissy waved her muff and ran forward, insisting
on relieving her from the burthen which she was perfectly capable of
carrying on one stalwart finger. Miss Eccleston’s manner to her hostess
was the perfection of pretty girlish deference and service, and Lady
Charmington’s grim countenance relaxed at sight of her.
‘Have you had a pleasant drive?’ she asked. ‘I hope Sainty has taken
good care of you.’
‘Lord Belchamber has been delightful,’ Cissy answered, ‘and shown me all
sorts of interesting things. We came back by the shrubbery, to look at
one of the poor ladies who has had her head cut off. Now I must go and
tell mamma we are back. I will leave your basket in the little hall for
you, dear Lady Charmington, I know just where it lives.’
Lady Charmington turned to Sainty as the girl skipped away. ‘Give me
your arm, my son, I am a little tired,’ she said. Now Sainty was well
aware that his mother was never tired, and would rather have died than
own it if she had been. ‘Good heavens, mother, aren’t you well?’ he
asked in alarm.
‘Oh yes, dear, quite well; but I am getting an old woman. It is a good
thing that you have begun to look after things yourself. What you ought
to do for me now is to give me a nice young daughter-in-law to look
after _me_, and some dear little grandchildren to pet and spoil.’
Sainty was startled; it seemed almost as if Lady Charmington were
answering the thoughts that had oppressed him on the way home. He smiled
parenthetically at the vision of his capable energetic mother in the
character of the feeble old lady cared for by pious children; nor did he
see her ‘petting and spoiling’ any one.
‘I am not likely to marry,’ he said. ‘With the best will in the world, I
might find it difficult. Fairy princesses do not marry the yellow
dwarf!’
Lady Charmington’s unwonted mildness fell from her miraculously. ‘You
are almost bound to marry--_now_,’ she said, the last word pronounced
with a sudden sharp inspiration that told how much the reference cost
her.
‘Dear mother,’ Sainty said gently, ‘who could possibly fill your place
here? Who would do all that you do, or do it nearly as well?’
‘I can’t live for ever. As I tell you, I am getting old; already I
can’t do all that I could. The thought of that woman in my place gives
me fever. Do you want her to succeed me--do you?’ And Sainty felt the
hand on his arm tighten to a clutch.
‘We have both got to die before that happens, mother. If you are not in
your first youth, you are very strong, and if I am not a tower of
strength, at least I have youth on my side; we may both have more
vitality than many younger or stronger people.’ Alas! that his chances
of long life, once so fiercely resented, should have come to be the
buckler on which he counted to interpose against the speedy succession
of his brother, which in those days he had so ardently desired!