The wedding cost Horace a large sum of money. You see, he could not do
less than behave handsomely by the bride, owing to his notorious
admiration for her; and of course the bridegroom needed setting up.
Horace practically furnished their home for them out of his own pocket;
it was not to be expected that Sidney should have resources. Further,
Sidney as a single man, paying seven-and-six a week for board and
lodging, could no doubt struggle along upon three pounds weekly. But
Sidney as a husband, with the nicest girl in the world to take care of,
and house-rent to pay, could not possibly perform the same feat.
Although he did no more work at the manufactory--Horace could not have
been so unbrotherly as to demand it--Horace paid him eight pounds a
week instead of three.
And the affair cost Horace a good deal besides money. But what could
Horace do? He decidedly would not have wished to wreck the happiness of
two young and beautiful lives, even had he possessed the power to do
so. And he did not possess the power. Those two did not consult Horace
before falling in love. They merely fell in love, and there was an end
of it--and an end of Horace too! Horace had to suffer. He did suffer.
Perhaps it was for his highest welfare that other matters came to
monopolize his mind. One sorrow drives out another. If you sit on a pin
you are apt to forget that you have the toothache. The earthenware
manufactory was not going well. Plenty of business was being done, but
not at the right prices. Crushed between the upper and nether
millstones of the McKinley Tariff and German competition, Horace, in
company with other manufacturers, was breathing out his life's blood in
the shape of capital. The truth was that he had never had enough
capital. He had heavily mortgaged the house at Toft End in order to
purchase his partners' shares in the business and have the whole
undertaking to himself, and he profoundly regretted it. He needed every
penny that he could collect; the strictest economy was necessary if he
meant to survive the struggle. And here he was paying eight pounds a
week to a personage purely ornamental, after having squandered hundreds
in rendering that personage comfortable! The situation was dreadful.
You may ask, Why did he not explain the situation to Sidney? Well,
partly because he was too kind, and partly because he was too proud,
and partly because Sidney would not have understood. Horace fought on,
keeping up a position in the town and hoping that miracles would occur.
Then Ella's expectations were realized. Sidney and she had some twenty
thousand pounds to play with. And they played the most agreeable games.
But not in Bursley. No. They left Horace in Bursley and went to
Llandudno for a spell. Horace envied them, but he saw them off at the
station as an elder brother should, and tipped the porters.
Certainly he was relieved of the formality of paying eight pounds a
week to his brother. But this did not help him much. The sad fact was
that 'things' (by which is meant fate, circumstances, credit, and so
on) had gone too far. It was no longer a question of eight pounds a
week; it was a question of final ruin.
Surely he might have borrowed money from Sidney? Sidney had no money;
the money was Ella's, and Horace could not have brought himself to
borrow money from a woman--from Ella, from a heavenly creature who
always had a soothing sympathetic word for him. That would have been to
take advantage of Ella. No, if you suggest such a thing, you do not
know Horace.
I stated in the beginning that he had no faults. He was therefore
absolutely honest. And he called his creditors together while he could
yet pay them twenty shillings in the pound. It was a noble act, rare
enough in the Five Towns and in other parts of England. But he received
no praise for it. He had only done what every man in his position ought
to do. If Horace had failed for ten times the sum that his debts
actually did amount to, and then paid two shillings in the pound
instead of twenty, he would have made a stir in the world and been
looked up to as no ordinary man of business.
Having settled his affairs in this humdrum, idiotic manner, Horace took
a third-class return to Llandudno. Sidney and Ella were staying at the
hydro with the strange Welsh name, and he found Sidney lolling on the
sunshiny beach in front of the hydro discoursing on the banjo to
himself. When asked where his wife was, Sidney replied that she was
lying down, and was obliged to rest as much as possible.
Horace, ashamed to trouble this domestic idyl, related his misfortunes
as airily as he could.
And Sidney said he was awfully sorry, and had no notion how matters
stood, and could he do anything for Horace? If so, Horace might--
'No,' said Horace. 'I'm all right. I've very fortunately got an
excellent place as manager in a big new manufactory in Germany.' (This
is how we deal with German competition in the Five Towns.)
'Germany?' cried Sidney.
'Yes,' said Horace; 'and I start the day after tomorrow.'
'Well,' said Sidney, 'at any rate you'll stay the night.'
'Thanks,' said Horace, 'you're very kind. I will.'
So they went into the hydro together, Sidney caressing his wonderful
new pearl-inlaid banjo; and Horace talked in low tones to Ella as she
lay on the sofa. He convinced Ella that his departure to Germany was
the one thing he had desired all his life, because it was not good that
Ella should be startled, shocked, or grieved.
They dined well.
But in the night Sidney had a recurrence of his old illness--a bad
attack; and Horace sat up through the dark hours, fetched the doctor,
and bought things at the chemist's. Towards morning Sidney was better.
And Horace, standing near the bed, gazed at his stepbrother and tried
in his stupid way to read the secrets beneath that curly hair. But he
had no success. He caught himself calculating how much Sidney had cost
him, at periods of his career when he could ill spare money; and,
having caught himself, he was angry with himself for such baseness. At
eight o'clock he ventured to knock at Ella's door and explain to her
that Sidney had not been quite well. She had passed a peaceful night,
for he had, of course, refrained from disturbing her.
He was not quite sure whether Sidney had meant him to stay at the hydro
as his guest, so he demanded a bill, paid it, said good-bye, and left
for Bonn-on-the-Rhine. He was very exhausted and sleepy. Happily the
third-class carriages on the London & North-Western are pretty
comfortable. Between Chester and Crewe he had quite a doze, and dreamed
that he had married Ella after all, and that her twenty thousand pounds
had put the earthenware business on a footing of magnificent and
splendid security.
V
A few months later Horace's house and garden at Toft End were put up to
auction by arrangement with his mortgagee and his trade-creditors. And
Sidney was struck with the idea of buying the place. The impression was
that it would go cheap. Sidney said it would be a pity to let the abode
pass out of the family. Ella said that the idea of buying it was a
charming one, because in the garden it was that she had first met her
Sidney. So the place was duly bought, and Sidney and Ella went to live
there.
Several years elapsed.
Then one day little Horace was informed that his uncle Horace, whom he
had never seen, was coming to the house on a visit, and that he must be
a good boy, and polite to his uncle, and all the usual sort of thing.
And in effect Horace the elder did arrive in the afternoon. He found no
one to meet him at the station, or at the garden gate of the pleasaunce
that had once been his, or even at the front door. A pert parlour-maid
told him that her master and mistress were upstairs in the nursery, and
that he was requested to go up. And he went up, and to be sure Sidney
met him at the top of the stairs, banjo in hand, cigarette in mouth,
smiling, easy and elegant as usual--not a trace of physical weakness in
his face or form. And Horace was jocularly ushered into the nursery and
introduced to his nephew. Ella had changed. She was no longer slim, and
no longer gay and serious by turns. She narrowly missed being stout,
and she was continuously gay, like Sidney. The child was also gay.
Everybody was glad to see Horace, but nobody seemed deeply interested
in Horace's affairs. As a fact he had done rather well in Germany, and
had now come back to England in order to assume a working partnership
in a small potting concern at Hanbridge. He was virtually beginning
life afresh. But what concerned Sidney and Ella was themselves and
their offspring. They talked incessantly about the infinitesimal
details of their daily existence, and the alterations which they had
made, or meant to make, in the house and garden. And occasionally
Sidney thrummed a tune on the banjo to amuse the infant. Horace had
expected them to be curious about Germany and his life in Germany. But
not a bit! He might have come in from the next street and left them
only yesterday, for all the curiosity they exhibited.
'Shall we go down to the drawing-room and have tea, eh?' said Ella.
'Yes, let's go and kill the fatted calf,' said Sidney.
And strangely enough, inexplicably enough, Horace did feel like a
prodigal.
Sidney went off with his precious banjo, and Ella picked up sundry
belongings without which she never travelled about the house.
'You carry me down-stairs, unky?' the little nephew suggested, with an
appealing glance at his new uncle. 'No,' said Horace, 'I'm dashed if I
do!'