They were married abroad as it happened. Jim had exchanged; but his
regiment, before going on to India, had been appointed to the garrison
at Malta. There the family had joined him for the winter.
Fate had spared Sir Harry his last disappointment in life. Jim had not
told him about Eleanor. There was no hurry. It could be done at any
time. And he had died, after a few days illness, early in the spring.
He had been busy, unknown to the others, fixing up with his sister Mary
for Eleanor to come out in London during the season, and had built
great hopes upon the result. Thus, so far as that matter was concerned,
the poor old gentleman had died happy. Eleanor and her mother stopped
on at a little place up in the hills. Anthony came out at the end of
the summer; and they had been married in the English church. It was
arranged that Lady Coomber should remain at Malta till Jim left for
India; it might be the next year or the year after. Then she would
come back to England and live with them at The Abbey. Anthony had not
hoped to be able to take Eleanor back to The Abbey, but the summer
had brought him unusual good fortune. As a matter of fact, everything
seemed to be prospering with him just now. He was getting nervous about
it, wondering how long it would last. He was glad that he had been able
to pay Jim a good price for the place; beyond that, when everything was
cleared up and Lady Coomber’s annuity provided for, there would not be
much left.
Mrs. Strong’nth’arm would not come to live at The Abbey, though Eleanor
was anxious that she should and tried to persuade her. Whether she
thought Eleanor did not really want her or whether the reasons she gave
him were genuine Anthony could not be sure.
“I should be wandering, without knowing it, into the kitchen,” she
explained; “or be jumping up suddenly to answer a bell. Or maybe,”
she added with a smile, “I’d be slipping out of the back door of an
evening to the little gate behind the stables, and thinking I saw
your father under the shadow of the elms, where he used to be always
waiting for me. I’ll be happier in the old square. There are no ghosts
there--leastways, not for my eyes to see.”
Besides, there was his aunt to be considered. He had thought that she
might find a home with one or another of her chapel friends. But Mrs.
Newt had fallen away from grace, as it was termed, and was no longer
in touch with her former circle. She had given back her fine tombstone
to old Batson the stonemason who, not knowing what else to do with it,
had used it to replace a broken doorstep leading to his office. She had
come to picture her safe arrival at the gates of Endless Bliss with
less complacency. She no longer felt sure of her welcome.
“Don’t see what I’ve done to deserve it,” she said. “All that I’ve ever
tried to do has been to make myself comfortable in this world and to
take good care, as I thought, to be on the right road for the next. I
used to think it all depended upon faith: that all you had to do was to
believe. But your poor uncle used to say it sounded a bit too cheap to
be true. And if he was right and the Lord demands works, guess I’ll cut
a poor figure.”
The idea had come to her to replace the optimism of her discarded
tombstone by a simple statement of facts with underneath: “Lord be
merciful to me, a sinner.” But the head sexton, on being consulted as a
friend, had objected to the quotation as one calculated to let down the
tone of the cemetery, and had urged something less committal.
So the two old ladies remained at Bruton Square, keeping for themselves
the basement and the three small rooms at the top. Anthony added an
extra kitchen and let the rest of the house to a Mr. Arnold Landripp,
an architect. He had for some years been occupying the two large
schoolrooms as an office. He was a widower. His daughter, who had been
at school in the south of England and afterwards at University College,
had now joined him. She was aged about twenty, and was said to be a
“high-brow.” The term was just coming into use. She was a tall, pale
girl with coal black eyes. She wore her hair brushed back from her
forehead and, in secret, smoked cigarettes, it was rumoured.
Betty and her father lived practically abroad. They had taken a flat in
Florence and had let The Priory furnished to a cousin of Mr. Mowbray
who owned the big steel works at Shawley, half-way up the valley.
Anthony had been generous over the sharing of profits; and Mr. Mowbray
had expressed himself as more than satisfied.
“I was running the business on to the rocks,” he confessed. “There
wouldn’t have been much left for Betty. As it is, I shall die with an
easy mind, thanks to you.”
He held out his hand. He and Anthony had been having a general talk
in the great room with its three domed windows that had been Mr.
Mowbray’s private office and was now Anthony’s. He and Betty would be
leaving early the next morning on their return to Italy. He hesitated a
moment, still holding Anthony’s hand, and then spoke again.
“I thought at one time,” he said, “that it might have been a closer
relationship than that of mere partners. But she’s a strange girl. I
don’t expect she ever will marry. I fancy I frightened her off it.” He
laughed. “She knew that I loved her mother with as great a love as any
woman could hope for. But it didn’t save me from making her life one of
sorrow.
“Do you know what’s wrong with the Apostles Creed?” he said. “They’ve
left out the devil. Don’t you make the mistake, my lad, of not
believing in him. He doesn’t want us to believe in him. He wants us to
believe that he is dead, that he never lived, that he’s just an old
wives’ tale. We talk about the still small voice of God. Yes, if we
listen very hard and if it’s all quiet about us, we can hear it. What
about the insistent tireless voice of the other one who whispers to
us day and night, sits beside us at table, creeps with us into bed?
David made a mistake; he should have said, ‘The fear of the devil is
the beginning of wisdom.’ It began in the Garden of Eden. If the Lord
only hadn’t forgot the serpent! It has been the trouble of all the
reformers. They might have accomplished something: if they hadn’t
forgotten the devil. It’s the trouble of every youngster, thinking he
sees his life before him; they all forget the devil.”
Anthony laughed.
“What line of tactics do you suggest for overcoming him?” he asked.
“Haven’t myself had sufficient success to justify my giving advice,”
answered Mr. Mowbray. “All I can warn you is that he takes many shapes.
Sometimes he dresses himself up as a dear old lady and calls himself
Mother Nature. Sometimes he wears a shiny hat and claims to be nothing
more than a plain man of business. Sometimes he comes clothed in glory
and calls himself Love.”
The old gentleman reached for his hat.
“Didn’t expect to find me among the prophets, did you?” he added with a
smile.
He was growing feeble, and Anthony walked back with him to The Priory.
They passed St. Aldys churchyard on their way.
“I’ll just look in,” said Mr. Mowbray, “and say good-bye. I always like
to before I go away.”
Mr. Mowbray had bought many years ago the last three vacant graves in
the churchyard. His wife lay in the centre one and Edward to the right
of her.
They stood there for a while in silence.
“I suppose it’s only my fancy,” said Mr. Mowbray, “but you seem to me
to grow more like Ted every year. I don’t mean in appearance, though
even there I often see a look in your eyes that reminds me of him. But
in other ways. Sometimes I could almost think it was he speaking.”
“I have changed,” said Anthony. “I feel it myself. His death made a
great void in my life. I felt that I had been left with a wound that
would never heal. And then one day the thought came to me--it can
hardly be called a thought. I heard his very voice speaking to me,
with just that little note of irritation in it that always came to him
when he was arguing and got excited. ‘I am not dead,’ he said. ‘How
foolishly you are talking. How can I be dead while you are thinking of
me--while you still love me and are wanting me. Who wants the dead? It
is because you know I live, and that I love you, and always shall, that
you want me. I am not dead. I am with you.’”
“Yes,” said Mowbray after a little pause, “he loved you very dearly. I
was puzzled at first because I thought you so opposite to one another.
But now I know that it was my mistake.”
They did not talk during the short remainder of their walk. At the gate
of The Priory the old gentleman stopped and turned.
“Kiss me, Anthony,” he said, “there’s nobody about.”
Anthony did so. It seemed quite natural somehow. He watched Mr. Mowbray
pass up the flagged causeway to the door and then went back to his work.
Betty had been quite frank with him, or so he had thought.
“It’s fortunate we didn’t marry,” she said. “What a muddle it would
have ended in--or else a tragedy. Do you remember that talk we had one
evening?”
“Yes,” he answered. “You said that if you ever married it would be a
man who would ‘like’ you--think of you as a friend, a comrade.”
“I know,” she laughed. “To be candid, I had you in my mind at the
moment. I thought that you would always be so sane--the sort of husband
one could rely upon never to kick over the traces. Curious how little
we know one another.”
“Would you really have been satisfied?” he asked, “when it came to the
point. Would not you have demanded love as your right?”
“I don’t think so,” she answered, musing. “I suppose the explanation
is that a woman’s love is maternal rather than sexual. It is the home
she is thinking of more than the lover. Of course, I don’t mean in
every case. There are women for whom their exists one particular He, or
no other. But I fancy they are rare.”
“I wonder sometimes,” he said, “what would have happened to me if I’d
never met her. I suppose I should have gone on being quite happy and
contented.”
“There are finer things than happiness,” she answered.
A child was born to them late in the year. Anthony had never seen
a baby before, not at close quarters. In his secret heart, he was
disappointed that it was not more beautiful. But as the days went by it
seemed to him that this defect was passing away. He judged it to be a
very serious baby. It had large round serious eyes. Even its smile was
thoughtful. They called it John Anthony.
The elder Mrs. Strong’nth’arm resented the carriage being sent down
for her. She said she wasn’t so old that she could not walk a few
miles to see her own grandson. Both she and Eleanor agreed that he
was going to be like Anthony. His odd ways, it was, that so strongly
reminded the elder Mrs. Strong’nth’arm of his father at the same age.
They came together over John Anthony, the elder and the younger Mrs.
Strong’nth’arm.
“It’s her artfulness,” had argued the elder Mrs. Strong’nth’arm to
herself at first; “pretending to want my advice and hanging upon my
words; while all the time, I reckon, she’s laughing at me.”
But the next day or the day after she would come again to answer
delightedly the hundred questions put to her--to advise, discuss, to
gossip and to laugh--to remember on her way home that she had kissed
the girl, promising to come again soon.
Returning late one afternoon she met Anthony on the moor.
“I’ve left her going to sleep,” she said. “Don’t disturb her. She
doesn’t rest herself sufficiently. I’ve been talking to her about it.
“I’m getting to like her,” she confessed shamefacedly. “She isn’t as
bad as I thought her.”
He laughed, putting an arm about her.
“You’ll end by loving her,” he said. “You won’t be able to help it.”
“It’ll depend upon you, lad,” she answered. “So long as your good is
her good I shall be content.”
She kissed him good night for it was growing dusk. Neither he nor
Eleanor had ever been able to persuade her to stay the night. With the
nursery, which had been the former Lady Coomber’s dressing-room, she
was familiar, having been one of the housemaids. But the big rooms on
the ground floor overawed her. She never would enter by the great door,
but always by a small side entrance leading to the house-keeper’s room.
Eleanor had given instructions that it should always be left open.
He walked on slowly after he had left his mother. There, where the sun
was sinking behind the distant elms, she lay sleeping. At the bend
of the road was the old white thorn that had witnessed their first
kiss. Reaching it he looked round stealthily and, seeing no one, flung
himself upon the ground and, stretching out his arms, pressed his lips
to the sweet-smelling earth.
He laughed as he rose to his feet. These lovers’ rhapsodies he had
once thought idle nonsense! They were true. Going through fire and
water--dying for her, worshipping the ground she trod on. This dear
moorland with its lonely farmsteads and its scattered cots; its old
folks with their furrowed faces, its little children with shy wondering
eyes; its sandy hollows where the coneys frisked at twilight; its
hidden dells of fern and bracken where the primroses first blossomed;
its high banks beneath the birches where the red fox had his dwelling;
its deep woods, bird-haunted: always he would love it, for her sake.
He turned and looked back and down the winding road. The noisome town
half-hidden by its pall of smoke lay stretched beneath him, a few faint
lights twinkling from out the gloom. There too her feet had trod.
Its long sad streets with their weary white-faced people; its foul,
neglected places where the children played with dirt. This city of
maimed souls and stunted bodies! It must be cleansed, purified--made
worthy for her feet to pass. It should be his life’s work, his gift to
his beloved.