THE OLD HOME MEANWHILE
More than a year had now gone by since Henry left home, and meanwhile,
with the exception of Dot's baptism, there had been no exciting changes
to record. Perhaps uneventfulness is part of the security of a
real home. Every morning James Mesurier had risen at half-past
six,--though he no longer imposed that hour of rising upon his
daughters,--breakfasted at eight, and reached his office at nine. Every
evening during those months, punctually at half-past six his latch-key
had rattled in the front-door lock, and one or other of his daughters
had hurried out at the sound to bid him welcome home.
"Home at last, father dear!" they had said, helping him off with his
coat; and sometimes when he felt bright he would answer,--
"Yes, my dear, night brings crows home."
"Home again, James!" his wife would say, as he next entered the front
parlour, and bent down to kiss her where she sat. "It's a long day.
Isn't it time you were pulling in a bit? Surely some of the younger
heads should begin to relieve you."
"Responsibility, Mary dear! We cannot delegate responsibility," he would
answer.
"But we see nothing of you. You just sacrifice your whole life for the
business."
If he were in a good humour, he might answer with one of his rare sweet
laughs, and jokingly make one of his few French quotations: "_Telle est
la vie_! my dear, _Telle est la vie_! That's the French for it,
isn't it, Dot?"
James Mesurier was just perceptibly softening. Perhaps it was that he
was growing a little tired, that he was no longer quite the stern
disciplinarian we met in the first chapter; perhaps the influence of his
wife, and his experiences with his children, were beginning to hint to
him what it takes so long for a strong individual nature to learn, that
the law of one temperament cannot justly or fruitfully be enforced as
the law of another.
The younger children--Esther and Dot and Mat used sometimes to say to
each other--would grow up in a more clement atmosphere of home than had
been Henry's and theirs. Already they were quietly assuming privileges,
and nothing said, that would have meant beatings for their elders. For
these things had Henry and Esther gladly faced martyrdom. Henry had
looked on the Promised Land, but been denied an entrance there. By his
stripes this younger generation would be healed.
The elder girls hastened to draw close to their father in gratitude, and
home breathed a kinder, freer air than ever had been known before.
Between Esther and her father particularly a kind of comradeship began
to spring up, which perhaps more than ever made the mother miss her boy.
But, all the same, home was growing old. This was the kindness of the
setting sun!
Childless middle age is no doubt often dreary to contemplate, yet is it
an egoistical bias which leads one to find in such limitation, or one
might rather say preservation, of the ego, a certain compensation? The
childless man or woman has at least preserved his or her individuality,
as few fathers and mothers of large families are suffered to do. By the
time you are fifty, with a family of half a dozen children, you have
become comparatively impersonal as "father" or "mother." It is tacitly
recognised that your life-work is finished, that your ambitions are
accomplished or not, and that your hopes are at an end.
The young Mesuriers, for example, were all eagerly hastening towards
their several futures. They were garrulous over them at every meal. But
to what future in this world were James and Mary Mesurier looking
forward? Love had blossomed and brought forth fruit, but the fruit was
quickly ripening, and stranger hands would soon pluck it from the
boughs. In a very few years they would sit under a roof-tree bared of
fruit and blossom, and sad with falling leaves. They had dreamed their
dream, and there is only one such dream for a lifetime; now they must
sit and listen to the dreams of their children, help them to build
theirs. They mattered now no longer for themselves, but just as so much
aid and sympathy on which their children might draw. Too well in their
hearts they knew that their children only heard them with patience so
long as they talked of their to-morrows. Should they sometimes dwell
wistfully on their own yesterdays, they could too plainly see how long
the story seemed.
_Telle est la vie!_ as James Mesurier said, and, that being so, no
wonder life is a sad business. Better perhaps be childless and retain
one's own personal hopes and fears for life, than be so relegated to
history in the very zenith of one's days. If only this younger
generation at the door were always, as it assumes, stronger and better
than its elder! but, though the careless assumption that it is so is
somewhat general, history alone shows how false and impudent the
assumption often is. Too often genius itself must submit to the silly
presumption of its noisy and fatuous children, and it is the young fool
who too often knocks imperiously at the door of wise and active
middle age.
That all this is inevitable makes it none the less sad. The young
Mesuriers were neither fools nor hard of heart; and sometimes, in
moments of sympathy, their parents would be revealed to them in sudden
lights of pathos and old romance. They would listen to some old
love-affair of their mother's as though it had been their own, or go out
of their way to make their father tell once more the epic of the great
business over which he presided, and which, as he conceived it, was
doubtless a greater poem than his son would ever write. Yet still even
in such genuine sympathy, there was a certain imaginative effort to be
made. The gulf between the generations, however hidden for the moment,
was always there.
Yet, after all, James and Mary Mesurier possessed an incorruptible
treasure, which their children had neither given nor could take away. To
regard them as without future would be a shallow observation,--for love
has always a future, however old in mortal years it may have grown; and
as they grew older, their love seemed to grow stronger. Involuntarily
they seemed to draw closer together, as by an instinct of
self-preservation. Their love had been before their children; were they
to be spared, it would still be the same love, sweeter by trial, when
their children had passed from them. In this love had been wise for
them. Some parents love their children so unwisely that they forget to
love each other; and, when the children forsake them, are left
disconsolate. One has heard young mothers say that now their boy has
come, their husbands may take a second place; and often of late we have
heard the woman say: "Give me but the child, and the lover can go his
ways." Foolish, unprophetic women! Let but twenty years go by, and how
glad you will be of that rejected lover; for, though a son may suffice
for his mother, what mother has ever sufficed for her son?
But though sometimes, as they looked at their parents, the young
Mesuriers caught a glimpse of the infinite sadness of a life-work
accomplished, yet it failed to warn them against the eager haste with
which they were hurrying on towards a like conclusion. Too late they
would understand that all the joy was in the doing; too soon say to
themselves: "Was it for this that our little world shook with such fiery
commotion and molten ardours, that this present should be so firm and
insensitive beneath our feet? This habit--why, it was once a passion!
This fact--why, it was once a dream!"
Oh, why shake off youth's fragile blossoms with the very speed of your
own impatience! Why make such haste towards autumn! Who ever thought the
ruddiest lapful of apples a fair exchange for a cloud of sunlit blossom?
Whose maturity, however laden with prosperity or gilded with honour,
ever kept the fairy promise of his youth? For so brief a space youth
glitters like a dewdrop on the tree of life, glitters and is gone. For
one desperate instant of perfection it hangs poised, and is seen
no more.
But, alas! the art of enjoying youth with a wise economy is only learnt
when youth is over. It is perhaps too paradoxical an accomplishment to
be learnt before; for a youth that economised itself would be already
middle age. It is just the wasteful flare of it that leaves such a
dazzle in old eyes, as they look back in fancy to the conflagration of
fragrant fire which once bourgeoned and sang where these white ashes now
slowly smoulder towards extinction.
When Mike has a theatre of his own and can send boxes to his friends,
when Henry maybe is an editor of power, when Esther and Angel are the
enthroned wives of famous men, and the new heaven and the new earth are
quite finished,--will they never sigh sometimes to have the making of
them all over again? Then they will have everything to enjoy, so there
will be nothing left to hope for. Then there will be no spice of peril
in their loves, no keen edge that comes of enforced denial; and the game
of life will be too sure for ambition to keep its savour. "There is no
thrill, no excitement nowadays," one can almost fancy their saying, and,
like children playing with their bricks, "Now let us knock it all down,
and build another, one. It will be such fun."
However, these are intrusive, autumnal thoughts in this book of simple
youth, and our young people knew them not. They were far indeed from
Esther's mind as she talked with Dot of the future one afternoon.
Instead, her words were full of impatience with the slow march of
events, and the enforced inactivity of a girl's life at home.
"It is so much easier for the boys," she was saying. "There is something
for them to do. But we can do nothing but sit at home and wait, darn
their socks, and clap our hands at their successes. I wish I were
a man!"
"No, you don't," said Dot; "for then you couldn't marry Mike. And you
couldn't wear pretty dresses--Oh! and lots of things. I don't much envy
a man's life, after all. It's all very well talking about hard work when
you haven't got to do it; and it's not so much the work as the
responsibility. It must be such a responsibility to be a man."
"Of course you're right, Dot--but, oh! this waiting is so stupid, all
the same. If only I could be doing something--anything!"
"Well, you _are_ doing something. Is it nothing to be all the world to a
man?" said Dot, wistfully; "nothing to be his heaven upon earth? Nothing
to be the prize he is working for, and nothing to sustain and cheer him
on, as you do Mike, and as Angel cheers Henry? Would Henry have been the
same without Angel, or Mike the same without you? No, the man's work
makes more noise, but the woman's work is none the less real and useful
because it is quiet and underground."
"Dear Dot, what a wise old thing you're growing! But you know you're
longing all the time for some work to do yourself. Didn't you say the
other day that you seemed to be wasting your life here, making beds and
doing housework?"
"Yes; but I'm different. Don't you see?" retorted Dot, sadly. "I've got
no Mike. Your work is to help Mike be a great actor, but I've got no one
to help be anything. You may be sure I wouldn't complain of being idle
if I had. I think you're a bit forgetful sometimes how happy you are."
"Poor old Dot! you needn't talk as if you're such a desperate old
maid,--you're not twenty yet. And I'm sure it's a good thing for you
that you haven't got any of the young men about here--to help be
aldermen! Wait till you come and stay with us in London, then you'll
soon find some one to work for, as you call it."
"I don't know," said Dot, thoughtfully; "somehow I think I shall never
marry."
"I suppose you mean you'd rather be a nun or something serious of that
sort."
"Well, to tell the truth, I have been thinking lately if perhaps I
couldn't do something,--perhaps go into a hospital, or something of
that sort."
"Oh, nonsense, Dot! Think of all the horrible, dirty people you'd have
to attend to. Ugh!"
"Christ didn't think of that when He washed the feet of His disciples,"
said little Dot, sententiously.
"Why, Dot, how dreadfully religious you're getting! You want a good
shaking! Besides, isn't it a little impious to imply that the apostles
were horrible, dirty people?"
"You know what I meant," said Dot, flushing.
"Yes, of course, dear; and I think I know where you've been. You've been
to see that dear Sister Agatha."
"You admit she's a dear?"
"Of course I do; but I don't know whether she's quite good for you."
"If you'd only seen her among the poor little children the other day,
how beautiful and how happy she looked, you might have thought
differently," said Dot.
"Oh, yes, dear; but then you mustn't forget that her point of view is
different. She's renounced the world; she's one of those women," Esther
couldn't resist adding, maliciously, "who've given up hope of man, and
so have set all their hopes on God."
"Esther, that's unworthy of you--though what if it is as you say, is it
so great a failure after all to dedicate one's self to God rather than
to one little individual man?"
"Oh, come," said Esther, rather wilfully misunderstanding, and suddenly
flushing up, "Mike is not so little as all that!"
"Why, you goose, how earthly you are! I never thought of dear
Mike--though it would have served you right for saying such a mean thing
about Sister Agatha."
"Forgive me. I know it was mean, but I couldn't resist it. And it is
true, you'll admit, of some of those pious women, though I withdraw it
about Sister Agatha."
"Of course I couldn't be a sister like Sister Agatha," said Dot,
"without being a Catholic as well; but I might be a nurse at one of the
ordinary hospitals."
"It would be dreadfully hard work!" said Esther.
"Harder than being a man, do you think?" asked Dot, laughing.
"For goodness' sake, don't turn Catholic!" said Esther, in some alarm.
"_That_ would break father's heart, if you like."
A horror of Catholicism ran in the very marrow of these young people.
It was one of the few relics of their father's Puritanism surviving in
them. Of "Catholics" they had been accustomed to speak since childhood
as of nightmares and Red Indians with bloody scalps at their waists; and
perhaps that instinctive terror of the subtle heart of Rome is the
religious prejudice which we will do well to part with last.
Dot had not, indeed, contemplated an apostacy so unnatural; but beneath
these comparatively trivial words there was an ever-growing impulse to
fulfil that old longing of her nature to do something, as the Christians
would say, "for God," something serious, in return for the solemn and
beautiful gift of life. By an accident, she had met Sister Agatha one
day in the house of an old Irish servant of theirs, who had been
compelled to leave them on account of ill-health, and on whom she had
called with a little present of fruit. She had been struck by the
sweetness of the Sister's face, as the Sister had been struck by hers.
Sister Agatha had invited Dot to visit her some day at the home for
orphan children of which she had charge; and, with some misgiving as to
whether it was right thus to visit a Catholic, whether even it was
safe, Dot had accepted. So an acquaintance had grown up and ripened into
a friendship; and Sister Agatha, while making no attempt to turn the
friendship to the account of her church, was a great consolation to the
lonely, religious girl.
Dot retained too much rationalism ever to become a Catholic, but the
longing to do something grew and grew. At a certain moment, with each
new generation of girls, there comes an epidemical desire in maiden
bosoms to dedicate their sweet young lives to the service of what Esther
called "horrible dirty people." At these periods the hospitals are
flooded with applications from young girls whom the vernal equinox urges
first to be mothers, and, failing motherhood, nurses. Just before she
met Henry, Angel had done her best to miss him by frantic endeavours to
nurse people whom the hospital doctors decided she was far too slight a
thing to lift,--for unless you can lift your patients, not to say throw
them about, you fail in the muscular qualifications of a hospital nurse.
Dot, as we have seen, was impelled in this direction from no merely
sentimental impulse, unless the religious impulse, which paradoxically
makes nuns of disappointed mothers, may so be called. Perhaps,
unacknowledged, deep down in her heart, she longed to be the nurse--of
one little wonderful child. Had this been granted her, it is probable
that the maimed and the halt would have had less attraction for her
pitying imagination. As it was, however, she persuaded herself that she
loved them. Was it because, at the moment, no one else seemed to
need her love?