THE SQUIRE MAKES UP HIS MIND
That same evening at nine o'clock, sitting over the last glass of a
pint of port, Mr. Barter felt an irresistible longing for enjoyment, an
impulse towards expansion and his fellow-men.
Taking his hat and buttoning his coat--for though the June evening was
fine the easterly breeze was eager--he walked towards the village.
Like an emblem of that path to God of which he spoke on Sundays, the
grey road between trim hedges threaded the shadow of the elm-trees where
the rooks had long since gone to bed. A scent of wood-smoke clung in
the air; the cottages appeared, the forge, the little shops facing the
village green. Lights in the doors and windows deepened; a breeze, which
hardly stirred the chestnut leaves, fled with a gentle rustling through
the aspens. Houses and trees, houses and trees! Shelter through the past
and through the days to come!
The Rector stopped the first man he saw.
“Fine weather for the hay, Aiken! How's your wife doing--a girl? Ah, ha!
You want some boys! You heard of our event at the Rectory? I'm thankful
to say----”
From man to man and house to house he soothed his thirst for fellowship,
for the lost sense of dignity that should efface again the scar of
suffering. And above him the chestnuts in their breathing stillness,
the aspens with their tender rustling, seemed to watch and whisper: “Oh,
little men! oh, little men!”
The moon, at the end of her first quarter, sailed out of the shadow of
the churchyard--the same young moon that had sailed in her silver irony
when the first Barter preached, the first Pendyce was Squire at Worsted
Skeynes; the same young moon that, serene, ineffable, would come again
when the last Barter slept, the last Pendyce was gone, and on their
gravestones, through the amethystine air, let fall her gentle light.
The Rector thought:
'. shall set Stedman to work on that corner. We must have more room;
the stones there are a hundred and fifty years old if they're a day. You
can't read a single word. They'd better be the first to go.'
He passed on along the paddock footway leading to the Squire's.
Day was gone, and only the moonbeams lighted the tall grasses.
At the Hall the long French windows of the dining-room were open; the
Squire was sitting there alone, brooding sadly above the remnants of
the fruit he had been eating. Flanking him on either wall hung a silent
company, the effigies of past Pendyces; and at the end, above the oak
and silver of the sideboard, the portrait of his wife was looking at
them under lifted brows, with her faint wonder.
He raised his head.
“Ah, Barter! How's your wife?”
“Doing as well as can be expected.”
“Glad to hear that! A fine constitution--wonderful vitality. Port or
claret?”
“Thanks; just a glass of port.”
“Very trying for your nerves. I know what it is. We're different from
the last generation; they thought nothing of it. When Charles was born
my dear old father was out hunting all day. When my wife had George, it
made me as nervous as a cat!”
The Squire stopped, then hurriedly added:
“But you're so used to it.”
Mr. Barter frowned.
“I was passing Coldingham to-day,” he said. “I saw Winlow. He asked
after you.”
“Ah! Winlow! His wife's a very nice woman. They've only the one child, I
think?”
The Rector winced.
“Winlow tells me,” he said abruptly, “that George has sold his horse.”
The Squire's face changed. He glanced suspiciously at Mr. Barter, but
the Rector was looking at his glass.
“Sold his horse! What's the meaning of that? He told you why, I
suppose?”
The Rector drank off his wine.
“I never ask for reasons,” he said, “where racing-men are concerned.
It's my belief they know no more what they're about than so many dumb
animals.”
“Ah! racing-men!” said Mr. Pendyce. “But George doesn't bet.”
A gleam of humour shot into the Rector's eyes. He pressed his lips
together.
The Squire rose.
“Come now, Barter!” he said.
The Rector blushed. He hated tale-bearing--that is, of course, in the
case of a man; the case of a woman was different--and just as, when he
went to Bellew he had been careful not to give George away, so now he
was still more on his guard.
“No, no, Pendyce.”
The Squire began to pace the room, and Mr. Barter felt something stir
against his foot; the spaniel John emerging at the end, just where the
moonlight shone, a symbol of all that was subservient to the Squire,
gazed up at his master with tragic eyes. 'Here, again,' they seemed to
say, 'is something to disturb me!'
The Squire broke the silence.
“I've always counted on you, Barter; I count on you as I would on my own
brother. Come, now, what's this about George?”
'.fter all,' thought the Rector, 'it's his father!'--“I know nothing but
what they say,” he blurted forth; “they talk of his having lost a lot of
money. I dare say it's all nonsense. I never set much store by rumour.
And if he's sold the horse, well, so much the better. He won't be
tempted to gamble again.”
But Horace Pendyce made no answer. A single thought possessed his
bewildered, angry mind:
'.y son a gambler! Worsted Skeynes in the hands of a gambler!'
The Rector rose.
“It's all rumour. You shouldn't pay any attention. I should hardly think
he's been such a fool. I only know that I must get back to my wife.
Good-night.”
And, nodding but confused, Mr. Barter went away through the French
window by which he had come.
The Squire stood motionless.
A gambler!
To him, whose existence was bound up in Worsted Skeynes, whose every
thought had some direct or indirect connection with it, whose son was
but the occupier of that place he must at last vacate, whose religion
was ancestor-worship, whose dread was change, no word could be so
terrible. A gambler!
It did not occur to him that his system was in any way responsible for
George's conduct. He had said to Mr. Paramor: “I never had a system; I'm
no believer in systems.” He had brought him up simply as a gentleman. He
would have preferred that George should go into the Army, but George had
failed; he would have preferred that George should devote himself to the
estate, marry, and have a son, instead of idling away his time in town,
but George had failed; and so, beyond furthering his desire to join the
Yeomanry, and getting him proposed for the Stoics' Club, what was
there he could have done to keep him out of mischief? And now he was a
gambler!
Once a gambler always a gambler!
To his wife's face, looking down from the wall, he said:
“He gets it from you!”
But for all answer the face stared gently.
Turning abruptly, he left the room, and the spaniel John, for whom he
had been too quick, stood with his nose to the shut door, scenting for
someone to come and open it.
Mr. Pendyce went to his study, took some papers from a locked drawer,
and sat a long time looking at them. One was the draft of his will,
another a list of the holdings at Worsted Skeynes, their acreage and
rents, a third a fair copy of the settlement, re-settling the estate
when he had married. It was at this piece of supreme irony that Mr.
Pendyce looked longest. He did not read it, but he thought:
'.nd I can't cut it! Paramor says so! A gambler!'
That “crassness” common to all men in this strange world, and in the
Squire intensified, was rather a process than a quality--obedience to an
instinctive dread of what was foreign to himself, an instinctive fear of
seeing another's point of view, an instinctive belief in precedent. And
it was closely allied to his most deep and moral quality--the power of
making a decision. Those decisions might be “crass” and stupid, conduce
to unnecessary suffering, have no relation to morality or reason; but he
could make them, and he could stick to them. By virtue of this power he
was where he was, had been for centuries, and hoped to be for centuries
to come. It was in his blood. By this alone he kept at bay the
destroying forces that Time brought against him, his order, his
inheritance; by this alone he could continue to hand down that
inheritance to his son. And at the document which did hand it down he
looked with angry and resentful eyes.
Men who conceive great resolutions do not always bring them forth with
the ease and silence which they themselves desire. Mr. Pendyce went to
his bedroom determined to say no word of what he had resolved to do.
His wife was asleep. The Squire's entrance wakened her, but she
remained motionless, with her eyes closed, and it was the sight of that
immobility, when he himself was so disturbed, which drew from him the
words:
“Did you know that George was a gambler?”
By the light of the candle in his silver candlestick her dark eyes
seemed suddenly alive.
“He's been betting; he's sold his horse. He'd never have sold that horse
unless he were pushed. For all I know, he may be posted at Tattersalls!”
The sheets shivered as though she who lay within them were struggling.
Then came her voice, cool and gentle:
“All young men bet, Horace; you must know that!”
The Squire at the foot of the bed held up the candle; the movement had a
sinister significance.
“Do you defend him?” it seemed to say. “Do you defy me?”
Gripping the bed-rail, he cried:
“I'll have no gambler and profligate for my son! I'll not risk the
estate!”
Mrs. Pendyce raised herself, and for many seconds stared at her husband.
Her heart beat furiously. It had come! What she had been expecting all
these days had come! Her pale lips answered:
“What do you mean? I don't understand you, Horace.”
Mr. Pendyce's eyes searched here and there for what, he did not know.
“This has decided me,” he said. “I'll have no half-measures. Until he
can show me he's done with that woman, until he can prove he's given up
this betting, until--until the heaven's fallen, I'll have no more to do
with him!”
To Margery Pendyce, with all her senses quivering, that saying, “Until
the heaven's fallen,” was frightening beyond the rest. On the lips
of her husband, those lips which had never spoken in metaphors, never
swerved from the direct and commonplace, nor deserted the shibboleth of
his order, such words had an evil and malignant sound.
He went on:
“I've brought him up as I was brought up myself. I never thought to have
had a scamp for my son!”
Mrs. Pendyce's heart stopped fluttering.
“How dare you, Horace!” she cried.
The Squire, letting go the bed-rail, paced to and fro. There was
something savage in the sound of his footsteps through the utter
silence.
“I've made up my mind,” he said. “The estate----”
There broke from Mrs. Pendyce a torrent of words:
“You talk of the way you brought George up! You--you never understood
him! You--you never did anything for him! He just grew up like you all
grow up in this----” But no word followed, for she did not know herself
what was that against which her soul had blindly fluttered its wings.
“You never loved him as I do! What do I care about the estate? I wish it
were sold! D'you think I like living here? D'you think I've ever liked
it? D'you think I've ever----” But she did not finish that saying: D'you
think I've ever loved you? “My boy a scamp! I've heard you laugh and
shake your head and say a hundred times: 'Young men will be young men!'
You think I don't know how you'd all go on if you dared! You think I
don't know how you talk among yourselves! As for gambling, you'd gamble
too, if you weren't afraid! And now George is in trouble----”
As suddenly as it had broken forth the torrent of her words dried up.
Mr. Pendyce had come back to the foot of the bed, and once more gripped
the rail whereon the candle, still and bright, showed them each other's
faces, very changed from the faces that they knew. In the Squire's lean
brown throat, between the parted points of his stiff collar, a string
seemed working. He stammered:
“You--you're talking like a madwoman! My father would have cut me off,
his father would have cut him off! By God! do you think I'll stand
quietly by and see it all played ducks and drakes with, and see that
woman here, and see her son, a--a bastard, or as bad as a bastard, in my
place? You don't know me!”
The last words came through his teeth like the growl of a dog. Mrs.
Pendyce made the crouching movement of one who gathers herself to
spring.
“If you give him up, I shall go to him; I will never come back!”
The Squire's grip on the rail relaxed; in the light of the candle, still
and steady and bright--his jaw could be seen to fall. He snapped his
teeth together, and turning abruptly, said:
“Don't talk such rubbish!”
Then, taking the candle, he went into his dressing-room.
And at first his feelings were simple enough; he had merely that sore
sensation, that sense of raw offence, as at some gross and violent
breach of taste.
'.hat madness,' he thought, 'gets into women! It would serve her right
if I slept here!'
He looked around him. There was no place where he could sleep, not
even a sofa, and taking up the candle, he moved towards the door. But a
feeling of hesitation and forlornness rising, he knew not whence, made
him pause irresolute before the window.
The young moon, riding low, shot her light upon his still, lean figure,
and in that light it was strange to see how grey he looked--grey from
head to foot, grey, and sad, and old, as though in summary of all the
squires who in turn had looked upon that prospect frosted with young
moonlight to the boundary of their lands. Out in the paddock he saw his
old hunter Bob, with his head turned towards the house; and from the
very bottom of his heart he sighed.
In answer to that sigh came a sound of something falling outside against
the door. He opened it to see what might be there. The spaniel John,
lying on a cushion of blue linen, with his head propped up against the
wall, darkly turned his eyes.
'. am here, master,' he seemed to say; 'it is late--I was about to go
to sleep; it has done me good, however, to see you;' and hiding his eyes
from the light under a long black ear, he drew a stertorous breath. Mr.
Pendyce shut-to the door. He had forgotten the existence of his dog.
But, as though with the sight of that faithful creature he had regained
belief in all that he was used to, in all that he was master of, in all
that was--himself, he opened the bedroom door and took his place beside
his wife.
And soon he was asleep.
PART III
CHAPTER I
MRS. PENDYCE'S ODYSSEY
But Mrs. Pendyce did not sleep. That blessed anodyne of the long day
spent in his farmyards and fields was on her husband's eyes--no anodyne
on hers; and through them, all that was deep, most hidden, sacred, was
laid open to the darkness. If only those eyes could have been seen that
night! But if the darkness had been light, nothing of all this so deep
and sacred would have been there to see, for more deep, more sacred
still, in Margery Pendyce, was the instinct of a lady. So elastic and so
subtle, so interwoven of consideration for others and consideration for
herself, so old, so very old, this instinct wrapped her from all eyes,
like a suit of armour of the finest chain. The night must have been
black indeed when she took that off and lay without it in the darkness.
With the first light she put it on again, and stealing from bed, bathed
long and stealthily those eyes which felt as though they had been burned
all night; thence went to the open window and leaned out. Dawn had
passed, the birds were at morning music. Down there in the garden her
flowers were meshed with the grey dew, and the trees were grey, spun
with haze; dim and spectrelike, the old hunter, with his nose on the
paddock rail, dozed in the summer mist.
And all that had been to her like prison out there, and all that she had
loved, stole up on the breath of the unaired morning, and kept beating
in her face, fluttering at the white linen above her heart like the
wings of birds flying.
The first morning song ceased, and at the silence the sun smiled out in
golden irony, and everything was shot with colour. A wan glow fell on
Mrs. Pendyce's spirit, that for so many hours had been heavy and grey in
lonely resolution. For to her gentle soul, unused to action, shrinking
from violence, whose strength was the gift of the ages, passed into it
against her very nature, the resolution she had formed was full of pain.
Yet painful, even terrible in its demand for action, it did not waver,
but shone like a star behind the dark and heavy clouds. In Margery
Pendyce (who had been a Totteridge) there was no irascible and acrid
“people's blood,” no fierce misgivings, no ill-digested beer and
cider--it was pure claret in her veins--she had nothing thick and angry
in her soul to help her; that which she had resolved she must carry out,
by virtue of a thin, fine flame, breathing far down in her--so far that
nothing could extinguish it, so far that it had little warmth. It was
not “I will not be overridden” that her spirit felt, but “I must not be
over-ridden, for if I am over-ridden, I, and in me something beyond me,
more important than myself, is all undone.” And though she was far from
knowing this, that something was her country's civilisation, its very
soul, the meaning of it all gentleness, balance. Her spirit, of that
quality so little gross that it would never set up a mean or petty
quarrel, make mountains out of mole-hills, distort proportion, or get
images awry, had taken its stand unconsciously, no sooner than it must,
no later than it ought, and from that stand would not recede. The issue
had passed beyond mother love to that self-love, deepest of all, which
says:
“Do this, or forfeit the essence of your soul”
And now that she stole to her bed again, she looked at her sleeping
husband whom she had resolved to leave, with no anger, no reproach, but
rather with a long, incurious look which told nothing even to herself.
So, when the morning came of age and it was time to rise, by no action,
look, or sign, did she betray the presence of the unusual in her soul.
If this which was before her must be done, it would be carried out as
though it were of no import, as though it were a daily action; nor did
she force herself to quietude, or pride herself thereon, but acted thus
from instinct, the instinct for avoiding fuss and unnecessary suffering
that was bred in her.
Mr. Pendyce went out at half-past ten accompanied by his bailiff and the
spaniel John. He had not the least notion that his wife still meant the
words she had spoken overnight. He had told her again while dressing
that he would have no more to do with George, that he would cut him out
of his will, that he would force him by sheer rigour to come to heel,
that, in short, he meant to keep his word, and it would have been
unreasonable in him to believe that a woman, still less his wife, meant
to keep hers.
Mrs. Pendyce spent the early part of the morning in the usual way. Half
an hour after the Squire went out she ordered the carriage round,
had two small trunks, which she had packed herself, brought down, and
leisurely, with her little green bag, got in. To her maid, to the butler
Bester, to the coachman Benson, she said that she was going up to stay
with Mr. George. Norah and Bee were at the Tharps', so that there was no
one to take leave of but old Roy, the Skye; and lest that leave-taking
should prove too much for her, she took him with her to the station.
For her husband she left a little note, placing it where she knew he
must see it at once, and no one else see it at all.
“DEAR HORACE,
“I have gone up to London to be with George. My address will be Green's
Hotel, Bond Street. You will remember what I said last night. Perhaps
you did not quite realise that I meant it. Take care of poor old Roy,
and don't let them give him too much meat this hot weather. Jackman
knows better than Ellis how to manage the roses this year. I should like
to be told how poor Rose Barter gets on. Please do not worry about me. I
shall write to dear Gerald when necessary, but I don't feel like writing
to him or the girls at present.
“Good-bye, dear Horace; I am sorry if I grieve you.
“Your wife,
“MARGERY PENDYCE.”
Just as there was nothing violent in her manner of taking this step,
so there was nothing violent in her conception of it. To her it was
not running away, a setting of her husband at defiance; there was no
concealment of address, no melodramatic “I cannot come back to you.”
Such methods, such pistol-holdings, would have seemed to her ridiculous.
It is true that practical details, such as the financial consequences,
escaped the grasp of her mind, but even in this, her view, or rather
lack of view, was really the wide, the even one. Horace would not let
her starve: the idea was inconceivable. There was, too, her own three
hundred a year. She had, indeed, no idea how much this meant, or what
it represented, neither was she concerned, for she said to herself, “I
should be quite happy in a cottage with Roy and my flowers;” and though,
of course, she had not the smallest experience to go by, it was quite
possible that she was right. Things which to others came only by money,
to a Totteridge came without, and even if they came not, could well
be dispensed with--for to this quality of soul, this gentle
self-sufficiency, had the ages worked to bring her.
Yet it was hastily and with her head bent that she stepped from the
carriage at the station, and the old Skye, who from the brougham seat
could just see out of the window, from the tears on his nose that were
not his own, from something in his heart that was, knew this was no
common parting and whined behind the glass.
Mrs. Pendyce told her cabman to drive to Green's Hotel, and it was only
after she had arrived, arranged her things, washed, and had lunch, that
the beginnings of confusion and home-sickness stirred within her. Up to
then a simmering excitement had kept her from thinking of how she was
to act, or of what she had hoped, expected, dreamed, would come of her
proceedings. Taking her sunshade, she walked out into Bond Street.
A passing man took off his hat.
'.ear me,' she thought, 'who was that? I ought to know!'
She had a rather vague memory for faces, and though she could not recall
his name, felt more at home at once, not so lonely and adrift. Soon a
quaint brightness showed in her eyes, looking at the toilettes of the
passers-by, and at each shop-front, more engrossing than the last.
Pleasure, like that which touches the soul of a young girl at her first
dance, the souls of men landing on strange shores, touched Margery
Pendyce. A delicious sense of entering the unknown, of braving the
unexpected, and of the power to go on doing this delightfully for ever,
enveloped her with the gay London air of this bright June day. She
passed a perfume shop, and thought she had never smelt anything so nice.
And next door she lingered long looking at some lace; and though she
said to herself, “I must not buy anything; I shall want all my money
for poor George,” it made no difference to that sensation of having all
things to her hand.
A list of theatres, concerts, operas confronted her in the next window,
together with the effigies of prominent artistes. She looked at them
with an eagerness that might have seemed absurd to anyone who saw her
standing there. Was there, indeed, all this going on all day and every
day, to be seen and heard for so few shillings? Every year, religiously,
she had visited the opera once, the theatre twice, and no concerts;
her husband did not care for music that was “classical.” While she was
standing there a woman begged of her, looking very tired and hot, with
a baby in her arms so shrivelled and so small that it could hardly be
seen. Mrs. Pendyce took out her purse and gave her half a crown, and as
she did so felt a gush of feeling which was almost rage.
'.oor little baby!' she thought. 'There must be thousands like that, and
I know nothing of them!'
She smiled to the woman, who smiled back at her; and a fat Jewish youth
in a shop doorway, seeing them smile, smiled too, as though he found
them charming. Mrs. Pendyce had a feeling that the town was saying
pretty things to her, and this was so strange and pleasant that she
could hardly believe it, for Worsted Skeynes had omitted to say that
sort of thing to her for over thirty years. She looked in the window of
a hat shop, and found pleasure in the sight of herself. The window was
kind to her grey linen, with black velvet knots and guipure, though it
was two years old; but, then, she had only been able to wear it once
last summer, owing to poor Hubert's death. The window was kind, too,
to her cheeks, and eyes, which had that touching brightness, and to the
silver-powdered darkness of her hair. And she thought: 'I don't look so
very old!' But her own hat reflected in the hat-shop window displeased
her now; it turned down all round, and though she loved that shape, she
was afraid it was not fashionable this year. And she looked long in the
window of that shop, trying to persuade herself that the hats in there
would suit her, and that she liked what she did not like. In other shop
windows she looked, too. It was a year since she had seen any, and for
thirty-four years past she had only seen them in company with the Squire
or with her daughters, none of whom cared much for shops.
The people, too, were different from the people that she saw when she
went about with Horace or her girls. Almost all seemed charming, having
a new, strange life, in which she--Margery Pendyce--had unaccountably
a little part; as though really she might come to know them, as though
they might tell her something of themselves, of what they felt and
thought, and even might stand listening, taking a kindly interest in
what she said. This, too, was strange, and a friendly smile became fixed
upon her face, and of those who saw it--shop-girls, women of fashion,
coachmen, clubmen, policemen--most felt a little warmth about their
hearts; it was pleasant to see on the lips of that faded lady with the
silvered arching hair under a hat whose brim turned down all round.
So Mrs. Pendyce came to Piccadilly and turned westward towards George's
club. She knew it well, for she never failed to look at the windows when
she passed, and once--on the occasion of Queen Victoria's Jubilee--had
spent a whole day there to see that royal show.
She began to tremble as she neared it, for though she did not, like the
Squire, torture her mind with what might or might not come to pass, care
had nested in her heart.
George was not in his club, and the porter could not tell her where he
was. Mrs. Pendyce stood motionless. He was her son; how could she ask
for his address? The porter waited, knowing a lady when he saw one. Mrs.
Pendyce said gently:
“Is there a room where I could write a note, or would it be----”
“Certainly not, ma'am. I can show you to a room at once.”
And though it was only a mother to a son, the porter preceded her
with the quiet discretion of one who aids a mistress to her lover; and
perhaps he was right in his view of the relative values of love, for he
had great experience, having lived long in the best society.
On paper headed with the fat white “Stoics' Club,” so well known on
George's letters, Mrs. Pendyce wrote what she had to say. The little
dark room where she sat was without sound, save for the buzzing of a
largish fly in a streak of sunlight below the blind. It was dingy in
colour; its furniture was old. At the Stoics' was found neither the new
art nor the resplendent drapings of those larger clubs sacred to the
middle classes. The little writing-room had an air of mourning: “I am
so seldom used; but be at home in me; you might find me tucked away in
almost any country-house!”
Yet many a solitary Stoic had sat there and written many a note to many
a woman. George, perhaps, had written to Helen Bellew at that very table
with that very pen, and Mrs. Pendyce's heart ached jealously.
“DEAREST GEORGE” (she wrote),
“I have something very particular to tell you. Do come to me at Green's
Hotel. Come soon, my dear. I shall be lonely and unhappy till I see you.
“Your loving
“MARGERY PENDYCE.”
And this note, which was just what she would have sent to a lover, took
that form, perhaps unconsciously, because she had never had a lover thus
to write to.
She slipped the note and half a crown diffidently into the porter's
hand; refused his offer of some tea, and walked vaguely towards the
Park.
It was five o'clock; the sun was brighter than ever. People in carriages
and people on foot in one leisurely, unending stream were filing in at
Hyde Park Corner. Mrs. Pendyce went, too, and timidly--she was unused
to traffic--crossed to the further side and took a chair. Perhaps George
was in the Park and she might see him; perhaps Helen Bellew was there,
and she might see her; and the thought of this made her heart beat and
her eyes under their uplifted brows stare gently at each figure-old men
and young men, women of the world, fresh young girls. How charming they
looked, how sweetly they were dressed! A feeling of envy mingled with
the joy she ever felt at seeing pretty things; she was quite unconscious
that she herself was pretty under that hat whose brim turned down all
round. But as she sat a leaden feeling slowly closed her heart, varied
by nervous flutterings, when she saw someone whom she ought to know.
And whenever, in response to a salute, she was forced to bow her head, a
blush rose in her cheeks, a wan smile seemed to make confession:
“I know I look a guy; I know it's odd for me to be sitting here alone!”
She felt old--older than she had ever felt before. In the midst of this
gay crowd, of all this life and sunshine, a feeling of loneliness which
was almost fear--a feeling of being utterly adrift, cut off from all the
world--came over her; and she felt like one of her own plants, plucked
up from its native earth, with all its poor roots hanging bare, as
though groping for the earth to cling to. She knew now that she had
lived too long in the soil that she had hated; and was too old to be
transplanted. The custom of the country--that weighty, wingless creature
born of time and of the earth--had its limbs fast twined around her. It
had made of her its mistress, and was not going to let her go.
CHAPTER II
THE SON AND THE MOTHER
Harder than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle is it for
a man to become a member of the Stoics' Club, except by virtue of the
hereditary principle; for unless he be nourished he cannot be elected,
and since by the club's first rule he may have no occupation whatsoever,
he must be nourished by the efforts of those who have gone before. And
the longer they have gone before the more likely he is to receive no
blackballs.
Yet without entering into the Stoics' Club it is difficult for a man to
attain that supreme outward control which is necessary to conceal his
lack of control within; and, indeed, the club is an admirable instance
of how Nature places the remedy to hand for the disease. For, perceiving
how George Pendyce and hundreds of other young men “to the manner
born” had lived from their birth up in no connection whatever with the
struggles and sufferings of life, and fearing lest, when Life in her
careless and ironical fashion brought them into abrupt contact with
ill-bred events they should make themselves a nuisance by their cries
of dismay and wonder, Nature had devised a mask and shaped it to its
highest form within the portals of the Stoics' Club. With this mask she
clothed the faces of these young men whose souls she doubted, and called
them--gentlemen. And when she, and she alone, heard their poor squeaks
behind that mask, as Life placed clumsy feet on them, she pitied them,
knowing that it was not they who were in fault, but the unpruned system
which had made them what they were. And in her pity she endowed many
of them with thick skins, steady feet, and complacent souls, so that,
treading in well-worn paths their lives long, they might slumber to
their deaths in those halls where their fathers had slumbered to their
deaths before them. But sometimes Nature (who was not yet a Socialist)
rustled her wings and heaved a sigh, lest the excesses and excrescences
of their system should bring about excesses and excrescences of the
opposite sort. For extravagance of all kinds was what she hated, and
of that particular form of extravagance which Mr. Paramor so vulgarly
called “Pendycitis” she had a horror.
It may happen that for long years the likeness between father and son
will lie dormant, and only when disintegrating forces threaten the links
of the chain binding them together will that likeness leap forth, and
by a piece of Nature's irony become the main factor in destroying
the hereditary principle for which it is the silent, the most worthy,
excuse.
It is certain that neither George nor his father knew the depth to which
this “Pendycitis” was rooted in the other; neither suspected, not even
in themselves, the amount of essential bulldog at the bottom of their
souls, the strength of their determination to hold their own in the way
that would cause the greatest amount of unnecessary suffering. They
did not deliberately desire to cause unnecessary suffering; they simply
could not help an instinct passed by time into their fibre, through
atrophy of the reasoning powers and the constant mating, generation
after generation, of those whose motto had been, “Kings of our own
dunghills.” And now George came forward, defying his mother's belief
that he was a Totteridge, as champion of the principle in tail male; for
in the Totteridges, from whom in this stress he diverged more and
more towards his father's line, there was some freer strain, something
non-provincial, and this had been so ever since Hubert de Totteridge had
led his private crusade, from which he had neglected to return. With the
Pendyces it had been otherwise; from immemorial time “a county family,”
they had construed the phrase literally, had taken no poetical licences.
Like innumerable other county families, they were perforce what their
tradition decreed--provincial in their souls.
George, a man-about-town, would have stared at being called provincial,
but a man cannot stare away his nature. He was provincial enough to keep
Mrs. Bellew bound when she herself was tired of him, and consideration
for her, and for his own self-respect asked him to give her up. He had
been keeping her bound for two months or more. But there was much excuse
for him. His heart was sore to breaking-point; he was sick with longing,
and deep, angry wonder that he, of all men, should be cast aside like a
worn-out glove. Men tired of women daily--that was the law. But what was
this? His dogged instinct had fought against the knowledge as long as
he could, and now that it was certain he fought against it still. George
was a true Pendyce!
To the world, however, he behaved as usual. He came to the club about
ten o'clock to eat his breakfast and read the sporting papers. Towards
noon a hansom took him to the railway-station appropriate to whatever
race-meeting was in progress, or, failing that, to the cricket-ground
at Lord's, or Prince's Tennis Club. Half-past six saw him mounting the
staircase at the Stoics' to that card-room where his effigy still hung,
with its look of “Hard work, hard work; but I must keep it going!” At
eight he dined, a bottle of champagne screwed deep down into ice, his
face flushed with the day's sun, his shirt-front and his hair shining
with gloss. What happier man in all great London!
But with the dark the club's swing-doors opened for his passage into the
lighted streets, and till next morning the world knew him no more. It
was then that he took revenge for all the hours he wore a mask. He would
walk the pavements for miles trying to wear himself out, or in the Park
fling himself down on a chair in the deep shadow of the trees, and sit
there with his arms folded and his head bowed down. On other nights
he would go into some music-hall, and amongst the glaring lights, the
vulgar laughter, the scent of painted women, try for a moment to forget
the face, the laugh, the scent of that woman for whom he craved. And
all the time he was jealous, with a dumb, vague jealousy of he knew
not whom; it was not his nature to think impersonally, and he could not
believe that a woman would drop him except for another man. Often he
went to her Mansions, and walked round and round casting a stealthy
stare at her windows. Twice he went up to her door, but came
away without ringing the bell. One evening, seeing a light in her
sitting-room, he rang, but there came no answer. Then an evil spirit
leaped up in him, and he rang again and again. At last he went away to
his room--a studio he had taken near--and began to write to her. He was
long composing that letter, and many times tore it up; he despised
the expression of feelings in writing. He only tried because his heart
wanted relief so badly. And this, in the end, was all that he produced:
“I know you were in to-night. It's the only time I've come. Why couldn't
you have let me in? You've no right to treat me like this. You are
leading me the life of a dog.”
GEORGE.
The first light was silvering the gloom above the river, the lamps were
paling to the day, when George went out and dropped this missive in the
letter-box. He came back to the river and lay down on an empty bench
under the plane-trees of the Embankment, and while he lay there one of
those without refuge or home, who lie there night after night, came up
unseen and looked at him.
But morning comes, and with it that sense of the ridiculous, so merciful
to suffering men. George got up lest anyone should see a Stoic lying
there in his evening clothes; and when it became time he put on his mask
and sallied forth. At the club he found his mother's note, and set out
for her hotel.
Mrs. Pendyce was not yet down, but sent to ask him to come up. George
found her standing in her dressing-gown in the middle of the room, as
though she knew not where to place herself for this, their meeting. Only
when he was quite close did she move and throw her arms round his neck.
George could not see her face, and his own was hidden from her, but
through the thin dressing-gown he felt her straining to him, and her
arms that had pulled his head down quivering; and for a moment it seemed
to him as if he were dropping a burden. But only for a moment, for at
the clinging of those arms his instinct took fright. And though she was
smiling, the tears were in her eyes, and this offended him.
“Don't, mother!”
Mrs. Pendyce's answer was a long look. George could not bear it, and
turned away.
“Well,” he said gruffly, “when you can tell me what's brought you
up----”
Mrs. Pendyce sat down on the sofa. She had been brushing her hair;
though silvered, it was still thick and soft, and the sight of it about
her shoulders struck George. He had never thought of her having hair
that would hang down.
Sitting on the sofa beside her, he felt her fingers stroking his,
begging him not to take offence and leave her. He felt her eyes trying
to see his eyes, and saw her lips trembling; but a stubborn, almost evil
smile was fixed upon his face.
“And so, dear--and so,” she stammered, “I told your father that I
couldn't see that done, and so I came up to you.”
Many sons have found no hardship in accepting all that their mothers do
for them as a matter of right, no difficulty in assuming their devotion
a matter of course, no trouble in leaving their own affections to be
understood; but most sons have found great difficulty in permitting
their mothers to diverge one inch from the conventional, to swerve one
hair's breadth from the standard of propriety appropriate to mothers of
men of their importance.
It is decreed of mothers that their birth pangs shall not cease until
they die.
And George was shocked to hear his mother say that she had left his
father to come to him. It affected his self-esteem in a strange and
subtle way. The thought that tongues might wag about her revolted his
manhood and his sense of form. It seemed strange, incomprehensible, and
wholly wrong; the thought, too, gashed through his mind: 'She is trying
to put pressure on me!'
“If you think I'll give her up, Mother----” he said.
Mrs. Pendyce's fingers tightened.
“No, dear,” she answered painfully; “of course, if she loves you so
much, I couldn't ask you. That's why I----”
George gave a grim little laugh.
“What on earth can you do, then? What's the good of your coming up like
this? How are you to get on here all alone? I can fight my own battles.
You'd much better go back.”
Mrs. Pendyce broke in:
“Oh, George; I can't see you cast off from us! I must be with you!”
George felt her trembling all over. He got up and walked to the window.
Mrs. Pendyce's voice followed:
“I won't try to separate you, George; I promise, dear. I couldn't, if
she loves you, and you love her so!”
Again George laughed that grim little laugh. And the fact that he was
deceiving her, meant to go on deceiving her, made him as hard as iron.
“Go back, Mother!” he said. “You'll only make things worse. This isn't a
woman's business. Let father do what he likes; I can hold on!”
Mrs. Pendyce did not answer, and he was obliged to look round. She was
sitting perfectly still with her hands in her lap, and his man's hatred
of anything conspicuous happening to a woman, to his own mother of all
people, took fiercer fire.
“Go back!” he repeated, “before there's any fuss! What good can you
possibly do? You can't leave father; that's absurd! You must go!”
Mrs. Pendyce answered:
“I can't do that, dear.”
George made an angry sound, but she was so motionless and pale that he
dimly perceived how she was suffering, and how little he knew of her who
had borne him.
Mrs. Pendyce broke the silence:
“But you, George dear? What is going to happen? How are you going to
manage?” And suddenly clasping her hands: “Oh! what is coming?”
Those words, embodying all that had been in his heart so long, were too
much for George. He went abruptly to the door.
“I can't stop now,” he said; “I'll come again this evening.”
Mrs. Pendyce looked up.
“Oh, George”
But as she had the habit of subordinating her feelings to the feelings
of others, she said no more, but tried to smile.
That smile smote George to the heart.
“Don't worry, Mother; try and cheer up. We'll go to the theatre. You get
the tickets!”
And trying to smile too, but turning lest he should lose his
self-control, he went away.
In the hall he came on his uncle, General Pendyce. He came on him from
behind, but knew him at once by that look of feeble activity about the
back of his knees, by his sloping yet upright shoulders, and the sound
of his voice, with its dry and querulous precision, as of a man whose
occupation has been taken from him.
The General turned round.
“Ah, George,” he said, “your mother's here, isn't she? Look at this that
your father's sent me!”
He held out a telegram in a shaky hand.
“Margery up at Green's Hotel. Go and see her at once.
“HORACE.”
And while George read the General looked at his nephew with eyes that
were ringed by little circles of darker pigment, and had crow's-footed
purses of skin beneath, earned by serving his country in tropical
climes.
“What's the meaning of it?” he said. “Go and see her? Of course, I'll go
and see her! Always glad to see your mother. But where's all the hurry?”
George perceived well enough that his father's pride would not let him
write to her, and though it was for himself that his mother had taken
this step, he sympathised with his father. The General fortunately gave
him little time to answer.
“She's up to get herself some dresses, I suppose? I've seen nothing of
you for a long time. When are you coming to dine with me? I heard at
Epsom that you'd sold your horse. What made you do that? What's your
father telegraphing to me like this for? It's not like him. Your
mother's not ill, is she?”
George shook his head, and muttering something about “Sorry, an
engagement--awful hurry,” was gone.
Left thus abruptly to himself, General Pendyce summoned a page, slowly
pencilled something on his card, and with his back to the only persons
in the hall, waited, his hands folded on the handle of his cane. And
while he waited he tried as far as possible to think of nothing. Having
served his country, his time now was nearly all devoted to waiting,
and to think fatigued and made him feel discontented, for he had had
sunstroke once, and fever several times. In the perfect precision of his
collar, his boots, his dress, his figure; in the way from time to time
he cleared his throat, in the strange yellow driedness of his face
between his carefully brushed whiskers, in the immobility of his white
hands on his cane, he gave the impression of a man sucked dry by a
system. Only his eyes, restless and opinionated, betrayed the essential
Pendyce that was behind.
He went up to the ladies' drawing-room, clutching that telegram. It
worried him. There was something odd about it, and he was not accustomed
to pay calls in the morning. He found his sister-in-law seated at an
open window, her face unusually pink, her eyes rather defiantly bright.
She greeted him gently, and General Pendyce was not the man to discern
what was not put under his nose. Fortunately for him, that had never
been his practice.
“How are you, Margery?” he said. “Glad to see you in town. How's Horace?
Look here what he's sent me!” He offered her the telegram, with the air
of slightly avenging an offence; then added in surprise, as though he
had just thought of it: “Is there anything I can do for you?”
Mrs. Pendyce read the telegram, and she, too, like George, felt sorry
for the sender.
“Nothing, thanks, dear Charles,” she said slowly. “I'm all right. Horace
gets so nervous!”
General Pendyce looked at her; for a moment his eyes flickered, then,
since the truth was so improbable and so utterly in any case beyond his
philosophy, he accepted her statement.
“He shouldn't go sending telegrams like this,” he said. “You might have
been ill for all I could tell. It spoiled my breakfast!” For though, as
a fact, it had not prevented his completing a hearty meal, he fancied
that he felt hungry. “When I was quartered at Halifax there was a fellow
who never sent anything but telegrams. Telegraph Jo they called him. He
commanded the old Bluebottles. You know the old Bluebottles? If Horace
is going to take to this sort of thing he'd better see a specialist;
it's almost certain to mean a breakdown. You're up about dresses, I see.
When do you come to town? The season's getting on.”
Mrs. Pendyce was not afraid of her husband's brother, for though
punctilious and accustomed to his own way with inferiors, he was hardly
a man to inspire awe in his social equals. It was, therefore, not
through fear that she did not tell him the truth, but through an
instinct for avoiding all unnecessary suffering too strong for her,
and because the truth was really untellable. Even to herself it seemed
slightly ridiculous, and she knew the poor General would take it so
dreadfully to heart.
“I don't know about coming up this season. The garden is looking so
beautiful, and there's Bee's engagement. The dear child is so happy!”
The General caressed a whisker with his white hand.
“Ah yes,” he said--“young Tharp! Let's see, he's not the eldest. His
brother's in my old corps. What does this young fellow do with himself?”
Mrs. Pendyce answered:
“He's only farming. I'm afraid he'll have nothing to speak of, but he's
a dear good boy. It'll be a long engagement. Of course, there's nothing
in farming, and Horace insists on their having a thousand a year. It
depends so much on Mr. Tharp. I think they could do perfectly well on
seven hundred to start with, don't you, Charles?”
General Pendyce's answer was not more conspicuously to the point than
usual, for he was a man who loved to pursue his own trains of thought.
“What about George?”, he said. “I met him in the hall as I was coming
in, but he ran off in the very deuce of a hurry. They told me at Epsom
that he was hard hit.”
His eyes, distracted by a fly for which he had taken a dislike, failed
to observe his sister-in-law's face.
“Hard hit?” she repeated.
“Lost a lot of money. That won't do, you know, Margery--that won't do. A
little mild gambling's one thing.”
Mrs. Pendyce said nothing; her face was rigid: It was the face of a
woman on the point of saying: “Do not compel me to hint that you are
boring me!”
The General went on:
“A lot of new men have taken to racing that no one knows anything about.
That fellow who bought George's horse, for instance; you'd never have
seen his nose in Tattersalls when I was a young man. I find when I go
racing I don't know half the colours. It spoils the pleasure. It's no
longer the close borough that it was. George had better take care what
he's about. I can't imagine what we're coming to!”
On Margery Pendyce's hearing, those words, “I can't imagine what we're
coming to,” had fallen for four-and-thirty years, in every sort of
connection, from many persons. It had become part of her life, indeed,
to take it for granted that people could imagine nothing; just as the
solid food and solid comfort of Worsted Skeynes and the misty mornings
and the rain had become part of her life. And it was only the fact that
her nerves were on edge and her heart bursting that made those words
seem intolerable that morning; but habit was even now too strong, and
she kept silence.
The General, to whom an answer was of no great moment, pursued his
thoughts.
“And you mark my words, Margery; the elections will go against us. The
country's in a dangerous state.”
Mrs. Pendyce said:
“Oh, do you think the Liberals will really get in?”
From custom there was a shade of anxiety in her voice which she did not
feel.
“Think?” repeated General Pendyce. “I pray every night to God they
won't!”
Folding both hands on the silver knob of his Malacca cane, he stared
over them at the opposing wall; and there was something universal in
that fixed stare, a sort of blank and not quite selfish apprehension.
Behind his personal interests his ancestors had drilled into him the
impossibility of imagining that he did not stand for the welfare of his
country. Mrs. Pendyce, who had so often seen her husband look like that,
leaned out of the window above the noisy street.
The General rose.
“Well,” he said, “if I can't do anything for you, Margery, I'll take
myself off; you're busy with your dressmakers. Give my love to Horace,
and tell him not to send me another telegram like that.”
And bending stiffly, he pressed her hand with a touch of real courtesy
and kindness, took up his hat, and went away. Mrs. Pendyce, watching him
descend the stairs, watching his stiff sloping shoulders, his head with
its grey hair brushed carefully away from the centre parting, the backs
of his feeble, active knees, put her hand to her breast and sighed, for
with him she seemed to see descending all her past life, and that one
cannot see unmoved.
CHAPTER III
MRS. BELLEW SQUARES HER ACCOUNTS
Mrs. Bellew sat on her bed smoothing out the halves of a letter; by her
side was her jewel-case. Taking from it an amethyst necklet, an emerald
pendant, and a diamond ring, she wrapped them in cottonwool, and put
them in an envelope. The other jewels she dropped one by one into her
lap, and sat looking at them. At last, putting two necklets and two
rings back into the jewel-case, she placed the rest in a little green
box, and taking that and the envelope, went out. She called a hansom,
drove to a post-office, and sent a telegram:
PENDYCE, STOICS' CLUB.
“Be at studio six to seven.--H.”
From the post-office she drove to her jeweller's, and many a man who saw
her pass with the flush on her cheeks and the smouldering look in her
eyes, as though a fire were alight within her, turned in his tracks and
bitterly regretted that he knew not who she was, or whither going. The
jeweller took the jewels from the green box, weighed them one by one,
and slowly examined each through his lens. He was a little man with a
yellow wrinkled face and a weak little beard, and having fixed in his
mind the sum that he would give, he looked at his client prepared to
mention less. She was sitting with her elbows on the counter, her chin
resting in her hands, and her eyes were fixed on him. He decided somehow
to mention the exact sum.
“Is that all?”
“Yes, madam; that is the utmost.”
“Very well, but I must have it now in cash!”
The jeweller's eyes flickered.
“It's a large sum,” he said--“most unusual. I haven't got such a sum in
the place.”
“Then please send out and get it, or I must go elsewhere.”
The jeweller brought his hands together, and washed them nervously.
“Excuse me a moment; I'll consult my partner.”
He went away, and from afar he and his partner spied her nervously. He
came back with a forced smile. Mrs. Bellew was sitting as he had left
her.
“It's a fortunate chance; I think we can just do it, madam.”
“Give me notes, please, and a sheet of paper.” The jeweller brought
them.
Mrs. Bellew wrote a letter, enclosed it with the bank notes in the bulky
envelope she had brought, addressed it, and sealed the whole.
“Call a cab, please!”
The jeweller called a cab.
“Chelsea Embankment!”
The cab bore her away.
Again in the crowded streets so full of traffic, people turned to look
after her. The cabman, who put her down at the Albert Bridge, gazed
alternately at the coins in his hands and the figure of his fare, and
wheeling his cab towards the stand, jerked his thumb in her direction.
Mrs. Bellew walked fast down a street till, turning a corner, she came
suddenly on a small garden with three poplar-trees in a row. She opened
its green gate without pausing, went down a path, and stopped at the
first of three green doors. A young man with a beard, resembling an
artist, who was standing behind the last of the three doors, watched her
with a knowing smile on his face. She took out a latch-key, put it in
the lock, opened the door, and passed in.
The sight of her face seemed to have given the artist an idea. Propping
his door open, he brought an easel and canvas, and setting them so that
he could see the corner where she had gone in, began to sketch.
An old stone fountain with three stone frogs stood in the garden near
that corner, and beyond it was a flowering currant-bush, and beyond
this again the green door on which a slanting gleam of sunlight fell. He
worked for an hour, then put his easel back and went out to get his tea.
Mrs. Bellew came out soon after he was gone. She closed the door behind
her, and stood still. Taking from her pocket the bulky envelope, she
slipped it into the letter-box; then bending down, picked up a twig, and
placed it in the slit, to prevent the lid falling with a rattle. Having
done this, she swept her hands down her face and breast as though to
brush something from her, and walked away. Beyond the outer gate she
turned to the left, and took the same street back to the river. She
walked slowly, luxuriously, looking about her. Once or twice she
stopped, and drew a deep breath, as though she could not have enough of
the air. She went as far as the Embankment, and stood leaning her elbows
on the parapet. Between the finger and thumb of one hand she held
a small object on which the sun was shining. It was a key. Slowly,
luxuriously, she stretched her hand out over the water, parted her thumb
and finger, and let it fall.
CHAPTER IV
MRS. PENDYCE'S INSPIRATION
But George did not come to take his mother to the theatre, and she
whose day had been passed in looking forward to the evening, passed that
evening in a drawing-room full of furniture whose history she did not
know, and a dining-room full of people eating in twos and threes and
fours, at whom she might look, but to whom she must not speak, to whom
she did not even want to speak, so soon had the wheel of life rolled
over her wonder and her expectation, leaving it lifeless in her breast.
And all that night, with one short interval of sleep, she ate of bitter
isolation and futility, and of the still more bitter knowledge: “George
does not want me; I'm no good to him!”
Her heart, seeking consolation, went back again and again to the time
when he had wanted her; but it was far to go, to the days of holland
suits, when all those things that he desired--slices of pineapple,
Benson's old carriage-whip, the daily reading out of “Tom Brown's
School-days,” the rub with Elliman when he sprained his little ankle,
the tuck-up in bed--were in her power alone to give.
This night she saw with fatal clearness that since he went to school he
had never wanted her at all. She had tried so many years to believe that
he did, till it had become part of her life, as it was part of her
life to say her prayers night and morning; and now she found it was all
pretence. But, lying awake, she still tried to believe it, because to
that she had been bound when she brought him, firstborn, into the world.
Her other son, her daughters, she loved them too, but it was not the
same thing, quite; she had never wanted them to want her, because that
part of her had been given once for all to George.
The street noises died down at last; she had slept two hours when they
began again. She lay listening. And the noises and her thoughts became
tangled in her exhausted brain--one great web of weariness, a
feeling that it was all senseless and unnecessary, the emanation of
cross-purposes and cross-grainedness, the negation of that gentle
moderation, her own most sacred instinct. And an early wasp, attracted
by the sweet perfumes of her dressing-table, roused himself from the
corner where he had spent the night, and began to hum and hover over the
bed. Mrs. Pendyce was a little afraid of wasps, so, taking a moment
when he was otherwise engaged, she stole out, and fanned him with her
nightdress-case till, perceiving her to be a lady, he went away. Lying
down again, she thought: 'People will worry them until they sting, and
then kill them; it's so unreasonable,' not knowing that she was putting
all her thoughts on suffering in a single nutshell.
She breakfasted upstairs, unsolaced by any news from George. Then
with no definite hope, but a sort of inner certainty, she formed the
resolution to call on Mrs. Bellew. She determined, however, first to
visit Mr. Paramor, and, having but a hazy notion of the hour when men
begin to work, she did not dare to start till past eleven, and told her
cabman to drive her slowly. He drove her, therefore, faster than
his wont. In Leicester Square the passage of a Personage between two
stations blocked the traffic, and on the footways were gathered a crowd
of simple folk with much in their hearts and little in their stomachs,
who raised a cheer as the Personage passed. Mrs. Pendyce looked eagerly
from her cab, for she too loved a show.
The crowd dispersed, and the cab went on.
It was the first time she had ever found herself in the business
apartment of any professional man less important than a dentist. From
the little waiting-room, where they handed her the Times, which she
could not read from excitement, she caught sight of rooms lined to the
ceilings with leather books and black tin boxes, initialed in white to
indicate the brand, and of young men seated behind lumps of paper that
had been written on. She heard a perpetual clicking noise which roused
her interest, and smelled a peculiar odour of leather and disinfectant
which impressed her disagreeably. A youth with reddish hair and a pen
in his hand passed through and looked at her with a curious stare
immediately averted. She suddenly felt sorry for him and all those
other young men behind the lumps of paper, and the thought went flashing
through her mind, 'I suppose it's all because people can't agree.'
She was shown in to Mr. Paramor at last. In his large empty room, with
its air of past grandeur, she sat gazing at three La France roses in a
tumbler of water with the feeling that she would never be able to begin.
Mr. Paramor's eyebrows, which jutted from his clean, brown face like
little clumps of pothooks, were iron-grey, and iron-grey his hair
brushed back from his high forehead. Mrs. Pendyce wondered why he
looked five years younger than Horace, who was his junior, and ten years
younger than Charles, who, of course, was younger still. His eyes, which
from iron-grey some inner process of spiritual manufacture had made into
steel colour, looked young too, although they were grave; and the smile
which twisted up the corners of his mouth looked very young.
“Well,” he said, “it's a great pleasure to see you.”
Mrs. Pendyce could only answer with a smile.
Mr. Paramor put the roses to his nose.
“Not so good as yours,” he said, “are they? but the best I can do.”
Mrs. Pendyce blushed with pleasure.
“My garden is looking so beautiful----” Then, remembering that she no
longer had a garden, she stopped; but remembering also that, though she
had lost her garden, Mr. Paramor still had his, she added quickly: “And
yours, Mr. Paramor--I'm sure it must be looking lovely.”
Mr. Paramor drew out a kind of dagger with which he had stabbed some
papers to his desk, and took a letter from the bundle.
“Yes,” he said, “it's looking very nice. You'd like to see this, I
expect.”
“Bellew v. Bellew and Pendyce” was written at the top. Mrs. Pendyce
stared at those words as though fascinated by their beauty; it was long
before she got beyond them. For the first time the full horror of these
matters pierced the kindly armour that lies between mortals and what
they do not like to think of. Two men and a woman wrangling, fighting,
tearing each other before the eyes of all the world. A woman and two men
stripped of charity and gentleness, of moderation and sympathy-stripped
of all that made life decent and lovable, squabbling like savages before
the eyes of all the world. Two men, and one of them her son, and
between them a woman whom both of them had loved! “Bellew v. Bellew and
Pendyce”! And this would go down to fame in company with the pitiful
stories she had read from time to time with a sort of offended interest;
in company with “Snooks v. Snooks and Stiles,” “Horaday v. Horaday,”
“Bethany v. Bethany and Sweetenham.” In company with all those cases
where everybody seemed so dreadful, yet where she had often and often
felt so sorry, as if these poor creatures had been fastened in the
stocks by some malignant, loutish spirit, for all that would to come and
jeer at. And horror filled her heart. It was all so mean, and gross, and
common.
The letter contained but a few words from a firm of solicitors
confirming an appointment. She looked up at Mr. Paramor. He stopped
pencilling on his blotting-paper, and said at once:
“I shall be seeing these people myself tomorrow afternoon. I shall do my
best to make them see reason.”
She felt from his eyes that he knew what she was suffering, and was even
suffering with her.
“And if--if they won't?”
“Then I shall go on a different tack altogether, and they must look out
for themselves.”
Mrs. Pendyce sank back in her chair; she seemed to smell again that
smell of leather and disinfectant, and hear a sound of incessant
clicking. She felt faint, and to disguise that faintness asked at
random, “What does 'without prejudice' in this letter mean?”
Mr. Paramor smiled.
“That's an expression we always use,” he said. “It means that when we
give a thing away, we reserve to ourselves the right of taking it back
again.”
Mrs. Pendyce, who did not understand, murmured:
“I see. But what have they given away?”
Paramor put his elbows on the desk, and lightly pressed his finger-tips
together.
“Well,” he said, “properly speaking, in a matter like this, the other
side and I are cat and dog.
“We are supposed to know nothing about each other and to want to know
less, so that when we do each other a courtesy we are obliged to save
our faces by saying, 'We don't really do you one.' D'you understand?”
Again Mrs. Pendyce murmured:
“I see.”
“It sounds a little provincial, but we lawyers exist by reason of
provincialism. If people were once to begin making allowances for each
other, I don't know where we should be.”
Mrs. Pendyce's eyes fell again on those words, “Bellew v. Bellew and
Pendyce,” and again, as though fascinated by their beauty, rested there.
“But you wanted to see me about something else too, perhaps?” said Mr.
Paramor.
A sudden panic came over her.
“Oh no, thank you. I just wanted to know what had been done. I've come
up on purpose to see George. You told me that I----”
Mr. Paramor hastened to her aid.
“Yes, yes; quite right--quite right.”
“Horace hasn't come with me.”
“Good!”
“He and George sometimes don't quite----”
“Hit it off? They're too much alike.”
“Do you think so? I never saw----”
“Not in face, not in face; but they've both got----”
Mr. Paramor's meaning was lost in a smile; and Mrs. Pendyce, who did
not know that the word “Pendycitis” was on the tip of his tongue, smiled
vaguely too.
“George is very determined,” she said. “Do you think--oh, do you
think, Mr. Paramor, that you will be able to persuade Captain Bellew's
solicitors----”
Mr. Paramor threw himself back in his chair, and his hand covered what
he had written on his blotting-paper.
“Yes,” he said slowly---- “oh yes, yes!”
But Mrs. Pendyce had had her answer. She had meant to speak of her visit
to Helen Bellew, but now her thought was:
'.e won't persuade them; I feel it. Let me get away!'
Again she seemed to hear the incessant clicking, to smell leather and
disinfectant, to see those words, “Bellew v. Bellew and, Pendyce.”
She held out her hand.
Mr. Paramor took it in his own and looked at the floor.
“Good-bye,” he said, “good-bye. What's your address--Green's Hotel? I'll
come and tell you what I do. I know--I know!”
Mrs. Pendyce, on whom those words “I know--I know!” had a strange,
emotionalising effect, as though no one had ever known before, went away
with quivering lips. In her life no one had ever “known”--not indeed
that she could or would complain of such a trifle, but the fact
remained. And at this moment, oddly, she thought of her husband, and
wondered what he was doing, and felt sorry for him.
But Mr. Paramor went back to his seat and stared at what he had written
on his blotting paper. It ran thus:
“We stand on our petty rights here,
And our potty dignity there;
We make no allowance for others,
They make no allowance for us;
We catch hold of them by the ear,
They grab hold of us by the hair
The result is a bit of a muddle
That ends in a bit of a fuss.”
He saw that it neither rhymed nor scanned, and with a grave face he tore
it up.
Again Mrs. Pendyce told her cabman to drive slowly, and again he drove
her faster than usual; yet that drive to Chelsea seemed to last for
ever, and interminable were the turnings which the cabman took, each one
shorter than the last, as if he had resolved to see how much his horse's
mouth could bear.
'.oor thing!' thought Mrs. Pendyce; 'its mouth must be so sore, and it's
quite unnecessary.' She put her hand up through the trap. “Please take
me in a straight line. I don't like corners.”
The cabman obeyed. It worried him terribly to take one corner instead of
the six he had purposed on his way; and when she asked him his fare,
he charged her a shilling extra for the distance he had saved by going
straight. Mrs. Pendyce paid it, knowing no better, and gave him sixpence
over, thinking it might benefit the horse; and the cabman, touching his
hat, said:
“Thank you, my lady,” for to say “my lady” was his principle when he
received eighteen pence above his fare.
Mrs. Pendyce stood quite a minute on the pavement, stroking the horse's
nose and thinking:
'. must go in; it's silly to come all this way and not go in!'
But her heart beat so that she could hardly swallow.
At last she rang.
Mrs. Bellew was seated on the sofa in her little drawing-room whistling
to a canary in the open window. In the affairs of men there is an
irony constant and deep, mingled with the very springs of life. The
expectations of Mrs. Pendyce, those timid apprehensions of this meeting
which had racked her all the way, were lamentably unfulfilled. She had
rehearsed the scene ever since it came into her head; the reality seemed
unfamiliar. She felt no nervousness and no hostility, only a sort of
painful interest and admiration. And how could this or any other woman
help falling in love with George?
The first uncertain minute over, Mrs. Bellew's eyes were as friendly as
if she had been quite within her rights in all she had done; and Mrs.
Pendyce could not help meeting friendliness halfway.
“Don't be angry with me for coming. George doesn't know. I felt I must
come to see you. Do you think that you two quite know all you're doing?
It seems so dreadful, and it's not only yourselves, is it?”
Mrs. Bellew's smile vanished.
“Please don't say 'you two,'. she said.
Mrs. Pendyce stammered:
“I don't understand.”
Mrs. Bellew looked her in the face and smiled; and as she smiled she
seemed to become a little coarser.
“Well, I think it's quite time you did! I don't love your son. I did
once, but I don't now. I told him so yesterday, once for all.”
Mrs. Pendyce heard those words, which made so vast, so wonderful
a difference--words which should have been like water in a
wilderness--with a sort of horror, and all her spirit flamed up into her
eyes.
“You don't love him?” she cried.
She felt only a blind sense of insult and affront.
This woman tire of George? Tire of her son? She looked at Mrs. Bellew,
on whose face was a kind of inquisitive compassion, with eyes that had
never before held hatred.
“You have tired of him? You have given him up? Then the sooner I go to
him the better! Give me the address of his rooms, please.”
Helen Bellew knelt down at the bureau and wrote on an envelope, and the
grace of the woman pierced Mrs. Pendyce to the heart.
She took the paper. She had never learned the art of abuse, and no words
could express what was in her heart, so she turned and went out.
Mrs. Bellew's voice sounded quick and fierce behind her.
“How could I help getting tired? I am not you. Now go!”
Mrs. Pendyce wrenched open the outer door. Descending the stairs, she
felt for the bannister. She had that awful sense of physical soreness
and shrinking which violence, whether their own or others', brings to
gentle souls.