A VINDICATION OF CONSCIENCE
It was a dull chilly afternoon in March. Christine Fanshaw huddled her
slight little figure--she looked as if the cold would cut right through
her--over a blazing fire in her boudoir. She held a screen between the
flames and her face, and turned her eyes on Anna Selford, who was paying
her a call. Anna was a plump dark girl, by no means pretty, but with a
shrewd look about her and an air of self-confidence rather too assured
for her years; she was dressed in a would-be artistic fashion, not well
suited to her natural style.
"Awfully sad, isn't it?" she was saying. "But mamma says Mrs. Raymore is
splendid about it. Mr. Raymore was quite upset, and was no good at all
at first. It was Mrs. Raymore who went and got Charley away from the
woman, and hushed up all the row about the money--oh, he had taken some
from the office: he was in a solicitor's office, you know--and arranged
for him to be sent out to Buenos Ayres--did the whole thing in fact.
She's quite heart-broken about it, mamma says, but quite firm and brave
too. How awful to have your son turn out like that! He was only
nineteen, and Mrs. Raymore simply worshipped him."
"He used to be a very pretty little boy. A little boy! And now!"
Christine plucked idly at the fringes of her hand-screen.
"And mamma says the woman was thirty, and not very good-looking either!"
"What a lot you know, Anna! You're hardly seventeen, are you? And
Suzette Bligh's twenty-seven! But she's a baby compared to you."
"Oh, mamma always tells me things--or else I hear her and papa talking
about them. When I'm washing the dogs, they forget I'm there, especially
if they're squabbling at all. And I keep my ears open."
"Yes, I think you do."
"But generally mamma tells me. She always must talk to somebody, you
see. When I was little she used to tell me things, and then forget it
and box my ears for knowing them!"
Anna spoke without rancour; rather with a sort of quiet amusement, as
though she had given much study to her mother's peculiarities and found
permanent diversion in them.
"Poor Kate Raymore! So they're in trouble too!"
"Charley was awfully sorry; and they hope he'll come back some day, if
he behaves well out there."
"Poor Kate Raymore! Well, there's trouble everywhere, isn't there,
Anna?" She shivered and drew yet a little nearer the fire. "How are
things at home with you?"
"Just as usual; nothing ever happens with us."
"It might be much worse than that."
"I suppose it might. It's only just rather dull; and I suppose I shall
have to endure it for a long while. You see, I'm not very likely to get
married, Mrs. Fanshaw. No men ever come to our house--they can't stand
it. Besides I'm not pretty."
"Oh, come and meet men here; and never mind not being pretty; I could
dress you to look quite smart. That's it! You should go in for
smartness, not prettiness. I really believe it pays better nowadays. Get
Janet--get your mother to give you an allowance, and we'll put our heads
together over it."
"That's awfully kind of you, Mrs. Fanshaw."
"Oh, I like dressing people; and I do think girls ought to have their
chances. But in those things she makes you wear--oh, my dear Anna!"
"Yes, I know. I'll ask her. And----"
Anna hesitated, then rose, and came over to Christine. Suddenly she
kissed her.
"It's nothing, my dear," said Christine, amused but annoyed; she was
very ready to help Anna, but did not care in the least for being kissed
by her.
Anna sat down again, and there ensued a long pause.
"And as for not marrying," Christine resumed, "it's six of one and half
a dozen of the other, I think. Oh, I should have hated to be an old
maid; but still one would have avoided so much worry. Look at these poor
Raymores! They've always got on so well too, up to now!"
She laid down her screen and pulled up her dress, to let the warmth get
to her ankles. Anna looked at her dainty face lit up by the glow.
"I wish I was like you, Mrs. Fanshaw!"
Christine did not refuse the compliment; she only denied the value of
the possession which won it for her.
"Much good it's done me, my dear!" she sighed. "But people who've not
got looks never will believe how little good they are. Oh, I didn't mean
to be rude, Anna! I believe in you, you know. I can do something with
you. Only----" She stopped, frowning a little and looking vaguely
unhappy. "Well," she resumed, "if it turns out that I can't take you
under my wing, we must get hold of Sibylla. She's always ready to do
things for people--and they've got lots of money, anyhow."
Anna's curiosity was turned in the direction of Sibylla.
"What was the truth about Mrs. Imason, Mrs. Fanshaw?"
"I made sure you'd know that too!" smiled Christine. "And if you don't,
I suppose I oughtn't to tell you."
"I know she--she had an accident."
"Oh, well, everybody knows. Yes, she had, and they thought it was worse
than it was. The country doctor down at Milldean made a mistake--took
too serious a view, you know. And--and there was a lot of bother. But
the London man said it would be all right, and so it turned out. The
baby came all right, and it's a splendid boy."
"It all ended all right, then?"
Christine looked a little doubtful.
"The boy's all right, and Sibylla's quite well," she answered.
"But mamma said Mrs. Raymore hinted----"
"Well, Sibylla wouldn't believe the London man, you see. She thought
that he--that he'd been persuaded to say she needn't have the operation
she wanted to have, and that they meant to---- Well, really, Anna, I
can't go into details. It's quite medical, my dear, and I can't express
myself discreetly. Anyhow Sibylla made a grievance of it, you know, and
relations were a little strained, I think."
"Oh, well, I suppose that's over now, since everything's gone right,
Mrs. Fanshaw?"
"It ought to be," said Christine, shy of asserting the positive fact.
"But very often fusses about nothing do just as much harm as fusses
about something big. It's the way one looks at them."
"Yes, I ought to know that, living in our house," remarked Anna Selford.
"You do give your parents away so!" Christine complained, with a smile
in which pity was mingled.
The pity, however, was not for the betrayed, but for the traitor. Anna's
premature knowingness and the suggestion of hardness it carried with it
were the result of a reaction against the atmosphere of her home,
against the half-real gush and the spasmodic emotionality of the family
circle. In this revolt truth asserted itself, but sweetness suffered,
and freshness lost its bloom. Christine was sorry when that sort of
thing happened to young girls. But there it was. Anna was not the
_ingénue_, and it was no good treating her as if she were.
"I'm really half glad you don't live in this house. I'm sure John and I
couldn't bear the scrutiny--not just now, anyhow." She answered Anna's
questioning eyes by going on: "Oh, it's terrible, my dear. We've no
money--now, really, don't repeat that! And John's full of business
worries. It's positively so bad that I have to try to be amiable about
it!"
"I'm so sorry, and I really won't talk about it, Mrs. Fanshaw."
"No, don't, my dear--not till we're in the bankruptcy court. Then
everybody'll know. And I daresay we shall have some money again; at
least bankrupts seem to have plenty generally."
"Then why don't you?"
"Anna! John would cut his throat first. Oh, I really believe he would!
You've no idea what a man like him thinks of his business and of his
firm's credit. It's like--well, it's like what we women ought to think
(again Christine avoided asserting the actual fact) about our
reputations, you know. So you may imagine the state of things. The best
pair is being sold at Tattersall's this very day. That's why I'm
indoors--cabs are so cold and the other pair will have to go out at
night."
Shiveringly she nestled to the fire again.
"I'm so awfully sorry, Mrs. Fanshaw! It'll all come right, won't it?"
"It generally does; but I don't know. And John says I've always been so
extravagant--and I suppose I have. Well, I thought it was just that John
was stingy. He had a splendid business, you know." She paused and smiled
at Anna. "So now you know all of everybody's troubles," she ended.
Christine was not in the habit of giving praise beyond measure or
without reservation either to herself or to other people, and she had
done no more than justice to her present effort to be amiable. Money was
the old cause of quarrel between her husband and herself; the
alternation of fat and lean years had kept it always alive and
intermittently active. But hitherto, while the fat seasons had meant
affluence, the lean had never fallen short of plenty or of solvency. It
had been a question of more or less lavish expenditure; that was all.
Christine was afraid there was more now. Her husband was worried as he
had never been before; he had dropped hints of speculations gone wrong
and of heavy commitments; and Christine, a constant glancer at City
articles and an occasional dabbler in stocks, had read that there was a
crisis in the market in which he mainly dealt. Things were black; she
knew it almost as well as he. Both showed courage, and the seriousness
of the matter forbade mere bickering. Nor was either invulnerable enough
to open the battle. Her extravagance exposed her to attack; he was
conscious of hazardous speculations which had wantonly undermined the
standing, and now threatened the credit, of a firm once strong and of
excellent repute. Each needed at once to give and to receive charity.
Thus from the impending trouble they had become better friends, and
their underlying comradeship had more openly asserted itself. This
amount of good there was in it, Christine thought to herself; and John,
in his blunt fashion, had actually said as much to her.
"We're in the same boat, and we must both pull at our oars, old girl,"
he said, and Christine was glad he should say it, although she hated
being called "old girl." John had a tendency towards plebeian
endearments, she thought.
So the best pair went to Tattersall's, and some of the diamonds to a
corresponding establishment in the jewellery line; and various other
things were done or attempted with the view of letting free a few
thousand pounds and of diminishing expenditure in the future. But John
Fanshaw's brow grew no clearer. About these sacrifices there hung the
air of doing what was right and proper--what, given the worst happening,
would commend itself to the feelings of the creditors and the Official
Receiver--rather than of achieving anything of real service. Christine
guessed that the speculations must have been on a very large scale and
the commitments very heavy. Could it be that ruin--real ruin--was in
front of them? She could hardly realise that--either its coming or what
life would be after it had come. And in her heart--here too she had said
no more than truth--she did doubt whether John would stay in the world
to see. Well, what could she do? She had three hundred a year of her own
tied up, and (since they had no children) to go back to her people on
her death. If the ruin came, she could find crusts for herself and
John--if John were there. These were the thoughts which had kept
intruding into her mind as she talked to Anna Selford and shivered now
and then over the blazing fire. Yet she could face them better than
John, thanks to a touch of fatalism in her nature. She would think of no
violent step to avoid what she feared. Hating it, she would sit
shivering by the fire, and wait for it all the same. She knew this of
herself, and therefore was even more sorry for John than on her own
account. This state of mind made the amiability easier. It also awoke
her conscience from a long sleep with regard to the way in which she had
treated John in the past. Against this, however, she struggled not only
fiercely, but with a conviction of justice. Here conscience was
overdoing its part, and passing from scrupulousness to morbidity. The
thing in question, the thing conscience had awoken about, belonged to
the far past; it had been finished off and written off, enjoyed and
deplored, brooded over and violently banished from thought, ever so long
ago. Hardly anybody knew about it; it was utterly over. None the less,
the obstinate irrational digs which conscience--awake again--gave her
about it increased as John's face grew gloomier.
Late in the afternoon John Fanshaw came to his wife's room for a cup of
tea.
"The pair went for only two hundred and forty-five," he said; "I gave
four hundred for them six months ago. Ah, well, a forced sale, you
know!"
"It doesn't make much difference, does it?" she asked.
"No," he said, absently stirring his tea. "Not much, Christine."
She sat very quiet by the fire watching him; her screen was in her hand
again.
"It's no use, we must face it," he broke out suddenly. "Everything's
gone against me again this week. I had a moral certainty; but--well,
that isn't a certainty. And----"
He took a great gulp of tea.
A faint spot of colour came on Christine's cheek.
"What does it mean?" she asked.
"I've been to see Grantley Imason to-day. He behaved uncommonly well.
The bank can't do anything more for me, but as a private friend----"
"Had you to ask him for money, John?"
"Well, friends often lend one another money, don't they? I don't see
anything awful in that. I daren't go to the money-lenders--I'm afraid
they'll sell the secret."
"I daresay there's nothing wrong in it. I don't know about such things.
Go on."
"He met me very straight; and I met him straight too. I told him the
whole position. I said, 'The business is a good one, but I've got into a
hole. Once I get out of that, the business is there. On steady lines (I
wish to God I'd kept on them!) it's worth from eight to ten thousand a
year. I'll pay you back three thousand a year, and five per cent. on all
capital still owing.' I think he liked the way I put it, Christine. He
asked if he could take my word for it, and I said he could; and he said
that on the faith of that he'd let me have fifteen thousand. I call that
handsome."
"Grantley always likes to do the handsome thing." She looked at him
before she put her question. "And--and is that enough?"
He was ashamed, it was easy to see that--ashamed to show her how deep he
was in the bog, how reckless he had been. He finished his tea, and
pottered about, cutting and lighting a cigar, before he answered.
"I suppose it's not enough?" said Christine.
"It's no use unless I get some more. I don't know where else to turn,
and I must raise thirty thousand in a fortnight--by next settling
day--or it's all up. I shall be hammered, Christine."
"If we sold up absolutely everything----?"
"For God's sake no! That would ruin our credit; and then it wouldn't be
thirty thousand we should want, but--oh, I don't know! Perhaps a
hundred! We've sold enough already; there's nothing more we can do on
the quiet."
He sat down opposite to her, and stared gloomily at the fire. Christine
rather wondered that he did not turn to abuse of himself for having got
into the bog, but she supposed that the speculative temper, which
acknowledges only bad luck and never bad judgment, saved him from that.
He looked at her covertly once or twice; she saw, but pretended not to,
and waited to hear what was in his mind: something, clearly, was there.
"No, I don't know where to turn--and I shall be hammered. After thirty
years! and my father forty years before me! I never though of its coming
to this." After a long pause he added: "I want another fifteen thousand,
and I don't know where to turn." He smoked hard for a minute, then flung
his cigar peevishly into the fire.
"I do wish I could help you, John!" she sighed.
"I'm afraid you can't, old lady." Again he hesitated. "Unless----" He
broke off again.
Christine had some difficulty in keeping her nerves under control. When
he spoke again it was abruptly, as though with a wrench.
"I say, do you ever see Caylesham now?"
A very slight, almost imperceptible, start ran over her.
"Lord Caylesham! Oh, I meet him about sometimes. He's at the Raymores'
now and then--and at other places of course."
"He never comes here now, does he?"
"Very seldom: to a party now and then." She answered without apparent
embarrassment, but her eyes were very sharply on the watch; she was on
guard against the next blow.
"He was a good chap, and very fond of us. Lord, we had some fine old
times with Caylesham!" He rose now and stood with his back to the fire.
"He must be devilish rich since he came into the property."
He looked at her inquiringly. She said nothing.
"He's a good chap too. I don't think he'd let a friend go to the wall.
What do you think? He was as much your friend as mine, you know."
"You'd ask him, John? Oh, I shouldn't do that!"
"Why not? He's got plenty."
"We see so little of him now; and it's such a lot to ask."
"It's not such a lot to him; and it's only accidental that we haven't
met lately." He looked at her angrily. "You don't realise what the devil
of a mess we're in. We've no choice, I tell you, but to get it from
somewhere; and there's nobody else I know to ask. Why, he'll get his
money back again, Christine."
Her screen was before her face now, so that he saw no more than her
brow.
"I want you to go and ask him, Christine. That's what you can do for me.
You said you wanted to help. Well, go and ask Caylesham to lend me the
money."
"I can't do that, John."
"Why not? Why can't you?"
"I should hate your asking him, and I simply couldn't ask him myself."
"Why do you hate my asking him? You said nothing against my asking
Grantley, and we haven't known him any better."
She had no answer to that ready. The thrust was awkward.
"Anyhow I couldn't ask him--I really couldn't. Don't press me to do
that. If you must ask him, do it yourself. Why should I do it?"
"Why, because he's more likely to give it to you."
"But that's--that's so unfair. To send a woman because it's harder to
refuse her! Oh, that isn't fair, John!"
"Fair! Good heavens, can't you understand how we're situated? It's ruin
if we don't get it--and I'm damned if I'll live to see it! There!"
She saw his passion; his words confirmed her secret fear. She saw, too,
how in the stress of danger he would not stand on scruples or be baulked
by questions of taste or of social propriety. He saw possible salvation,
and jumped at any path to it; and the responsibility of refusing to
tread the path he put on her, with all it might mean.
"If I went and he said 'No,' you couldn't go afterwards. But you can go
first, and you must go."
Christine raised her head and shook it.
"I can't go," she said.
"Why not? You're infernally odd about it! Why can't you go? Is it
anything about Caylesham in particular?"
"No, no, nothing--nothing like that; but I--I hate to go."
"You must do it for me. I don't understand why you hate it so much as
all that."
He was regarding her with an air at once angry and inquisitive. She
dared hide her face no longer. She had to look at him calmly and
steadily--with distress perhaps, but at all costs without fear or
confusion.
"My good name depends on it, and all we have in the world; and--by God,
yes!--my life too, if you like!" he exclaimed in rising passion. "You
shall go! No, no! I don't mean that--I don't want to be rough! But, for
heaven's sake--if you've ever cared about me, old woman--for heaven's
sake, go!"
She hesitated still, and at this his passing touch of tenderness
vanished; but it had moved her, and it worked with the fear that was on
her.
"If you've a special reason, tell it me," he urged impatiently: "a
special reason against asking Caylesham; somebody we must ask."
"I have no special reason against asking Lord Caylesham," she answered
steadily.
"Then you'll go?"
A last struggle kept her silent a moment. Then she answered in a low
voice:
"Yes, I'll go."
"There's a brave little woman!" he cried delightedly, and bent down as
if he would kiss her; but she had slipped her screen up nearly to her
eyes again, and seemed so unconscious of his purpose that he abandoned
it. His spirits rose in a moment, as his sanguine mind, catching hold of
the bare chance, twisted it into a good chance--almost into a certainty.
"Gad, I believe he'll give it you! You'll put it in such a fetching way.
Oh, his money's safe enough, of course! But--well, you'll make him see
that better than I could. He liked you so much, you know. By Jove, I'm
sure he'll do it for you, you know!"
Christine's pain-stricken eyes alone were visible above the screen.
Underneath it her lips were bent in an involuntary smile of most mocking
bitterness. Conscience had not been at her without a purpose. At her
husband's bidding she must go and ask Caylesham for money. She bowed to
conscience now.