THE LAST OF THE WILDACRES
I wrote to Isabel that I had changed my mind, and that I consented to
have Frank at Restham for his convalescence: but I asked her to make it
quite clear to him that I felt it as impossible now as I did two years
ago to forgive him for having come between my wife and myself. I did
not want to have him at the Manor on false pretences that everything
was going to be smoothed over and made easy for him, as it had been
always before: for even if such condoning of his fault had been
possible on my part (which it was not), I knew him well enough to
realise that it would be extremely bad for him.
The fiat had gone forth from the altar of Restham Church on the
occasion of my marriage with Fay: "Those whom God hath joined together
let no man put asunder." Frank had done his best to put asunder two
Divinely united persons, and had succeeded. Therefore I felt it was
but meet that he should be punished as he deserved. To be allowed to
sin with impunity is the most terrible curse that can fall on the head
of any man: and I had no intention of becoming the instrument whereby
this curse should be directed to the head of Frank Wildacre.
Isabel sent him down to Restham in her car, and it was on a gloomy
autumn day that he arrived. I met him at the door, and at the first
moment was struck afresh by his marvellous likeness to Fay: it seemed
almost as if my dead darling had come back to me, and for a second I
was well-nigh unmanned. But after Jeavons had helped him in and laid
him down on the large Chesterfield by the hall fire, I saw that he was
not as much like Fay as I had at first thought. Both the Wildacres had
always been slight and slender, but it was the slightness and
slenderness of perfect health: now Frank's thinness amounted to
positive emaciation, and his face was pinched and peaked. Moreover, he
had lost that appearance of essential and eternal youth which had been
so marked a characteristic of him and of Fay, and without which he
hardly seemed a Wildacre at all.
But in one thing he was unchanged, and that was in his perfect ease of
manner and absolute unself-consciousness. Although I could see that it
required all his self-control to enable him to respond naturally to my
greeting, as indeed it required all my self-control to give it,
nevertheless he succeeded: and I could not help admiring the pluck and
courage of the boy when I remembered how much lay between his departure
from the Manor and his return to it.
As I recalled what bright and beautiful beings Wildacre and his
children had been at one time, and realised that this broken wreck of a
boy was all that was left of the once brilliant trio, a wave of misery
at the pity of it all swept over my soul. I thought of Wildacre as he
used to be in the old boyish days, and then of Frank and Fay when they
first came to the Rectory after their father's death: and I felt that I
was face to face with the hopeless tragedy of what might have been but
was not, because the folly and sin of man frustrated the Wisdom and
Righteousness of God, as for some hidden reason it has been permitted
to do ever since the forbidden tree was planted in the midst of the
garden.
And that is how the last of the Wildacres came to Restham.
For some days I saw but little of Frank. Ponty took him into her
tender keeping and set about nursing him back to health, only allowing
him to come downstairs and lie on the Chesterfield couch by the hall
fire for a few hours every day. It was astonishing to me to find Ponty
so good to Frank. She had always resented his presence at Restham even
before he had worked any mischief there: yet now she took him into her
charge, and nursed him as devotedly as if she had been his mother.
I remarked upon this change of front one day. "I am surprised you are
so kind to Mr. Wildacre, Ponty, considering how angry you were when
first I asked him to come and live at the Manor. I was afraid you
wouldn't like his coming back in this way."
"Well, you see, Master Reggie, when I was that set against his coming
to the Manor, he was strong and well, and so could stand up to me, as
you might say: but now he is too weak and ill to hurt a fly. There's
lots of folks as you can't stand at any price when they are able to
stick up for themselves: but when they are knocked down you'd do
anything you could to help them to get up again."
"Women are made like that--thank God!" I said.
"I remember there was a girl at Poppenhall who'd had a fine upstanding
young man after her for years and years, and she couldn't so much as
look at him, though all the other girls envied her for having such a
handsome beau: but he lost an arm and got his face scarred in an
accident down a coal-pit, and then she married him at once, and spent
the rest of her life in looking after him and trying to take the place
of his lost arm."
"A woman all over!" I remarked.
"And all the same, Master Reggie, I'm not such a woman as you seem to
think--though I dare say I'm as weak as most of them if I'm taken the
right way: but it was one thing to have Mr. Wildacre here when I felt
it in my bones that he'd come between you and her dear young ladyship,
and quite another to have him here when there is nobody to come
between. It wasn't that I objected to Mr. Wildacre himself--far from
it--any more than I objected to Miss Annabel, whom I'd had from a month
old: but what I did say--and always shall say--is that it's best for
married people to fight things out for themselves, without having any
relations on either side to back them up. And I shall stick to this
till my dying day, even if I was to hang for it!"
I had no intention of hanging my old nurse when she talked in this
strain, but I had every objection to listening to her. So I closed the
conversation by going out of the nursery.
Annabel came over to see Frank a few days after his arrival at Restham:
but Ponty, who was paramount in the sick room, forbade her entrance. I
had already perceived that my sister's despotic sway at the Manor was
gradually being undermined, in secret and insidious ways, by the
redoubtable Ponty, whenever a suitable opportunity presented itself.
"I'm not going to let Miss Annabel see Mr. Wildacre till he is
stronger," my old nurse said: "she's no good in a sick room isn't Miss
Annabel, being far too managing and interfering for invalids. And
after all that poor young gentleman has gone through, it would be
heathen cruelty to upset him still worse. Miss Annabel on the top of
the Germans would be too much for anybody!"
"But Miss Annabel, as you call her, used to be so fond of Mr.
Wildacre," I pleaded.
"Not after he crossed her will and ran off with her ladyship. You
could put on the top of a threepenny-bit all Miss Annabel's love for
them as don't do exactly as she tells them, and have room to spare. If
she is as fond of Mr. Wildacre as she used to be, she can go on with it
as soon as he is strong again, and able to stand her domineering ways;
though there won't be much fondness to go on with, if I know Miss
Annabel. But as long as he's ill, and in my charge, I can't have him
bothered with nobody--not even with Deans and Chapters and all other
dignities of the Church, including Miss Annabel. And so I tell you
straight, Master Reggie."
And Ponty had her way, having found a secret supporter in my humble
self.
As Frank under Ponty's care grew stronger, I saw more of him, and we
gradually got into the way of talking naturally about my lost darling.
He could not bear even yet to say much about his awful experiences
during that terrible time at Louvain; but he repeated the story of how
Fay had given her life to save another's after risking it for some time
in order to tend the sick and wounded. And that made me love her all
the more dearly, and mourn her all the more deeply.
"I don't want to bother you, Reggie," he said one day, when relations
had grown less strained between us; "but I just want you to know how
dreadfully sorry I am that I behaved as I did. Lady Chayford told me
that you couldn't forgive me, and I feel I haven't the right to ask you
to forgive me. But I just want to tell you that I am sorry, and that I
would give my life to undo what I did."
He was lying in his usual place on the couch, and I was sitting in an
easy-chair on the other side of the great fire-place. For a few
seconds I smoked in silence: then I said: "I hope you understand it
isn't that I _won't_ forgive you, Frank, but that _I can't_. I've
tried, and I find it impossible."
Frank nodded his head in the way that reminded me so keenly of Fay. "I
know: Lady Chayford told me. And she also told me how not forgiving me
had made you lose your wonderful gift of healing. It is dreadful to
think that I had power to spoil your life as much as that!"
I smiled sadly at the childishness which made the loss of my healing
powers seem greater than the loss of Fay. And then my smile faded as I
realised that it is only when we speak as little children that we speak
truth; for the loss of my healing powers stood sacramentally for more
than even the loss of my wife. It was the outward and visible sign of
my separation from God.
"I know it's no good saying I'm sorry now, but I must say it," Frank
continued; "and I shall go on feeling it as long as I live. I don't
really see how you could forgive me: I know I couldn't if I were in
your place. In fact, I shouldn't even want to."
"I do want to," I said slowly; "but I can't."
"But although I own I did my best towards the end to induce Fay to come
away with me," continued Frank, in that throaty and rather husky voice
which was so like Fay's that sometimes it thrilled my heart-strings to
breaking-point, "I can't help saying that she oughtn't to have listened
to me. After all, she was bound to you by vows, and I wasn't."
I lifted up my hand in protest. "Hush, hush!" I said sternly: "I
cannot allow you or anybody else to dare to say a word against my wife."
"You are very loyal to her," he replied, after a short pause, in which
I did him the justice to believe that he felt ashamed of himself.
"I loved her," I said. Then I corrected myself: "I mean I love her."
But it was not easy to suppress a Wildacre even when he did feel
ashamed of himself. "Then you have forgiven her," said Frank: "Lady
Chayford told me you hadn't."
There was a few minutes' silence whilst I tried to be honest with Frank
and with myself. Then I said slowly: "I don't believe I really did
forgive her altogether till I heard of her death, though I loved her
all the time more than I loved life itself. But after she died I
gradually realised that there was nothing to forgive. I had been
weighed in her balance, and had been found wanting, and she had no
further use for me: therefore she threw me on one side as worthless. I
was hers to do what she liked with, and she had a perfect right to
retain or to reject me as she thought fit. But, mind you, I didn't see
this at first. I am no better than my neighbours, and for a long time
I was as harsh and bitter and vindictive as any poor beggar of the
so-called 'criminal classes' could have been in the circumstances. It
is only since Fay's death that I have realised that she was justified
in the course she took."
"But she wasn't----" Frank began; but I stopped him.
"No, no! Say what you like about yourself, my boy, but not a word
against Fay. And don't think that because I completely exonerate her I
also exonerate you. For I don't. Whatever lay between her and me, was
sacred to her and me, and no one had any right to intermeddle in it.
Neither had you nor anybody else a right to try to put asunder those
whom God had joined together: and that--unless I do you a grave
injustice--is what you did."
Frank pondered on my words for a short time and then he said: "To a
certain extent, perhaps, I did come between you and Fay, and, as I have
told you, I repent of what I did in dust and ashes. But I never meant
to come between you. On that score my conscience is clear. What I did
do was to persuade her to come away with me: but I never did that until
something or somebody had already come between you and her, and I saw
she was fretting her life out because of it."
I was startled. "Something had already come between us! What in
Heaven's name do you mean?"
"It is rather difficult to explain, Reggie," replied Frank, carefully
weighing his words in his endeavour to be lucid: "yet I think I must
try to do so even if I make a hash of it, because at present you are
absolutely in the dark about the whole affair. As far as I can make
out, you think that Fay went away because she didn't love you enough."
"That certainly was my impression," I said, trying in vain to keep the
pain out of my voice.
"Well, then, you are off on a wrong scent altogether. Fay went away
because she loved you too much."
"Loved me too much! I don't understand." I was dazed by Frank's
incomprehensible burst of confidence.
He did his best to make matters clearer. No Wildacre was ever at a
loss for words. "You see, it was in this way: Fay absolutely adored
you--simply worshipped the ground you walked on. I'm not justifying
her for feeling like this," he added, with the first touch of his old
whimsicalness that he had shown since his return; "I don't deny that it
was very foolish of her to set up any man as a god and worship him like
that: but that is what she did; and it is right for you to know it,
before you judge her for what she did besides."
"I shall never judge her," I interpolated; "God forbid!"
"Well, then, before you understand what she did, if you prefer the
word. It really was Fay's absorbing and unreasoning adoration of you
that upset the apple-cart and did all the mischief. If she'd been more
sensible and discriminating, all this trouble would never have
happened: but she was young and foolish, and madly in love at that.
And she was so wild with jealousy, because she thought you loved your
sister more than you loved her, that she hardly knew what she was
doing."
"I thought she found me old and dull and tiresome," I murmured.
"I know you did, and that really was too idiotic for anything! Why,
she was simply crazy for love of you from the first time she saw you
till the day she ran away; but you footled the whole thing! I'm sorry
to say it, Reggie, but you really did."
Amazement had rendered me humble. I realised that if any one had known
Fay thoroughly, Frank had; and it was as an expert that he spoke.
"Please explain," I said meekly.
Nothing loth, he continued: "Well, if you want the truth, you shall
have it. And of course you must bear in mind that, if Fay hadn't been
so ridiculously in love, silly little things wouldn't have hurt her as
they did, and she wouldn't have gone off her head with jealousy of Miss
Kingsnorth. I know men like to feel that their wives are very much in
love with them: but the wives who aren't so much in love are really the
best for everyday wear. They are more tolerant and much less exacting."
Frank was a wiser man than he had been when he left Restham. I noted
that. And for the first time a tiny doubt crept into my mind as to
whether even then he had been the most unwise man there.
"In the first place," he went on, "Fay was most frightfully upset at
your asking Miss Kingsnorth to stay on living with you after you were
married. That started the feeling."
"I thought that as Fay was still such a child it would be a comfort to
her to have a kind and loving woman to turn to and lean upon," I
explained.
"Kind and loving fiddlesticks!" retorted Frank, by no means
respectfully; but I was so glad to see him once more a little like his
old self that I rejoiced in rather than resented his impertinence. In
spite of my underlying enmity against him, I could not hide it from
myself that Frank had attracted and fascinated me since his return as
he had never attracted and fascinated me before: and this in spite of
the fact that his good looks were faded, and his brilliance was
quenched. "When girls are first married they don't want kind and
loving women to lean upon: they want to lean upon the husbands whose
business it is to be leant upon. And they hate anybody who comes
between them and their husbands."
"But remember, Frank, I asked you to live with us as well as Annabel.
It isn't as if I had asked my sister, and left my wife's brother out."
I appeared to be exculpating myself to Frank; but in reality I was
exculpating myself to myself.
"But that only made the matter worse. Fay didn't want me any more than
she wanted Miss Kingsnorth to come poking my nose in between you and
her. She wanted you to herself."
"I'm afraid that she and Annabel did not get on together as well as I
had hoped," I said.
Frank shrugged his thin shoulders. "They'd have got on all right
together in their proper places. Fay was quite fond of Miss Kingsnorth
as a sister-in-law: but when she found Miss Kingsnorth put in place of
her husband, why of course she kicked. Anybody would."
"Annabel wasn't put in place of her husband," I argued.
"Yes, she was; and of course the thing didn't work. You seemed to have
an idea that Fay's love was transferable, like a ticket for a concert,
and that if you didn't use it your sister could. But it's no good
trying to transfer other people's affections any more than it's any use
trying to change other people's religions. You can take the old one
away, but you can't give them a new one in its place."
"But I never attempted to do such a ridiculous thing," I argued.
But Frank was firm. "Yes, you did. Or, at any rate, Fay thought you
did, which comes to the same thing as far as she was concerned, and
that was what made her so mad. For instance, when she particularly
asked you to give her a Prayer Book with her name written in it by you,
so that religion and you might all get mixed up together in her mind,
and you be part of religion and religion part of you, what did you do?
You got Miss Kingsnorth to give her the Prayer Book, so that Miss
Kingsnorth should become part of her religion instead of you! Now it
really was absurd to expect Miss Kingsnorth--I beg her pardon, I mean
Mrs. Blathwayte--to become part of anybody's religion, except of old
Blathwayte's--I mean the Dean's. I suppose she's part of his religion
now, right enough. But she wasn't the kind of person to be ever part
of Fay's religion, and I should have thought you could have seen that
for yourself."
"Did Fay tell you that about the Prayer Book?" I asked, with a stab of
anguish. It was incomprehensible to me how my darling could have
discussed, even with her brother, things which lay entirely between her
and me. I could never have talked to Annabel about matters which
concerned Fay and myself alone! I should have regarded them as too
sacred. But that is where men and women are so different from each
other, and where women are so much less reserved than men. I believe
that good wives tell more about their husbands than bad husbands ever
tell about their wives.
But good Heavens, how it hurt!
"Yes," replied Frank, quite unconscious of my pain, "she told me
everything. And it was only after she had told me everything, and I
saw how miserable you were making her by setting Miss Kingsnorth above
and before her that I began to urge her to run away and begin life over
again. Of course I see now it was wicked of me to do so, although I
was so furious with you for thinking more of your sister than of your
wife; and besides being wicked, it was useless. Fay loved you so much
that being away from you didn't seem to mend matters at all, but only
to make them worse. But I thought that when once she'd got away from
you and your treatment of her, she'd begin to forget you, and be happy
again as she was before she and you had ever met. But unfortunately I
was wrong."
I groaned. I couldn't help it.
"Then another time," Frank went on, the Wildacres never having been
denied freedom of utterance, "she was almost mad with joy because you
came all the way from Restham to Liverpool Street to meet her on her
way home from Bythesea. It looked as if you really were as much in
love with her as she was with you. And then you went and spoilt it all
by saying that you had come to please your sister. Now, I ask you,
what wife could stand that? I'm sure you wouldn't have liked to feel
that Fay married you in order to please me: and in the same way she
didn't like to feel that you had married her to please Mrs. Blathwayte."
"But it was absurd of her to feel like that! She must have known that
I worshipped the very ground she walked on, and that the only fly in my
ointment was that I felt I was too old and dull to make her happy."
Frank still had me on the hip. "Then that was equally absurd of you!
Fay wasn't the only absurd one apparently. You see all the time that
you were inventing trouble by thinking that you were too old and dull
for her, she was inventing trouble by thinking that she was too young
and silly for you, and that you were comparing her with your sister,
and finding her inferior. And you know how mad a woman gets when she
thinks her husband likes anybody else more than he likes her. There's
nothing she wouldn't do to punish him and hurt herself at the same
time! And that is how Fay got. She was so wild at finding you thought
more of Miss Kingsnorth than you did of her, that she didn't care what
happened. She thought you despised her, and that simply finished her
off altogether. And when she was unhappy she tried to drown her
unhappiness in theatricals and fallals of that kind, which didn't
really do her the slightest good: but when husbands fail, women set up
all sorts of ridiculous scarecrows in their place. It's the way
they're made, I suppose. And when the theatricals turned out to be no
good in helping her to forget, she took to travelling, and that was how
we came to be in Belgium when the war broke out. But travelling didn't
really help her either, though she had an idea that the old cities of
Flanders might be rather soothing. But as things panned out they were
quite the reverse, and we'd far better have remained in Australia!"
"It is all incredible to me," I said.
But Frank had no mercy. "The long and the short of it is you were so
busy worrying yourself about the relations between Fay and your sister,
that you let the relations between Fay and yourself slide. And that
was really the only thing that mattered. Then Fay got it into her head
that you regretted having married her when you compared her with Miss
Kingsnorth and saw how young and silly she was in comparison: and so
she decided to leave you and your sister once more alone together, as
she believed that that was what really could make you happy. And even
now I can't help admitting that Miss Kingsnorth is far more your sort
than Fay was."
I was silent for a time. The solid earth seemed slipping away beneath
my feet. Then I said: "Do you mean to tell me, on your word of honour,
that to the best of your belief neither you nor Annabel tried to come
between my wife and me?"
Without hesitation the answer came: "Certainly I do. I am positive
that I never did, and in my own mind I am equally certain that Mrs.
Blathwayte never did either. But where I was to blame was that when I
saw matters had gone wrong, I tried to set them right in my own way:
and I think probably that is what Mrs. Blathwayte tried to do also.
But there was some excuse for us. The happiness of her brother and my
sister mattered more to us than anything else in the world. Of course
I see now that you asked Miss Kingsnorth here on Fay's account, though
it was a ridiculous thing to do: but I own now you did it from a right
motive. But Fay believed you did it because you thought you would find
her too young and silly to be enough for you by herself, and so you
wanted your sister and me to relieve the tedium, and make things more
cheerful for you. That was Fay's idea, and I agreed with her. And
naturally I resented your putting your sister before mine. Any fellow
would."
"I never meant to."
"But you did. And it is for what we do that we are punished--not for
what we meant to do. It is a way of yours to mix up essentials with
non-essentials, and I expect always will be: I suppose you are made
like that, and can't help it. But if you'd only realised that the
important thing was not how Fay and Miss Kingsnorth got on together,
but how Fay and you got on together, all this misery would never have
happened."
I felt I could bear no more: so I went out alone into the autumn dusk
to commune with my own soul on the revelations which Frank had
vouchsafed to me. And when we met again, we did not refer to it, but
talked only on indifferent things. For the boy not only knew when to
speak: with a wisdom beyond his years he knew also when to be silent.
For several days I continued to commune with my own soul on the matters
which Frank had revealed to me. And as I did so the conviction
gradually took hold of me that I had been right in my ruthless decision
that as long as I lived I could never forgive the man who had come
between my wife and me: who had left my house unto me desolate, and had
driven forth my darling to her death.
And then wherever I went I heard nothing but one awful message: the
dying leaves whispered it, the dropping rain repeated it, and the
autumn winds thundered it in my ears: the message which long ago struck
terror and remorse to the heart of a great King struck terror and
remorse also to mine. Wherever I went and whatever I did I kept
hearing the appalling word of condemnation: "Thou art the man."