COMFORTABLE SETTLEMENTS
Edward Holroyd had arranged to go down to Bath for a certain Saturday
till Monday, some fortnight after the safe arrival there (on the stroke
of five) of Mrs. Hancock's motor. He had spent a couple of rather
lonely weeks at Heathmoor since the departure of his neighbours,
and he was pleased to find how much he missed Edith. His failure to
achieve poignant emotion over his engagement had troubled him; he was
distressed about the indolence of his temperament. He had never yet
seen a girl whom he so much admired and liked, but the very fact that
he was able to contemplate her image and tell himself how charming she
was, seemed to him part of that failure. She affected him with the same
degree of emotion that a spring morning or a melodious song stirred in
him. He could, while basking in her charm, tell himself that he basked;
he was not by the exquisitiveness of the conditions rendered in the
least oblivious of himself; his sensations had not any overpowering
mastery over him. Duly he sat and thought about her when he got home
in the evening from his day in the City, duly and honestly he told
himself how delightful her perpetual presence would be to him. But he
did not dream and doat; he never lost himself in haze of rapture; he
was not blinded by any intolerable brightness. But he wanted immensely
to see her again; he missed her as much as he was capable of missing
anything. But his industry at his office and his appetite at his dinner
were wholly unaffected, though they would quite certainly have been
impaired if for any reason his engagement had been broken off. She was
the nicest girl he had ever seen, and in the autumn she was going to
marry him.
To-night, on the eve of his departure to Bath, he reminded himself
many times of his great good fortune. He had known friends who had
suffered the torments of the lost over the obduracy or the indifference
of girls whom they wanted to marry, and his sympathy with such men was
tinged with jealousy that they felt so keenly. She had been neither
indifferent nor obdurate; she had at once granted him his heart's
desire. And then he faced the question that arose out of his fortunate
situation. Would he have suffered unutterable torments if she had
refused him? He knew he would not.
The night was warm; a full moon rode high in an unclouded heaven; and
he let himself out of the French windows of his drawing-room into the
small lawn behind the house. A windless calm reigned, and the shadow of
the trees that bounded his lawn fell in sharp unwavering outline on the
dewy grass. Next door the black mass of Mrs. Hancock's house, unpierced
by any lights except the small illuminated square from servants' rooms
in the top story, stood with blinds drawn down over the windows, solid,
concrete, comfortable, a brick and mortar rendering of the ordered life
that was lived there. No roofs, he felt sure, leaked; no windows stuck;
no door squealed on its hinges; and its inhabitants, whom he knew so
well, to whom he was so sincerely attached, were equally strangers to
squealing and leaking. Soul and body they were watertight; undesirable
emotions no more percolated into their souls than did rainwater into
their roofs; they stood with their well-built walls cool in summer
and warm in winter; their windows never rattled when gales bugled
outside. And he himself, he knew also, was in the same excellent state
of repair; it was a characteristic of Heathmoor to be in an excellent
state of repair. They all stood like that, side by side in detached
residences, with small though charming gardens behind.
For the moment he was in revolt against this deadly respectability;
then, with a comical despair, he knew that he was not even in revolt.
He could not do more than imagine being in revolt. Rightly or wrongly,
he connected all this well-ordered comfort, those eggs and bacon for
breakfast and buttered toast for tea with his inability to feel keenly.
Life had never stung or prodded him any more than it appeared to have
stung or prodded Mrs. Hancock; and that she could be stung or prodded
by anything was beyond the bounds of the most fantastic imagination.
There were no wasps' nests in all Heathmoor; the gardens were too well
looked after. And there were no psychical wasps or gadflies either;
the gospel of Mr. Martin, preached so regularly and convincingly every
Sunday, made it a sin to be otherwise than cheerful and contented and
well-fed. No disturbing influence ever came down in those first-class
carriages; not even Mrs. Grundy ever paid them a visit; she left
her own dear children to look after themselves with a complete and
untroubled confidence in their good behaviour.
As for Edward, his conduct had from boyhood upwards been such as to
justify that lady's absence. In life he was a natural Grundyite,
indisposed to the venial if unjustifiable violences of youth, not
so much from a lack of vitality or, on the other hand, from high
principle, but from a sheer, innate respectability which beat in his
blood. He had been one of those boys who never have given their parents
a moment's anxiety, not from any stern sense of right behaviour, but
because he was that exceedingly rare product in a world that is almost
entirely composed of exceptions--a perfectly normal young man, one,
that is, who lies just about upon the mean which is fixed resultantly
by contending forces. He was that _lusus naturæ,_ an average young
man, a sport, an exception, a rare variety (to be collected by the
Mr. Beaumont of human moths), an instance in himself of the average,
which in the sum is made up of qualities of specimens, none of which
is average. He was in life and conduct what the average young man is
supposed to be and, in the mass, not individually, is. He was neither
milksop nor adventurer, neither celibate by nature nor debauchee.
He was not miserly with money or spendthrift, neither devout nor
irreligious. In two points only did he depart from the perfect
specimen of the average: he was exceedingly good-looking, and he had
been a dreamer, though his dream blossoms as yet had borne no fruit.
Indeed, as has been already stated, he had largely acquiesced in their
barrenness, and in the matter of the ideal She had shaken himself
awake. Round one subject only did they linger, that was music, in
regard to which, so far as he performed at all, he was so atrocious a
practitioner.
It was long past midnight as he stood there in his garden and surveyed
the solidity of the house next door, and the novelty (to him) of his
reflections about it had been perhaps induced by his listening that
night to that out of which his dreams were made, for he had just
come back--motoring down in great comfort--from a performance at the
opera of the "Gotterdämmerung." All evening he had been wrapped and
absorbed in the immense tragedy of its portentous people, and just
now they and their woes and their loves seemed to him more real, more
essentially existent than all the actual and tangible things with which
he was surrounded. They were the substance of which this moonlight,
this square house next door, the remembrance of Edith even, were but
the shadows of the spaces they moved among, even as the shadows on
the grass were but an accident of light occurring to the trees that
cast them. On such a night after the uproar of cosmic cataclysm the
moon shone on the waters of the Rhine with their restored treasure;
through a hundred and a thousand such nights Brunnhilde slept below her
breast-plate on the mountain-top, maiden, but goddess no more, till
to Siegfried's soul she resumed a nobler divinity.... And that divine
duet, with its webs of melody passing through and through it like a
shuttle of pure light, was but the expression of love, such love as it
had been given to man to feel, since a man wrote and recorded it. It
was such music now that his soul should be making when he thought of
Edith. But he knew that no such frenzy of fire inspired him; if his
soul sang it was but a cheerful little tune, admirably adapted to the
domestic hearth. And that was the best music he could make. Anyhow, it
had no wrong notes in it; it had no wild cadences or broken and sobbing
rhythms. It was just a cheerful little tune such as they sang in church
about morning gilding the skies. You only had to substitute "moon" for
"morning" ... and you were as jolly and comfortable as possible.
Edward began to be aware that his brain was dictating thoughts which
his conscious mind did not endorse. They resembled the tissue of
confused images which lie on the borderland which intervenes between
the sheer incoherence of sleeping dreams and the drowsiness which
precedes it. But there was an uneasy, though only momentary, wonder
in his mind whether these disordered images sprang not from the poppy
soil of sleep but from a gradually awakening brain, whether they
were not the light at the end of a tunnel rather than the dimness of
its entrance. The cool cells of thought had grown feverish with the
excitement of the drama he had just seen ... or had they begun to stir
to their own proper activity? Which was real, in fact, the white cool
flame of the moonlight as it shone on still trees and dewy grass, or
the song of Siegfried, which burned the sunset air and blinded with
rapture the eyes of Brunnhilde, when she woke, goddess no more, and by
that the more divine?
Heathmoor, the essential spirit of Heathmoor, in the incarnation of the
striking of the clock at the livery stables, came to his rescue, for it
unmistakably reminded him that the hour was two in the morning--a time
which probably occurred every night, but a time of which the evidence
was a matter of inference rather than experience. He hailed it as a
navigator driving before the wind in rock-sown and dangerous waters
might hail a harbour light that betokened an inlet in a wave-beaten and
inexorable cliff. He could "put in," and escape from these threats of
wave-crest and storm. It was long past the proper time to go to bed,
or, in Heathmoor phrase, he would "never" get up in the morning.
But that waiting in the still moonlight shadowed by the unwavering
trees had been a moment of revelation. A little light, coming from the
realms of music where alone his imagination worked, had been blinked
into the windows of the dark and tidy room where otherwise he lived. It
was like a distant lightning flash coming at night to a room where in
a cool clean bed a man lay drowsy but awake. He wondered whether the
storm would move nearer. And before he slept he wondered whether Edith
would understand. She knew he was "fond of music." Would she understand
that "fond of music" was a mere phrase of nonsense if meant to convey
what it held for him?
He fell into a slightly priggish sleep.
He arrived at the admirable Star Hotel at Bath next afternoon, and
found a room had been engaged for him by Mrs. Hancock, who, with Edith,
welcomed him at the station. He had been uncertain whether he was her
guest or not, but she at once put and end to all doubt on this point
by telling him that she had bargained with the manager on his behalf,
and that he had granted him the reduced terms on which she, making a
long stay, was entertained, which saved him half-a-crown a day, and
included the unlimited use of the bathroom. Of course he would use
their sitting-room quite freely, just as if it was his own.
"And I can't tell you how pleased I am to see you, dear Edward," she
said, laying a cordial hand on his knee. "We will have tea at once, as
my bath is at half-past five, and I like to reach the establishment a
full ten minutes before the hour, and so after tea you and Edith will
be left to your own devices. What a lot you will have to tell each
other, for it's a fortnight and three days since we left home, though
I'm sure it doesn't seem more than a week. Ellis sends us a bundle of
asparagus every morning, and says it will last another ten days at
least. They are most civil about having it cooked, and don't charge a
penny for it or for giving melted butter with it. I quite expected they
would charge for the melted butter!"
This seemed to be the sum of Mrs. Hancock's news, and shortly after
tea (she had brought her own tea with her, which, perhaps, served to
counterbalance the munificence of the management as regards the melted
butter) she went off to her bath, leaving the two together.
Edward had occupied a chair, while Edith sat on the sofa; now he came
beside her.
"Well?" he said, capturing her hand.
Edith looked at him as she had never looked before; her eyes sought and
held and embraced him.
"Tell me all you have been doing," she said, "especially the little
things. I think the little things matter most. They are more intimate."
"But I want your news," said he.
She flushed a little.
"I have wanted you," she said simply. "What a little thing!"
Not till then did he understand the change that had come over her
in this last fortnight--the change that concerned him alone. It was
clear that the music which her soul made was no cheerful little chant.
Inarticulate, it sang and soared. A little of that fire leaped across
to him, kindling him.
"That was sweet of you!" he said. "But it makes me feel rather nervous.
What if you are disappointed?"
She came a little closer to him.
"I've got an awful confession to make!" she said. "When--when you asked
me first, I was so pleased and glad, but I didn't care. Not care. But
since then----" She looked up at him.
"I care so much," she said. "And I want to be worthy. You have such
fine thoughts, Edward, thoughts so much above me. I've always known
that, but now that I care for you I realize it. When you play, for
instance, you are hearing things I am deaf to, seeing visions, perhaps,
that I am blind to. But I do want to learn. Will you teach me? Nobody
but you can teach me."
Her confession ennobled her; he saw a glimpse of her far above him. All
the years that he had known her he had thought that there was nothing
up high like that. But it had always been there; it wanted but the sun
and wind of love to part the cloud and show the shining peaks. Human
peaks, divine peaks, the highlands of dawning love. She was beginning
to realize for herself, quite easily, quite without effort all that he
lacked, all that in the vague dream of his youth he believed to lie
outside of him. Already she was there, her foot on the eternal snows,
bathed in the eternal sunshine. The commonest and greatest miracle of
all was in process within; the waterpots were already reddening with
the true grape.
"I never guessed," she said. "And, oh, Edward, if only caring made me
less stupid! But be patient with me and wait for me to learn. I shall
be able to learn if you will teach me. There is a whole great world
round me, full of splendour and beauty, which somehow doesn't come
in one's way at Heathmoor. I think"--and she laughed--"I think the
asparagus, so to speak, shuts it out. But it is there; it's everywhere.
You took me right up to it, and even then I didn't recognize it at
once. Now I am beginning to recognize it. I get glimpses of it, anyhow."
This was near enough to the dream-thoughts that had come to him last
night as he looked at the square house next door to enable him to join
her. But she, who besought him to teach her, spoke authentically of
what she had seen; he, the teacher, but babbled and halted over things
imagined and not realized.
"Ah, that is so much what I felt last night," he said. "I went to the
'Gotterdämmerung' in town, and when I came back I stood in the garden,
and all that you say was in my mind. There is a splendid world round
us, and too much asparagus. I don't mean----"
She guessed just what he stopped himself from saying.
"But mother is such a dear," she said. "I love her comfortable little
plans. They are as touching as a child's. I wouldn't spoil her pleasure
for anything. Tell me about the 'Gotterdämmerung'; it is all that which
I want to learn. There's love in it, and tragedy, all big. Music says
what you feel. Isn't that it? I can see it does to you when you play.
And what music says to you, you, the fact of you, say to me."
Yet he felt this was exactly the same girl whom he had long known,
comfortable, pleasant, pretty. The change was but the change that
happens to a plant when the spike of blossoms shoots upwards from its
heart, and was not so much change as growth. She had shot up, far away
ahead of him with her budding stem, and all the time she thought she
was reaching up to him. And he, gratified and a little embarrassed,
thought so, too.
"You mustn't say such things to me," he said. "It makes me feel as
if--as if you had put me on a pedestal, somehow. But it is true, that
music says to me things which turn into ideas, longings, aspirations.
But, so far from me teaching you what it means, it is you who have got
to teach me. It is you who are the explanation of it all. Don't you
see----"
He stopped a moment, trying himself to grasp the thought which eluded
him. So, at least, he imagined to himself; in reality he sought the
fire that should kindle him. And fire of a sort was not hard to find,
for they sat alone together, and she, whom he liked and admired, clung
to him. He kissed her and found himself nearer to passion than he had
ever been yet.
"It must have been you that I was looking for," he said.
Again in her the tremulous flame of a girl's first love shot up, fed
with the new fuel. Then, by a sudden impulse, she got up and stood a
little away from him, passing her hand over her eyes.
"I feel as if it can't be," she said, "and yet when you say it is, I
can't disbelieve you. But are you sure?"
He got up also.
"I tell you the truth when I say that I never cared like this before,"
he said. "All that I know of love is yours; you lit it."
She looked at him mutely, inquiring, scrutinizing. Something within
her wanted more, wanted a conviction that she had not yet got. It was
as if there was still some closed chamber in her heart that was not
yet flooded; the tide did not flow freely throughout her. And for that
moment's space she wondered if he, too, was in the same incomplete
stress of emotion, if the entire abandonment which she knew she lacked
held off from him.
For a moment only the doubt lasted, the next it was enough for her that
so much was hers already; the unfolding of love was at work on the
petals of her girlhood, and she did not even desire to hurry the hour
of full-blowing.
That for the present was the apex of the mounting flame in her, which
made the air round it quiver and glow, so that its heat and radiance
were beginning to touch with lambency all the common things of every
day around her, transforming them, as by the light of an Indian sunset,
into opalescent brightnesses. Already to her the sun was of a wider
light, the wind of May more caressing, the fields greener, the faces
she passed in the street lit with a happiness and a humanity she had
never noticed before. She saw and heard and apprehended all that
touched her senses with a greater vividness; the paper she read from to
Mrs. Hancock when she rested after her bath had a new significance, and
as she conned aloud the list of surnames of those who had been born,
married, and died--which was the opening chapter of the daily lecture,
in case her mother knew any of them--she found herself wondering about
the history of their loves. The most commonplace events filled her with
reflections which, though delightfully commonplace themselves, were
utterly new to her as material for thought. If the Prime Minister went
to Balmoral--the kind of news that was particularly gratifying to Mrs.
Hancock--Edith now was interested in it, not from wonder--like her
mother--as to what they would say to each other, but because before the
Prime Minister was a baby in his cradle, a man and a woman had looked
with eyes of dawning love on each other. The whole world was vivified,
a keener pleasure infused the common actions of life, she ate and drank
with a new savour, she went to sleep with a more luxurious sense of
that drowsy gulf, and, above all, she awoke with welcome for the day.
She joined every morning the ranks of those living and sentient things
to whom the knowledge of love had come; she was struggling, yet the
struggle was effortless, as if a new force invading her soul did the
battle for her--on to the level of real existence, leaving the desert
for fertile lands. She read the secret in the eyes and mouths of those
she met in the street, for they knew it, even as did the wind and the
sun, and the stars that wheeled. Sometimes she spoke of this new thing
to her mother, who must be among the initiated, and then the wing of
comedy shed a feather as it passed. Mrs. Hancock's reminiscences of her
beautiful days were of the nature of pressed flowers; it seemed that
their fragrance had departed, though they retained their outward form.
"Your father was a very handsome young man, dear," she would say--"very
handsome, indeed, with a rather bluish chin, for at that time he had
no beard. I don't think there can ever have been a more poetical
lover, and scarcely a day passed when he did not bring me some volume
of Tennyson's early poems, or Mr. Browning's. Edith, if you would put
the window just an inch more up we can talk. Thank you, dear! He could
understand all Mr. Browning wrote about different ways of love, and
explained it most beautifully. There was 'One Way of Love' and 'Another
Way of Love,' and one of them happened about the middle of June. I
learned that one by heart in order to please him. He used to say the
most wonderful of all was 'By the Fireside,' which was in November;
but that was after they married. Oh, look, dear; what a tiresome dog!
Some day it will be run over, and it won't be Denton's fault. Your
father was very jealous, and, though I hope you will never give Edward
any cause for that any more, I am sure, than I did, men are like that
sometimes, and they don't seem to be able to help it. He was quite
devoted to me, so it sprang from a good cause. Yes, he used to read Mr.
Browning's poems, though he was very fond of Mrs. Browning's too. Mr.
and Mrs. Browning! What a lot of poetry they must have read to each
other--all made up by themselves! I wonder if she understood it as
well as your father! He never found any difficulty about carrying on
the sense between the lines, which I think is the hardest part. And
to think that now you are going through the same happy time! Darling,
look, it is half-past three; and we must turn at once, else we shall
never get home in time for tea. Will you tell Denton down the tube to
turn as soon as he possibly can? When we get home I will let you read
the copies of Mr. Browning's poems which your father gave me. Have you
heard from Edward this morning? When he comes I shall have to talk to
him about business."
This business talk, which, so far as Mrs. Hancock was concerned,
followed on the lines which she had laid down for herself in the
matter of allowance for Edith, took place next morning. He had
suggested the more usual course that their respective solicitors
should represent their clients' views to each other, but Mrs. Hancock
preferred a personal and direct interview. She felt that Edward, who
was so generous, would understand the somewhat peculiar position that
she fully intended to take up, whereas the more practical and less
sympathetic mind of a solicitor might not see things in so romantic a
light. So Edith was informed when it was twenty minutes to eleven and
time that she should put her hat on, while Edward was told that it was
quite excusable that he should not want to go to church after sitting
in an airless office all the week. But it was a little chilly, and she
asked him to shut completely the window of the sitting-room.
"And now, dear Edward," she said, "we must have a little business talk,
which I am sure will soon be done, since I am as certain to approve of
your plans about Edith as you are to approve of mine. And then, when
we have talked it over, we can instruct our solicitors, and they will
draw up the settlement. Please smoke a cigarette; you will be more
comfortable so. There we are!"
Mrs. Hancock, indeed, felt perfectly comfortable. She had pictured her
plans in such delicious grandmotherly colours to herself that they
could not fail to touch Edward's heart. And she proceeded to lay them
before him.
"I am what they call fairly off, my dear," she said, "and, indeed, I
put by a little every year, though, as you know, to do that I live
extremely simply, just with the ordinary little comforts of life to
which I have been accustomed. Now at my death every penny of my fortune
will go to Edith, with the exception of two or three little bequests to
servants. At present it is something over a hundred thousand pounds.
You and Edith will enjoy that for many, many years after I am gone."
Mrs. Hancock felt as if she was making some deed of tremendous
generosity; the sense of that and the allusion to her own death caused
her eyes to stand in moisture, which she wiped away with one of her new
handkerchiefs, which were so expensive.
"But I am beginning at the end," she said, "and we must come back
to the present. I mean, dear Edward, to give Edith the whole of her
trousseau. I shall be very much vexed with you if you want not to let
me have my way about that. Everything she can want, and, indeed, much
more than I ever had, in the way of frocks and linen, shall be hers,
and shall be paid for by me. Put your cigarette in your mouth, and
don't think of interrupting me."
She beamed delightedly at him, sure that had she not positively
forbidden it he would have protested against her munificence.
Munificence, too, she really thought it, when she considered how much
lace....
"But that is not my great plan," she said. "I know so well, without
your telling me, that you will shower on Edith more than a girl
accustomed to the simplicity of life she has hitherto led can possibly
dream of spending, and so I have thought of a great expense which,
please God, will certainly come upon you and her, which you have not, I
expect, taken into consideration. Children, my dear Edward; I want it
to be my pleasure and privilege to provide for them, and, with careful
management, I shall be able to give each of your children as they
are born the sum of a hundred pounds, and on every one of all their
birthdays, if they live to be a hundred, fifty pounds more!"
To Mrs. Hancock's cars this sounded immense. It is true that her
original plan had been to make the yearly birthday gift a hundred
pounds to each of them, but in the interval between forming that idea
and to-day she had seen that such a scheme would amount to a lavishness
that was positively unreasonable, if not actually wrong. It is true
that it was not exactly likely that she would continue to be in a
position to shower this largess on children that were yet unborn for a
hundred years after their birth, unless she was to outrival the decades
of old Parr; but the sentence sounded well, and expressed, though
hyperbolically, the sumptuous extent of her intentions. But she had to
climb down from those great heights, and proceeded to small details.
"Take another cigarette, Edward," she said, "or otherwise you will be
arguing with me, and, as I have quite made up my mind, there would be
no use in that. My dear, I am a very determined person when once my
mind is made up, and I shan't listen to your remonstrances, so you
needn't trouble to make them. There! I can afford to do this, and since
I can, I am determined to. Now, as regards smaller matters, I know you
are very well off, but I want to spare you any extra expenses that I
possibly can, and a hundred little schemes occur to me. I send myself
to sleep at night with thinking what I can take on my shoulders, for
I assure you it is the little drains on one's purse that make the big
hole in it, so in the first place let me tell you that your motor bills
for tyres and petrol needn't be a penny more after your marriage than
they are to-day. I intend that Edith--and I shall tell her so--shall
consider my car as hers, in exactly the same manner as she has always
considered it ours, shall we say? Morning and afternoon, whenever she
feels inclined, she can have her drive with me, on _my_ tyres, and on
_my_ petrol. You will be sure when you are away in the City that your
car won't be scouring all over the country, eating up every penny you
make."
There is a psychical phenomenon known as suggestion, whereby the
operator produces a hypnotic effect on his subject, causing his mind to
receive and adopt the desired attitude. For the moment, at any rate,
Mrs. Hancock was producing this effect on Edward; her own sublime
conviction that she was making the most generous provision infected
him as she reeled off this string of benefits. But there are subtle
conditions under which suggestion acts, which, perhaps, she did not
appreciate, for at this point the effect began to wear off. Probably
she should have stopped there; unfortunately she continued. It may be
that she began to see through herself, and thus enabled her subject to
see through her.
"Household books, too!" she said. "You have no conception, nor has
Edith--for it takes years of careful housekeeping to understand all
about it--you have no conception what economies can be made in them,
nor, if you do not practise them, what a tremendous drain they are. Let
us say that Edith is alone for lunch, while you are in the City, and
she orders a fillet of sole, and a cutlet, with some French beans,
and a little cherry tart, and perhaps a peach to finish up with, for
dear Edith has such an excellent appetite, I am glad to say, and is not
like so many women who, when they are alone, have a sandwich on a tray
or a piece of cake, and find themselves getting anæmic and run down in
consequence. Edith, as I was saying, orders a decent little lunch like
what she is accustomed to, every day like that, when she is alone, and
at the end of the week I shouldn't wonder if her lunches had cost her
twenty-five or thirty shillings. Well, I want to spare you all that
expense; there will be lunch for Edith every day at my house, so that
all the household books for your purse will be a couple of poached eggs
in the morning and a plain little dinner in the evening, if you want to
be alone with her. Otherwise you can both find your dinner, and such a
warm welcome, my dear, as often as you like where she had her lunch.
And even if it costs me another gardener, I am determined to have my
croquet-lawn as good as a croquet-lawn can be, and you can come across
and play on it, and have your cup of tea or your whisky and soda with
me any day you like. I mean to turn my house into a hotel for you and
my darling, where you will ask for whatever you like, motors and what
not, and never have a bill sent in to you. Everything provided, Edward,
all the year round, and the warmest welcome from the old proprietress.
There! I don't think I can say more than that; and I certainly don't
mean less. About wedding presents I shall say nothing, because I mean
them to be a surprise."
But the suggestive glamour had faded, and Edward found himself adding
up in a clear-sighted and business-like manner what this all amounted
to. Immediately the result seemed to be that Mrs. Hancock would
have Edith's companionship at lunch and in her drives, and that he
could play croquet next door. Edith the day before had alluded to
her mother's childlike pleasure in her plans, but it seemed to him
that a certain power of parsimonious calculation presided over their
childlikeness, and it was not without a sense of surprise and almost
of incredulity that he made the inference that Mrs. Hancock had no
intention of giving her daughter any allowance or of settling anything
on her. For himself, he could not by any stretch of malignant criticism
be called niggardly or close-handed, and he felt justified in making
quite sure of the unlooked-for situation.
"Then you do not propose to settle anything on Edith," he said, "or
make her any allowance?"
He knew that this was a perfectly proper suggestion to make, that the
absence of any provision for Edith was ludicrous, yet the moment he
had made the suggestion he was sorry. He understood also what Edith
had meant by "childlikeness," for Mrs. Hancock's face changed suddenly
from its beaming and delighted aspect, and looked pathetic, hurt,
misunderstood. It was clear that she had taken the sincerest pleasure
in devising all these dazzling plans, which at present, anyhow, cost
her nothing, and in avoiding any direct expenditure. She had quite
certainly convinced herself of her own generosity, and of the unselfish
thought and ingenuity--which caused her to lie awake at night--that had
devised those schemes. But this miserliness, the ingenuity of which was
so perfectly transparent to anybody else, was not, he felt convinced,
transparent to her. Hurriedly he corrected himself; it was as if he
had unthinkingly taken a toy away from a child; now he made the utmost
haste to restore it, to anticipate the howl in preparation for which
it had opened its mouth.
"How stupid of me!" he said. "I had quite forgotten in the multitude
of your gifts that you were providing with such generosity for our
children. Of course you do that instead of giving money to Edith.
I think that is a delightful plan. Why, they will all be heirs and
heiresses by the time they grow up. And the lunches and drives for
Edith, too; she will never be lonely while I am away in town. And the
croquet and everything. I never heard so many nice plans."
He knew he was being weak, was yielding on points on which he really
had no business to yield, in order to avoid a scene. It was quite
ridiculous--and he was aware of that fact--to treat this middle-aged
and wideawake woman as if she was a child, to give her anything to
prevent her howling, but the morality of the matter did not trouble
him at all. She was like a child; he saw the resemblance; but no less
striking was the resemblance to a selfish child, or to a very miserly
grown-up person. He did not really doubt that some part of her brain,
carefully walled up and sequestered, knew that she was acting in a
thoroughly miserly manner, but she entirely refused to attend to that,
treating it as we treat some involuntary suggestion of a disobedient
mind, putting it from her even as she put away secular reflections
when in church, and indulging instead and painting in tender but
vivid colours the image of the beloved old granny--not so old,
either--incessantly signing the most sumptuous cheques for the benefit
of her beloved chicks, or looking from the drawing-room window on to
the velvet-napped croquet-lawn where Edward stood with brimming whisky
and soda, while Edith, a child tugging at her skirts, went through hoop
after hoop. She loved to see everybody happy round her, all enjoying
the fruits of her bounty, and if, incidentally, she herself gained a
companion in her daily drives, at any rate Edith would not sit solitary
over her expensive lunch while Edward was in town. And if, in reality,
she was a somewhat selfish person, and one somewhat insincere, how much
more comfortable that she should think that she was brimming with kind
plans for other people, when as a matter of fact she was only making
the most pleasing schemes for herself. It was not possible entirely
to agree with her in her estimate of herself, but there was certainly
no use in distressing her by letting her know that he saw through
her. She had hypnotized herself--by excessive gazing--into her creed
about herself, and any dissension from it was only likely to make her
think that the dissentient was unkind, not shake her belief in her own
tender benevolence. She started from that even as Euclid starts his
amazing propositions from certain postulates; if you did not accept the
postulates you could not proceed any further in her company.
Normal human vanity renders complete self-knowledge impossible, but
complete self-blindness is almost equally uncommon, and at the very
back of her mind Mrs. Hancock knew very well that she was acting
in a manner which, if occurring in anybody else, she would have
unhesitatingly labelled mean. But she never indulged in such thoughts
about herself; she turned a deliberate back upon them, for they were
rankly inconsistent with the spirit of cheerful selfishness which was
the key to her character. She shut the door on them as she shut it on
tales of misery and crime, ignoring and, if necessary, denying their
existence. And if it was easy to spoil her childlike pleasures, it
was easy also to restore them in all their integrity, and Edward's
assurance that he had never heard so many nice plans was amply
sufficient for her. Again her well-favoured face beamed with delighted
smiles.
"I thought you would like them," she said, shutting the door not only
on her knowledge of her meanness, but on his also, "and you have no
idea what a pleasure it was to me to make them. So, since you approve,
we will regard my share of the arrangements as settled. And now for
your part. I am certain I shall be as satisfied with what you intend to
do as you are with my intentions. But before we go on you must tell me
what I have to do. Must I have a deed drawn up? Is it a deed they call
it?"
He was careful not to spoil pleasure this time.
"I think that is scarcely necessary," he said. "You see you are--are
making no settlements on Edith. You have promised to do certain things
for our children, but for the present, anyhow----"
She interrupted.
"I see," she said, "but you must be certain to tell me whenever it is
necessary for me to have a deed drawn up. I shall be always ready to do
it, and to thank you for reminding me. Well, then."
She settled herself in her chair with an air of pleased expectation,
and, it must be confessed, a secret gratification that she had not got
to "put her name" to anything at all.
"I shall draw up a will," he said, "settling the whole of my property
on Edith in trust for her children, if she has any, and, if not,
for her use during her lifetime. In other words, she will enjoy the
interest on my money, though the property itself will be in the hands
of trustees. It amounts at present to about thirty thousand pounds."
Edward paused, for it was clear that Mrs. Hancock was pondering some
point.
"Let me thoroughly understand," she said. "In case of your death,
Edward, without children (though it really is quite horrid to think
about such a thing), if she wanted to build herself a little house,
shall we say, would she not be able to put her hand on three or four
thousand pounds?"
"No. She would have the income from my money for life."
Mrs. Hancock was almost as eager to secure financial advantages for
Edith, as she was to retain her own herself--almost, not quite.
"But she would find it difficult to live in a suitable house, the sort
of house to which she has been accustomed, on the interest of thirty
thousand pounds," said she.
"Do you think so? It means about fifteen hundred a year."
"Yes, I know, my dear, a very nice pleasant little income. But you must
think what she has been accustomed to, for I must say that, though, as
you know, I live very simply, yet I have never grudged Edith anything.
Think if she was ill! A long illness is so terribly expensive. Would it
not be better to insure your life, and settle that on her, so that she
could have a little fund for a rainy day? I know my husband insured his
life long before he married me."
Edward stiffened a little.
"I think, then, she might look to you for assistance," he said.
"Ah, how pleased I should be to make any economies for her sake," she
said, with feeling. "But what if I am no longer here to help her?"
"In that case she will have all your money in her complete command," he
remarked.
This was undoubtedly the case, and it was not possible to pursue that
particular line of grabbing any further. She smiled at him not quite
so tenderly.
"My dear, how sharp the City makes you business men," she observed.
Heathmoor seemed to have done pretty well in that line for her, but he
did not draw attention to that.
"I don't think I feel inclined to make any further provision over
that," he said. "Edith is coming to me, I must remind you, quite
portionless."
A sudden resentment at her attitude seized him.
"Or how would it be if you and I both insured our lives for, let us
say, ten thousand pounds," he suggested, "and settled it on her?"
Mrs. Hancock became dignified.
"At my death," she said, "she already comes into a considerable
fortune."
"Very well. I quite agree with you that no further provision is
necessary."
Mrs. Hancock had not much liked the reminder that Edith came
portionless to him, and did not want that section of the argument--for
it really was becoming an argument--pursued further. She retreated into
her stronghold of satisfaction again.
"And now about the allowance you will make her?" she asked genially.
"I was proposing to give her two hundred and fifty a year for her
private and personal expenses," he said.
Mrs. Hancock's smile completely faded.
"Yes," she said, "yes."
"I gather from your tone that you are not satisfied?" said he.
There was a short, rather unpleasant pause. Then she assumed an air of
confiding candour.
"I did expect, dear Edward," she said, "that you would make a rather
larger allowance than that for her. It is no use my denying it. And
would you mind not smoking another cigarette just yet? The air is
getting quite thick. Now, just as you have told me quite frankly what
you think of my provision for Edith, so I will tell you. There is
nothing like a perfectly frank talk for getting over difficulties. All
her life dear Edith has had a very handsome allowance from me, with
really nothing to spend it on except a dress or a pair of boots. I
don't deny that I have often stinted myself so as not to stint her,
but what her mother has done, that, I think, her husband should do. I
don't think you consider how many more calls a married woman has on her
purse than a girl living at home--all the running up to London to get
household necessities for you, all the greater expenditure on dress
that a married woman must make beyond what a girl requires. Indeed, I
don't see how Edith can manage it on the sum you mention."
Edward's sympathy with Mrs. Hancock's childlike pleasure evaporated. He
did not believe for a moment that the "very handsome allowance" given
her by her mother amounted to anything like the sum he proposed. He
knew also that the sum he proposed was a very reasonable one.
"If you would tell me how much she has hitherto spent," he said, "I
should have some guide."
This Mrs. Hancock did not in the least wish to do.
"I do not mean to say that dear Edith is extravagant," said she, "but
there is a great deal of difference between extravagance and counting
every penny. There has been no need for her to do that; she is not
accustomed to it."
It was impossible for him to ask her point blank what Edith's allowance
had been; it was impossible also to ask the girl herself. He could
not do such things; they were contrary to his average politeness of
behaviour.
"It is true that when I settled to give Edith this allowance," he said,
"I supposed that you would also give her something. I did not know what
your intentions might be."
Mrs. Hancock brightened.
"But you do now, dear Edward," she said, "and you said you quite
appreciate them. Dear me, what was the expression you used which warmed
my heart so? Oh, yes; you had never heard so many nice plans. I am
going to provide--and I assure you the more it costs me the better
shall I be pleased--for your children when I give Edith, oh, so gaily,
into your care. That shall be my part; you were pleased with that. I
dare say it had never occurred to you, and you thought it very likely,
that I should give Edith a hundred or a hundred and fifty a year, so
that she would have three hundred and fifty or four hundred pounds of
her own a year. Then, indeed, she would be well off; she would be as
comfortable as she had ever been."
Suddenly the intolerable sordidness of the discussion struck him.
Justly he told himself that it was none of his making, but he could at
any rate decline to let it continue. He did not hug himself over his
generosity, for he knew that in his comfortable circumstances it made
no real difference whether he gave Edith four hundred a year or not;
merely he could not possibly go on bargaining and disputing. He got up.
"She shall have four hundred a year," he said.
Mrs. Hancock gave a little cry of delight.
"Exactly what I thought that your generosity would insist on giving
her," she said. "It is nice to find how well we agree. I was sure we
should. And what a delicious sunny morning!"
BOOK TWO