replies Stanhope. “The half-truths, or the quarter-truths, which they
contain, are as poisonous as nux vomica.”
“Pray, then, let me go and pick oakum with the unfortunate man whom you
consider I have contaminated.”
Stanhope with difficulty keeps down his rising anger.
“My dear Bertram, I regret that you appreciate my intentions so little.
I received the communication I speak of from Mr. Adeane concerning
you; and if I had done what I ought I should perhaps have given you
some trouble. But I know you; and I know that it is an exaggerated
altruism which runs away with you into dangerous places; and that you
are the last man in the world to inculcate or to approve of crime.”
“But what _is_ crime?” murmurs Bertram. “Have not regicides many
apologists? Is Carlyle alone in admiring Cromwell? As boys are we not
adorers of Harmodius and Aristogiton?”
“Fortunately,” continues Sir Henry, waving aside these historical
precedents, “the magistrate took a lenient view of the case, considered
it excused by drink (we are always so immorally lenient to drink
in this country!), and so I was enabled, by using unacknowledged
influence (a thing I loathe to do), to get the affair hushed up. But
I cannot prevent your being marked by the police and considered a
dangerous person. You will probably be ‘shadowed’ for some time, and if
anything of this sort occurs again it will be out of my power to save
you from exceedingly disagreeable consequences.”
Bertram is silent.
“Are you anxious to be a martyr in company with Hopper?” asks Stanhope,
with impatience.
“If Hopper be made one, certainly.”
Stanhope rises from his chair.
“I regret that I intervened to screen you from the consequences of
your lubies. I stretched my prerogative, and risked the accusation of
illegality in my functions, in order to extricate you from the dilemma
in which your own imprudence placed you, and this I did in memory of
old Eton days. But I assure you that I shall not interfere again, and I
am sorry that you so little appreciate my friendship. Men in office, it
is true, should have no personal feelings.”
“I am of course grateful for your personal regard,” replies Bertram,
in icy tones, “but I cannot allow any one to criticise or control my
opinions.”
Sir Henry does not deign to reply. He takes his hat, and with a curt
“good-day” goes out of the room.
“How impossible it is to live under a government which is utterly
barbarian and unenlightened!” reflects Bertram; “and to think that
Stanhope could become a member of it! Such a fine scholar, such
a devoted Hellenist, as he was at Eton! And now sunk to a Home
Secretary!--a keeper of the ban-dogs of the law! It is so extraordinary
that these Philistines never can comprehend the beauty of altruistic
and collectivist views. They always confound them with anarchy! As
if any two creeds could possibly be more opposed. It is extremely
disagreeable all the same. ‘Marked by the police!’ as if I had broken
into a silversmith’s shop! I wonder where Critchett kept the mineral
waters? I don’t know where anything is. If I had always served
myself, how much better it would have been. It is so degrading this
continual dependence upon others. Every kind of wrong-doing brings its
own chastisement, and our heresy and egotism in keeping others in
servitude is visited on us by our own impotency to help ourselves in
the simplest acts of daily life.”
Some one taps at the door in the midst of his reflections.
“Come in!” he cried, irritably. “Will annoyances never cease?”
“It’s me, sir,” says Mrs. Brown. “Please as how I’ve come to bring you
back these two sovereigns as you gave my son.”
“Why? I gave them willingly.”
“I can’t hev him paid for his misbehaviour, sir, and he did misbehave
hisself. Kate spoke in jest, and Sam, being tipsy, took it in earnest.”
Bertram, fascinated by a social problem, answers dreamily. “Tell me,
Mrs. Brown, your son attended a Board School?”
“He did, sir.”
“And he passed the fourth standard?”
“He did, sir.”
“Then, my good woman, what benefit has that education been to him?”
“Lord, none, sir; and nobbut fools could ever suppose as ’twould be
any!” replies Mrs. Brown, briskly.
“How very sad!” murmurs Bertram. “But I have always feared that the
whole system of modern education was one gigantic error. You cannot
feed minds wholesale as you feed machines.”
“’Tis sad as poor folks should be made to pay for such gammon as them
schools, sir,” says Mrs. Brown. “I beg your pardon humbly for my boy’s
misconduct, and you’ll please take back the money. As for the rest that
Ann hev told me I’ll make bold to say as I ’eartily agree with it. You
know, Mr. Bertram, I never could ’old with that pack o’ nonsense o’
your marriage with my girl.”
“I know you never approved, Mrs. Brown.”
“No, sir, ’cause I knows my place. Lord, sir, ye’d hev been miserable
and my poor girl too.”
“Not through any fault of mine, Mrs. Brown.”
“No, sir; perhaps not. But miserable ye’d both hev bin. We’ll allus
remember ye kindly, sir, and I ’opes as ye’ll still send us yer linen.”
“Certainly, certainly. I shall always be your friend. Pray take those
sovereigns.”
“No, sir; let ’em lie. And might I be so bold as to ask hev ye took up
your ’eritance, sir?”
“My cousin’s fortune? No, I have refused it.”
“Lord, sir! That’s a real right-down pity.”
“I do not see it so, Mrs. Brown.”
“Well, sir, a gent as wears such shirts as you shouldn’t quarrel with
his bread and butter----”
A postman at that moment comes through the antechamber into the room,
and tenders a registered letter with the receipt book for signature.
“What am I to do?” asks Bertram, helplessly. “Critchett has always seen
to things of this kind.”
“You’re to sign your name in the book, sir,” says Mrs. Brown. He
signs; and the postman retires.
“I’ll leave ye to read your letter, sir,” says Mrs. Brown; “and if a
poor woman may give ye a word of advice, take them cobwebs out of your
brain, sir, and open your eyes and see the world as ’tis. That ere
man as ye thought so much on was a raskill, as rotten as shellfish o’
Saturday nights. Ye’ve too good a ’eart, Mr. Bertram, a deal too good a
’eart; and if you make yourself honey flies will eat yer; that’s true
as gospel, sir.”
“Wilfrid! Wilfrid!” shouts an excited voice in the anteroom, as a
robust form and a ruddy face, the face and form of a country gentleman,
are visible in the distance.
Mrs. Brown discreetly retires.
“My dear Wilfrid, is it possibly true what I heard in the Marlborough
this moment?” cries Southwold, out of breath. “Have you actually
inherited the whole fortune of those Italian Erringtons, and have
never said a syllable about it to your aunt and myself? It is
really--really--most extraordinary conduct.”
“I do not see that the matter concerns you,” says Bertram, tranquilly.
“Not concern us?” repeats Southwold, considerably astonished. “Well,
anything so very fortunate occurring in my wife’s family must concern
every member of it. I never knew this young man, nor his father. There
was that unfortunate dissension between your people and his. But it
is very consoling that the grave has now closed on all past feud;
and that the poor fellow did not allow his father’s animosity to
alienate him from his kith and kin. I really cannot congratulate you
sufficiently.”
“There is nothing to congratulate me upon,” replies Bertram,
impatiently.
“What?”
“Nothing whatever.”
“Why?”
“Because I decline the bequest.”
“Eh?”
“I decline the bequest.”
Lord Southwold pants like a blown horse, his small blue eyes grow large
and black; his ruddy face deepens to purple. “Good God! You are mad as
a hatter!”
“Are hatters less sane than the rest of society? I am incredulous of
the possibility.”
“You can’t mean what you say--you are joking!”
“I am entirely serious. And, if you will allow me to say so, you must
be aware that the matter does not, I repeat, in the most remote manner
concern you.”
“Good Lord! Am I not your aunt’s husband?”
“I have always heard so, and Burke vouches for it.”
Southwold emits a strangled sound that is an oath, a snarl, and a groan
in one.
“You ought to be placed in a padded room, sir?” he says at length, when
he recovers his voice.
“Oh, I am never violent!” says Bertram with a slight smile, as he
glances at the pieces of the broken whip.
“Where do the money and estates go?” roars Southwold.
“To a very respectable destination--Magdalen College.”
“All of it?”
“All of it.”
“Oh Lord!”
The unhappy gentleman, gasping for breath, drops down on a seat.
“With this fortune you could marry Cicely Seymour! The girl likes
you--more fool she!”
Bertram changes colour.
“You have no right to speak of that young lady: she is your guest.”
Southwold becomes furious.
“You dare to lecture me? You infernal ass! who are only fit for a
strait-waistcoat.”
Bertram shrugs his shoulders.
“You are stark staring mad!” roars Southwold; “and I tell you you are a
disgrace to your family.”
Bertram smiles.
“How extremely immoral, then, to wish me to accept and administer a
great property.”
“Damnation!”
Southwold puts his hat on his head, strikes his cane violently on the
back of a chair, and rushes out of the room.
“What can it possibly matter to him?” murmurs Bertram. “The idea of
money excites some people as valerian does cats.”
Lord Southwold, in a whirlwind of disgust, walks as rapidly as a gouty
toe will let him through the three or four streets which divide him
from his own house in Berkeley Square, and mounts the staircase of
his home with his wrath at boiling-point. He goes into his wife’s
morning-room, where she and Cicely Seymour are sitting, one reading,
the other writing letters.
“It’s true!” he shouts. “It’s perfectly true! it’s been left to him
and he won’t have it--can you believe that? he won’t have it!”
Cicely looks up from her book and says nothing; his wife looks up from
her writing-pad and says with a sigh:
“I _can_ believe it--_of him_.”
“Well, I can’t; though I’ve heard him say it with my own ears,” returns
her lord, as he drops down on a soft seat with the air of a man
crushed, annihilated, effaced from creation.
“And he said, ‘What could it possibly matter to us?’” he added in a
faint tone.
Cicely closes her book.
“Well, dear Lord Southwold, why should it matter?”
“Why?” he ejaculates. “Why?”
“Why?” repeats his wife. “Oh, Cicely!”
“Well, why?” she says, a little impatiently. “If Mr. Bertram likes to
live a poor man instead of becoming a rich one, what business is it of
anybody’s?”
“Oh Lord!” sighs her host.
“Good heavens, Cicely!” cries his wife. “You might as well ask what
does a man’s suicide matter to his family?”
“Suicide is a disgrace, or at least it is esteemed so. This is an
honour.”
“An honour!” echo both her host and hostess in one breath.
“A very rare honour,” she replies, “to have a relative who in these
days has the courage and loyalty to principle to refuse a fortune.”
Southwold is too utterly amazed and shocked to have any power to answer
her.
“My dear girl, this is very far-fetched,” says his wife. “You are
talking great nonsense, and approving great folly. I cannot believe
that even my nephew Wilfrid will be capable of adhering to such a crazy
and thankless decision.”
“I am sure he will adhere to it,” says Cicely Seymour, warmly. “At
least if he do not I shall be very mistaken in him. Do you think,” she
adds with indignation, “that his principles are mere sugared beignets,
mere frothy soufflées of eggs and cream?”
“His principles!” cries Southwold, with a snort like an angry horse.
“Do you mean those preposterous tomfooleries with which he entertained
us yesterday?”
“I mean the doctrines taught in his own journal. He is an
individualist, an altruist, a collectivist, a Mazzïnist, a Tolstoi-ist.
How could such a man with any consistency, with any decency, accept a
great fortune?”
“My dear Cicely,” said Lady Southwold, with unkind incisiveness. “Only
a great fortune could get such opinions forgiven to him; and as he is
going to marry a washerwoman’s daughter, if what you heard in the Park
is true, he will certainly never get her into society on any income
less than thirty thousand a year!”
“He will not want to get her into society. Nobody gathers a dog-rose to
put it under a forcing-frame.”
“You are very epigrammatic, my dear, but I am afraid you have not much
more common sense than Wilfrid Bertram.”
“John,” she adds to her husband, “do you think it would be of any use
if I went and tried to persuade him to suspend his decision?”
“I don’t think it would be the slightest,” replies her lord. “But you
might try. There would be no harm in trying. Tell him it’s flying in
the face of Providence.”
“I am afraid he doesn’t believe in Providence!” says Lady Southwold,
with a sigh.
Twenty minutes later she returns to her morning-room with a discouraged
air, and draws off her gloves.
“He was not at home,” she says, in answer to her husband’s look of
interrogation. “The door was shut, and his card was stuck under the
bell with ‘Out’ written upon it. I suppose I could have done no good
if I had seen him. For I met Scott-Gwynne in the street, and he told
me he had just heard Mr. Fanshawe saying in the reading-room at the
Travellers’ that Wilfrid had refused formally, and signed his refusal.
Fanshawe was present.”
“But Mr. Fanshawe as a Socialist, as a Radical, must approve the
refusal?” says Cicely Seymour, from where she sits by a stand of
Malmaison roses.
Southwold laughs grimly.
“Fanshawe thinks all wealth should be equally distributed; but so long
as it isn’t so, he gets all he can for himself, and considers everybody
should do the same who has the opportunity.”
Cicely is silent.
“I suppose Wilfrid has gone to have tea and shrimps with the
washerwoman,” says Lady Southwold. “Cicely, give me some tea, please. I
fear shrimps are an unknown joy to us.”
Cicely rises and goes over to the tea-table.
“Are you really positive that he is going to marry this girl?” asks his
aunt, as Cicely hands her a cup and some muffin.
“The mother of the girl said so,” replies Cicely, coldly. “She did not,
herself, seem to care about it.”
Lord Southwold laughs savagely.
“To make a _mésalliance_, and not even to be welcome! By Jove! The
fellow ought to be shot. Disgracing both our families in such a manner.”
“You are unfair to him, Lord Southwold,” says Cicely.
“In what way, my dear?”
“You do not attempt to enter into his views, his motives, his
principles. His opinions may be somewhat exaggerated, but his loyalty
to them is none the less admirable.”
“Oh, you do admit they’re exaggerated?”
“Some of them, yes. At least, in the _Age to Come_ there are things
which one cannot wholly accept, but they always err on the side of
generosity! And he is always consistent. Mr. Fanshawe may be more
politic, but he is far less to be respected. You blame the refusal of
this fortune. But you must admit it shows his consistency.”
“Only fools are consistent,” says Southwold, with unspeakable contempt.
“Really,” cries Lady Southwold, “one would think you were in love with
Wilfrid to hear you, Cicely.”
Cicely colours a little.
“One is not necessarily in love because one can see two sides to a
question. It seems to me extremely unjust to quarrel with anybody for
endeavouring loyally to carry out the views which they profess. You
seem to admire Mr. Fanshawe’s opportunism: I do not.”
“Fanshawe is a shrewd man of the world, Wilfrid is a monomaniac who has
gone daft on altruism.”
“Or Annie-ism, as Lord Marlow observed with such exquisite wit,” says
Cicely from her retreat amongst the roses, whither she has returned
after dispensing the tea.
A footman puts aside the _portières_ of one of the doors, and announces:
“Mr. Bertram.”
There is a dead silence.
Lord and Lady Southwold stare blankly at him.
Cicely rises from her bower of roses and crosses the room to him. She
holds out her hand with a charming smile.
“Let me congratulate you on your marriage, Mr. Bertram,” she says, in a
very kind, sweet voice.
Bertram looks at her with a little embarrassment.
“It is very good of you, Miss Seymour; you are the only person who has
said a kind word----”
“A kind word! Can you expect kind words?” begins Southwold, in great
ire.
“My dear Wilfrid, when you afflict and disgrace us so,” says his aunt.
Bertram silences them with an impatient movement.
“Allow me to speak. My marriage will not disgrace you, for it will not
take place----”
“Thank God!” cries Lady Southwold.
“It is not I who have withdrawn. It is--it is--Miss Brown, with the
consent of her family. But I did not come to speak of this matter,
which is one purely personal; one with which I was not aware you were
acquainted. I came to apologise to Lord Southwold for my rudeness to
him a little while ago.”
“All right, all right,” replies that choleraic but amiable person.
“I’m afraid I used strong language myself; but really your pig-headed
illusions are so uncommonly trying to a plain, ordinary man like
myself----”
“And you haven’t refused the inheritance, Wilfrid?” asks his aunt, in
great anxiety.
“I have refused, certainly,” replies Bertram; “I have signed and sealed
refusal.”
Southwold emits a very wicked word; his wife groans aloud. Cicely
Seymour, who has gone back to the roses, listens with a face grown
bright with interest and approval.
“Miss Seymour does not blame me?” says Bertram, softly.
“No; I should do as you have done.”
“Thanks,” says Bertram, very gravely. Then he takes a registered letter
out of his pocket.
“I have just received this,” he continues. “Will you allow me to read
it to you? It was sent to me by the poor vicar of a village in the
Pontine marshes, near which my cousin met his death. He says that my
cousin dictated it as he lay dying in his presbytery, and the priest
wrote it; it has been sent to me through the Embassy in Rome. Hence
the delay. To Folliott of course the man of business had telegraphed.
The letter which he dictated to this priest is, of course, in Italian.
I propose to translate it to you, for I think my uncle and you do not
know that language. It is very short.”
He speaks to his aunt, but he looks at Cicely Seymour.
“‘I am a dead man,’” he reads aloud from the letter. “‘An old tusker
has let life out of me for ever. You will get this when I am gone.
I wish we had known each other. I have left you all I possess, not
because you are a relative, but because I think you will do good with
it. I have not been a student, but I have seen some numbers of your
journal, and though I do not agree with you in all your opinions, I
see you care for the poor. Come and live on my lands, and you’ll have
work enough cut out for you. I have not done my duty--do yours.’ It is
signed by him, and the signature is witnessed.”
They are all silent.
Lady Southwold has tears in her eyes.
“There is a postscript,” continues Bertram, “‘Take care of my horses
and dogs.’ The priest adds that the poor fellow had desired him to send
it to the English Embassy, and died half an hour after dictating it.
That is all.”
“It is very touching,” says his aunt. “I wish we had known him.”
“So do I.”
“A pity you did not get it earlier,” says Southwold, “or had not been
so precipitate.”
Bertram folds the letter up and looks across at the Malmaison roses.
“Magdalen College,” adds Southwold, grimly, “won’t trouble itself much
about the horses and dogs.”
“Can’t you withdraw your refusal, Wilfrid?” asks his aunt.
Bertram is silent.
“Would they let you?” asks Southwold.
“It is a cruel position to be placed in,” says Bertram.
“Would it be utterly impossible,” says Southwold, sarcastically, “for
you to regard it, as a mere, humdrum, ordinary Philistine person like
myself would do, as a very fortuitous and felicitous piece of good
luck?”
“Good luck!” echoes Bertram, in disgust. “Cannot you see that whatever
I do I must feel humiliation and remorse; that however I may decide, I
must feel that I leave some duty undone?”
“No,” says Southwold, very shortly, “I really cannot see anything of
the sort. But I am obtuse, and I am very commonplace.”
There is again a prolonged silence.
It is broken by the low, clear voice of Cicely Seymour, on whose hair
the last rays of the dim red London sun are shining in a nimbus.
“I understand what Mr. Bertram feels. To accept this fortune will be
painful, and even odious to him with his views. But to let it go to
others, even to Oxford, must be, after receiving this letter, equally
distressing to him because he will feel that he has failed to carry out
a dead man’s trust. Is not that your meaning, Mr. Bertram?”
“It is.”
“These are very fine-drawn sentiments, and they are, I confess, wholly
beyond me,” says Southwold, with gruff contempt.
“I know what they both mean,” says his wife. “But to me too it is, I
admit, rather far-fetched. It seems to me so easy and so simple to go
back to Folliott and Hake and say, ‘I have changed my mind; I accept.’”
“But would it be right to do so?” says Bertram. “How can I be sure that
the foul fiend of selfishness is not deluding me by taking the shape of
duty?”
“You split straws!” growls Southwold. “The business of the world would
never get done if men hemmed and hawed and tortured themselves as you
do. _Can_ you retract your refusal? That’s the main question.”
“I can. Folliott said that they should take no action on it for
twenty-four hours, but hold it in abeyance for that term. Fanshawe
suggested that, indeed insisted on it.”
“Fortunate for you that a practical man was with you. I have a respect
for Mr. Fanshawe which I did not feel before. Well, my dear Wilfrid,
you can’t hesitate.”
Bertram does hesitate.
He looks across at the roses.
“Will you decide for me, Miss Seymour?”
“It is a great responsibility,” she replies, and her colour rises.
She plays with one of the roses nervously for a few moments. At last
she looks up and says gravely:
“I think you should accept, Mr. Bertram. To you such wealth would be no
sinecure, but always regarded as a great trust to be employed for the
welfare of others.”
Bertram bends his head.
“Since you think so, I will endeavour to merit your opinion of me.”
“And if you go and live on the Italian lands you can be as
self-sacrificing and as wretched as you like,” adds Southwold,
gleefully. “Mosquitoes, malaria, malandrini, and the hourly
probability of a shot from behind a hedge, or a dagger-thrust from an
irate beggar, will certainly provide you with constant material for the
most active altruism.”
“Of course he will be in England half the time; there is a great deal
of the Errington property in England,” says Lady Southwold, before
whose mental vision many charming prospects are dancing; and she rises
and goes across to Cicely Seymour and kisses her on her sun-illumined
hair.
“You will always give Wilfrid good counsel, won’t you darling?” she
says, very tenderly.
“Mr. Bertram will want no counsel but his own conscience,” says
Cicely Seymour, with the colour in her cheeks. “Oh, Lord Southwold,
conscience is so rare in our days, it seems almost dead; you should not
laugh at those who through all mockery try to keep alive its sacred
flame!”
“Since Wilfrid has your esteem, my dear, I laugh at him no longer,”
says Southwold, with pleasant malice. “I am thoroughly convinced that
he is the wisest, and will be the happiest, of men.”
OUIDA.
UNWIN BROTHERS,
THE GRESHAM PRESS, WOKING AND LONDON
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Italicized or underlined text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.
Emboldened text is surrounded by equals signs: =bold=.
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.
Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.