HAD all things gone as ordered, our arrival at the St. Leonards’ on
Friday afternoon would have been imposing. It was our entrance, so to
speak, upon the local stage; and Robina had decided it was a case where
small economies ought not to be considered. The livery stable proprietor
had suggested a brougham, but that would have necessitated one of us
riding outside. I explained to Robina that, in the country, this was
usual; and Robina had replied that much depended upon first impressions.
Dick would, in all probability, claim the place for himself; and, the
moment we were started, stick a pipe in his mouth. She selected an open
landau of quite an extraordinary size, painted yellow. It looked to me
an object more appropriate to a Lord Mayor’s show than to the
requirements of a Christian family; but Robina seemed touchy on the
subject, and I said no more. It certainly was roomy. Old Glossop had
turned it out well, with a pair of greys—seventeen hands, I judged them.
The only thing that seemed wrong was the coachman. I can’t explain why,
but he struck me as the class of youth one associates with a milk-cart.
We set out at a gentle trot. Veronica, who had been in trouble most of
the morning, sat stiffly on the extreme edge of her seat, clothed in the
attitude of one dead to the world; Dick, in lavender gloves that Robina
had thoughtfully bought for him, next to her. Ethelbertha, Robina, and
myself sat perched on the back seat; to have leaned back would have been
to lie down. Ethelbertha, having made up her mind she was going to
dislike the whole family of the St. Leonards, seemed disinclined for
conversation. Myself I had forgotten my cigar-case. I have tried the
St. Leonard cigar. He does not smoke himself; but keeps a box for his
friends. He tells me he fancies men are smoking cigars less than
formerly. I did not see how I was going to get a smoke for the next
three hours. Nothing annoys me more than being bustled and made to
forget things. Robina, who has recently changed her views on the subject
of freckles, shared a parasol with her mother. They had to hold it
almost horizontally in front of them, and this obscured their view. I
could not myself understand why people smiled as we went by. Apart from
the carriage, which they must have seen before, we were not, I should
have said, an exhilarating spectacle. A party of cyclists laughed
outright. Robina said there was one thing we should have to be careful
about, living in the country, and that was that the strong air and the
loneliness combined didn’t sap our intellect. She said she had noticed
it—the tendency of country people to become prematurely silly. I did not
share her fears, as I had by this time divined what it was that was
amusing folks. Dick had discovered behind the cushions—remnant of some
recent wedding, one supposes—a large and tastefully bound Book of Common
Prayer. He and Veronica sat holding it between them. Looking at their
faces one could almost hear the organ pealing.
Dick kept one eye on the parasol; and when, on passing into shade, it was
lowered, he and Veronica were watching with rapt ecstasy the flight of
swallows. Robina said she should tell Mr. Glossop of the insults to
which respectable people were subject when riding in his carriage. She
thought he ought to take steps to prevent it. She likewise suggested
that the four of us, leaving the Little Mother in the carriage, should
walk up the hill. Ethelbertha said that she herself would like a walk.
She had been balancing herself on the edge of a cushion with her feet
dangling for two miles, and was tired. She herself would have preferred
a carriage made for ordinary-sized people. Our coachman called attention
to the heat of the afternoon and the length of the hill, and recommended
our remaining where we were; but his advice was dismissed as exhibiting
want of feeling. Robina is, perhaps, a trifle over-sympathetic where
animals are concerned. I remember, when they were children, her banging
Dick over the head with the nursery bellows because he would not agree to
talk in a whisper for fear of waking the cat. You can, of course, overdo
kindness to animals, but it is a fault on the right side; and, as a rule,
I do not discourage her. Veronica was allowed to remain, owing to her
bad knee. It is a most unfortunate affliction. It comes on quite
suddenly. There is nothing to be seen; but the child’s face while she is
suffering from it would move a heart of stone. It had been troubling
her, so it appeared, all the morning; but she had said nothing, not
wishing to alarm her mother. Ethelbertha, who thinks it may be
hereditary—she herself having had an aunt who had suffered from
contracted ligament—fixed her up as comfortably as the pain would permit
with cushions in the centre of the back seat; and the rest of us toiled
after the carriage.
I should not like to say for certain that horses have a sense of humour,
but I sometimes think they must. I had a horse years ago who used to
take delight in teasing girls. I can describe it no other way. He would
pick out a girl a quarter of a mile off; always some haughty,
well-dressed girl who was feeling pleased with herself. As we approached
he would eye her with horror and astonishment. It was too marked to
escape notice. A hundred yards off he would be walking sideways, backing
away from her; I would see the poor lady growing scarlet with the insult
and annoyance of it. Opposite to her, he would shy the entire width of
the road, and make pretence to bolt. Looking back I would see her vainly
appealing to surrounding nature for a looking-glass to see what it was
that had gone wrong with her.
“What is the matter with me,” she would be crying to herself; “that the
very beasts of the field should shun me? Do they take me for a
gollywog?”
Halfway up the hill, the off-side grey turned his head and looked at us.
We were about a couple of hundred yards behind; it was a hot and dusty
day. He whispered to the near-side grey, and the near-side grey turned
and looked at us also. I knew what was coming. I’ve been played the
same trick before. I shouted to the boy, but it was too late. They took
the rest of the hill at a gallop and disappeared over the brow. Had
there been an experienced coachman behind them, I should not have
worried. Dick told his mother not to be alarmed, and started off at
fifteen miles an hour. I calculated I was doing about ten, which for a
gentleman past his first youth, in a frock suit designed to disguise
rather than give play to the figure, I consider creditable. Robina,
undecided whether to go on ahead with Dick or remain to assist her
mother, wasted vigour by running from one to the other. Ethelbertha’s
one hope was that she might reach the wreckage in time to receive
Veronica’s last wishes.
It was in this order that we arrived at the St. Leonards’. Veronica,
under an awning, sipping iced sherbet, appeared to be the centre of the
party. She was recounting her experiences with a modesty that had
already won all hearts. The rest of us, she had explained, had preferred
walking, and would arrive later. She was evidently pleased to see me,
and volunteered the information that the greys, to all seeming, had
enjoyed their gallop.
I sent Dick back to break the good news to his mother. Young Bute said
he would go too. He said he was fresher than Dick, and would get there
first. As a matter of history he did, and was immediately sorry that he
had.
This is not a well-ordered world, or it would not be our good deeds that
would so often get us into trouble. Robina’s insistence on our walking
up the hill had been prompted by tender feeling for dumb animals: a
virtuous emotion that surely the angels should have blessed. The result
had been to bring down upon her suffering and reproach. It is not often
that Ethelbertha loses her temper. When she does she makes use of the
occasion to perform what one might describe as a mental spring-cleaning.
All loose odds and ends of temper that may be lying about in her mind—any
scrap of indignation that has been reposing peacefully, half forgotten,
in a corner of her brain, she ferrets out and brushes into the general
heap. Small annoyances of the year before last—little things she hadn’t
noticed at the time—incidents in your past life that, so far as you are
concerned, present themselves as dim visions connected maybe with some
previous existence, she whisks triumphantly into her pan. The method has
its advantages. It leaves her, swept and garnished, without a scrap of
ill-feeling towards any living soul. For quite a long period after one
of these explosions it is impossible to get a cross word out of her. One
has to wait sometimes for months. But while the clearing up is in
progress the atmosphere round about is disturbing. The element of the
whole thing is its comprehensive swiftness. Before they had reached the
summit of the hill, Robina had acquired a tolerably complete idea of all
she had done wrong since Christmas twelvemonth: the present afternoon’s
proceedings—including as they did the almost certain sacrificing of a
sister to a violent death, together with the probable destruction of a
father, no longer of an age to trifle with apoplexy—being but a fit and
proper complement to what had gone before. It would be long, as Robina
herself that evening bitterly declared, before she would again give ear
to the promptings of her better nature.
To take next the sad case of Archibald Bute: his sole desire had been to
relieve, at the earliest moment possible, the anxieties of a sister and a
mother. Robina’s new hat, not intended for sport, had broken away from
its fastenings. With it, it had brought down her hair. There is a
harmless contrivance for building up the female hair called, I am told, a
pad. It can be made of combings, and then, of course, is literally the
girl’s own hair. He came upon Robina at the moment when, retracing her
steps and with her back towards him, she was looking for it. With his
usual luck, he was the first to find it. Ethelbertha thanked him for his
information concerning Veronica, but seemed chiefly anxious to push on
and convince herself that it was true. She took Dick’s arm, and left
Robina to follow on with Bute.
As I explained to him afterwards, had he stopped to ask my advice I
should have counselled his leaving the job to Dick, who, after all, was
only thirty seconds behind him. As regarded himself, I should have
suggested his taking a walk in the opposite direction, returning, say, in
half an hour, and pretending to have just arrived. By that time Robina,
with the assistance of Janie’s brush and comb, and possibly her
powder-puff, would have been feeling herself again. He could have
listened sympathetically to an account of the affair from Robina
herself—her version, in which she would have appeared to advantage. Give
her time, and she has a sense of humour. She would have made it bright
and whimsical. Without asserting it in so many words, she would have
conveyed the impression—I know her way—that she alone, throughout the
whole commotion, had remained calm and helpful. “Dear old Dick” and
“Poor dear papa”—I can hear her saying it—would have supplied the low
comedy, and Veronica, alluded to with affection free from sentimentality,
would have furnished the dramatic interest. It is not that Robina
intends to mislead, but she has the artistic instinct. It would have
made quite a charming story; Robina always the central figure. She would
have enjoyed telling it, and would have been pleased with the person
listening. All this—which would have been the reward of subterfuge—he
had missed. Virtuous intention had gained for him nothing but a few
scattered observations from Robina concerning himself; the probable
object of his Creator in fashioning him—his relation to the scheme of
things in general: observations all of which he had felt to be unjust.
We compared experiences over a pipe that same evening; and he told me of
a friend of his, a law student, who had shared diggings with him in
Edinburgh. A kinder-hearted young man, Bute felt sure, could never have
breathed; nor one with a tenderer, more chivalrous regard for women; and
the misery this brought him, to say nothing of the irritation caused to
quite a number of respectable people, could hardly be imagined, so young
Bute assured me, by anyone not personally acquainted with the parties.
It was the plain and snappy girl, and the less attractive type of old
maid, for whom he felt the most sorrow. He could not help thinking of
all they had missed, and were likely to go on missing; the rapture—surely
the woman’s birthright—of feeling herself adored, anyhow, once in her
life; the delight of seeing the lover’s eye light up at her coming. Had
he been a Mormon he would have married them all. They too—the neglected
that none had invited to the feast of love—they also should know the joys
of home, feel the sweet comfort of a husband’s arm. Being a Christian,
his power for good was limited. But at least he could lift from them the
despairing conviction that they were outside the pale of masculine
affection. Not one of them, so far as he could help it, but should be
able to say:
“I—even I had a lover once. No, dear, we never married. It was one of
those spiritual loves; a formal engagement with a ring would have spoiled
it—coarsened it. No; it was just a beautiful thing that came into my
life and passed away again, leaving behind it a fragrance that has
sweetened all my days.”
That is how he imagined they would talk about it, years afterwards, to
the little niece or nephew, asking artless questions—how they would feel
about it themselves. Whether law circles are peculiarly rich in
unattractive spinsters, or whether it merely happened to be an
exceptional season for them, Bute could not say; but certain it was that
the number of sour-faced girls and fretful old maids in excess of the
demand seemed to be greater than usual that winter in Edinburgh, with the
result that young Hapgood had a busy time of it. He made love to them,
not obtrusively, which might have laid them open to ridicule—many of them
were old enough to have been his mother—but more by insinuation, by
subtle suggestion. His feelings, so they gathered, were too deep for
words; but the adoring eyes with which he would follow their every
movement, the rapt ecstasy with which he would drink in their lightest
remark about the weather, the tone of almost reverential awe with which
he would enquire of them concerning their lesser ailments—all conveyed to
their sympathetic observation the message that he dared not tell. He had
no favourites. Sufficient it was that a woman should be unpleasant, for
him to pour out at her feet the simulated passion of a lifetime. He sent
them presents—nothing expensive—wrapped in pleasing pretence of
anonymity; valentines carefully selected for their compromising
character. One carroty-headed old maid with warts he had kissed upon the
brow.
All this he did out of his great pity for them. It was a beautiful idea,
but it worked badly. They did not understand—never got the hang of the
thing: not one of them. They thought he was really gone on them. For a
time his elusiveness, his backwardness in coming to the point, they
attributed to a fit and proper fear of his fate; but as the months went
by the feeling of each one was that he was carrying the apprehension of
his own unworthiness too far. They gave him encouragement, provided for
him “openings,” till the wonder grew upon them how any woman ever did get
married. At the end of their resources, they consulted bosom friends.
In several instances the bosom friend turned out to be the bosom friend
of more than one of them. The bosom friends began to take a hand in it.
Some of them came to him with quite a little list, insisting—playfully at
first—on his making up his mind what he was going to take and what he was
going to leave; offering, as reward for prompt decision, to make things
as easy for him as possible with the remainder of the column.
It was then he saw that his good intentions were likely to end in
catastrophe. He would not tell the truth: that the whole scheme had been
conceived out of charity towards all ill-constructed or dilapidated
ladies; that personally he didn’t care a hang for any of them; had only
taken them on, vulgarly speaking, to give them a treat, and because
nobody else would. That wasn’t going to be a golden memory, colouring
their otherwise drab existence. He explained that it was not love—not
the love that alone would justify a man’s asking of a woman that she
should give herself to him for life—that he felt and always should feel
for them, but merely admiration and deep esteem; and seventeen of them
thought that would be sufficient to start with, and offered to chance the
rest.
The truth had to come out. Friends who knew his noble nature could not
sit by and hear him denounced as a heartless and eccentric profligate.
Ladies whose beauty and popularity were beyond dispute thought it a
touching and tender thing for him to have done; but every woman to whom
he had ever addressed a kind word wanted to wring his neck.
He did the most sensible thing he could, under all the circumstances;
changed his address to Aberdeen, where he had an aunt living. But the
story followed him. No woman would be seen speaking to him. One
admiring glance from Hapgood would send the prettiest girls home weeping
to their mothers. Later on he fell in love—hopelessly, madly in love.
But he dared not tell her—dared not let a living soul guess it. That was
the only way he could show it. It is not sufficient, in this world, to
want to do good; there’s got to be a knack about it.
There was a man I met in Colorado, one Christmas-time. I was on a
lecturing tour. His idea was to send a loving greeting to his wife in
New York. He had been married nineteen years, and this was the first
time he had been separated from his family on Christmas Day. He pictured
them round the table in the little far-away New England parlour; his
wife, his sister-in-law, Uncle Silas, Cousin Jane, Jack and Willy, and
golden-haired Lena. They would be just sitting down to dinner, talking
about him, most likely; wishing he were among them. They were a nice
family and all fond of him. What joy it would give them to know that he
was safe and sound; to hear the very tones of his loved voice speaking to
them! Modern science has made possible these miracles. True, the
long-distance telephone would cost him five dollars; but what is five
dollars weighed against the privilege of wafting happiness to an entire
family on Christmas Day! We had just come back from a walk. He slammed
the money down, and laughed aloud at the thought of the surprise he was
about to give them all.
The telephone bell rang out clear and distinct at the precise moment when
his wife, with knife and fork in hand, was preparing to carve the turkey.
She was a nervous lady, and twice that week had dreamed that she had seen
her husband without being able to get to him. On the first occasion she
had seen him enter a dry-goods store in Broadway, and hastening across
the road had followed him in. He was hardly a dozen yards in front of
her, but before she could overtake him all the young lady assistants had
rushed from behind their counters and, forming a circle round her, had
refused to let her pass, which in her dream had irritated her
considerably. On the next occasion he had boarded a Brooklyn car in
which she was returning home. She had tried to attract his attention
with her umbrella, but he did not seem to see her; and every time she
rose to go across to him the car gave a jerk and bumped her back into her
seat. When she did get over to him it was not her husband at all, but
the gentleman out of the Quaker Oats advertisement. She went to the
telephone, feeling—as she said herself afterwards—all of a tremble.
That you could speak from Colorado to New York she would not then have
believed had you told her. The thing was in its early stages, which may
also have accounted for the voice reaching her strange and broken. I was
standing beside him while he spoke. We were in the vestibule of the
Savoy Hotel at Colorado Springs. It was five o’clock in the afternoon,
which would be about seven in New York. He told her he was safe and
well, and that she was not to fret about him. He told her he had been
that morning for a walk in the Garden of the Gods, which is the name
given to the local park; they do that sort of thing in Colorado. Also
that he had drunk from the silicial springs abounding in that favoured
land. I am not sure that “silicial” was the correct word. He was not
sure himself: added to which he pronounced it badly. Whatever they were,
he assured her they had done him good. He sent a special message to his
Cousin Jane—a maiden lady of means—to the effect that she could rely upon
seeing him soon. She was a touchy old lady, and liked to be singled out
for special attention. He made the usual kind enquiries about everybody,
sent them all his blessing, and only wished they could be with him in
this delectable land where it seemed to be always sunshine and balmy
breezes. He could have said more, but his time being up the telephone
people switched him off; and feeling he had done a good and thoughtful
deed, he suggested a game of billiards.
Could he have been a witness of events at the other end of the wire, his
condition would have been one of less self-complacence. Long before the
end of the first sentence his wife had come to the conclusion that this
was a message from the dead. Why through a telephone did not greatly
worry her. It seemed as reasonable a medium as any other she had ever
heard of—indeed a trifle more so. Later, when she was able to review the
matter calmly, it afforded her some consolation to reflect that things
might have been worse. That “garden,” together with the “silicial
springs”—which she took to be “celestial,” there was not much difference
the way he pronounced it—was distinctly reassuring. The “eternal
sunshine” and the “balmy breezes” likewise agreed with her knowledge of
heavenly topography as derived from the Congregational Hymn-Book. That
he should have needed to enquire concerning the health of herself and the
children had puzzled her. The only explanation was that they didn’t know
everything, not even up. There—may be, not the new-comers. She had
answered as coherently as her state of distraction would permit, and had
then dropped limply to the floor. It was the sound of her falling
against the umbrella-stand and upsetting it that brought them all
trooping out from the dining-room.
It took her some time to get the thing home to them; and when she had
finished, her brother Silas, acting on the impulse of the moment, rang up
the Exchange, with some vague idea of getting into communication with St.
Peter and obtaining further particulars, but recollected himself in time
to explain to the “hulloa girl” that he had made a mistake.
The eldest boy, a practical youth, pointed out, very sensibly, that
nothing could be gained by their not going on with their dinner, but was
bitterly reproached for being able to think of any form of enjoyment at a
moment when his poor dear father was in heaven. It reminded his mother
of the special message to Cousin Jane, who up to that moment had been
playing the part of comforter. With the collapse of Cousin Jane,
dramatic in its suddenness, conversation disappeared. At nine o’clock
the entire family went dinnerless to bed.
The eldest boy—as I have said, a practical youth—had the sense to get up
early the next morning and send a wire, which brought the glad news back
to them that their beloved one was not in heaven, but was still in
Colorado. But the only reward my friend got for all his tender
thoughtfulness was the vehement injunction never for the remainder of his
life to play such a fool’s trick again.
There were other cases I could have recited showing the ill recompense
that so often overtakes the virtuous action; but, as I explained to Bute,
it would have saddened me to dwell upon the theme.
It was quite a large party assembled at the St. Leonards’, including one
or two county people, and I should have liked, myself, to have made a
better entrance. A large lady with a very small voice seemed to be under
the impression that I had arranged the whole business on purpose. She
said it was “so dramatic.” One good thing came out of it: Janie, in her
quiet, quick way, saw to it that Ethelbertha and Robina slipped into the
house unnoticed by way of the dairy. When they joined the other guests,
half an hour later, they had had a cup of tea and a rest, and were
feeling calm and cool, with their hair nicely done; and Ethelbertha
remarked to Robina on the way home what a comfort it must be to Mrs. St.
Leonard to have a daughter so capable, one who knew just the right thing
to do, and did it without making a fuss and a disturbance.
Everyone was very nice. Of course we made the usual mistake: they talked
to me about books and plays, and I gave them my views on agriculture and
cub-hunting. I’m not quite sure what fool it was who described a bore as
a man who talked about himself. As a matter of fact it is the only
subject the average man knows sufficiently well to make interesting.
There’s a man I know; he makes a fortune out of a patent food for
infants. He began life as a dairy farmer, and hit upon it quite by
accident. When he talks about the humours of company promoting and the
tricks of the advertising agent he is amusing. I have sat at his table,
when he was a bachelor, and listened to him by the hour with enjoyment.
The mistake he made was marrying a broad-minded, cultured woman, who
ruined him—conversationally, I mean. He is now well-informed and
tiresome on most topics. That is why actors and actresses are always
such delightful company: they are not ashamed to talk about themselves.
I remember a dinner-party once: our host was one of the best-known
barristers in London. A famous lady novelist sat on his right, and a
scientist of world-wide reputation had the place of honour next our
hostess, who herself had written a history of the struggle for
nationality in South America that serves as an authority to all the
Foreign Offices in Europe. Among the remaining guests were a bishop, the
editor-in-chief of a London daily newspaper, a man who knew the interior
of China as well as most men know their own club, a Russian revolutionist
just escaped from Siberia, a leading dramatist, a Cabinet Minister, and a
poet whose name is a household word wherever the English tongue is
spoken. And for two hours we sat and listened to a wicked-looking little
woman who from the boards of a Bowery music-hall had worked her way up to
the position of a star in musical comedy. Education, as she observed
herself without regret, had not been compulsory throughout the waterside
district of Chicago in her young days; and, compelled to earn her own
living from the age of thirteen, opportunity for supplying the original
deficiency had been wanting. But she knew her subject, which was
Herself—her experiences, her reminiscences: and bad sense enough to stick
to it. Until the moment when she took “the liberty of chipping in,” to
use her own expression, the amount of twaddle talked had been appalling.
The bishop had told us all he had learnt about China during a visit to
San Francisco, while the man who had spent the last twenty years of his
life in the country was busy explaining his views on the subject of the
English drama. Our hostess had been endeavouring to make the scientist
feel at home by talking to him about radium. The dramatist had explained
at some length his views of the crisis in Russia. The poet had quite
spoilt his dinner trying to suggest to the Cabinet Minister new sources
of taxation. The Russian revolutionist had told us what ought to have
been a funny story about a duck; and the lady novelist and the Cabinet
Minister had discussed Christian Science for a quarter of an hour, each
under the mistaken impression that the other one was a believer in it.
The editor had been explaining the attitude of the Church towards the New
Theology; and our host, one of the wittiest men at the Bar, had been
talking chiefly to the butler. The relief of listening to anybody
talking about something they knew was like finding a match-box to a man
who has been barking his shins in the dark. For the rest of the dinner
we clung to her.
I could have made myself quite interesting to these good squires and
farmers talking to them about theatres and the literary celebrities I
have met; and they could have told me dog stories and given me useful
information as to the working of the Small Holdings Act. They said some
very charming things about my books—mostly to the effect that they read
and enjoyed them when feeling ill or suffering from mental collapse. I
gathered that had they always continued in a healthy state of mind and
body it would not have occurred to them to read me. One man assured me I
had saved his life. It was his brain, he told me. He had been so upset
by something that had happened to him that he had almost lost his reason.
There were times when he could not even remember his own name; his mind
seemed an absolute blank. And then one day by chance—or Providence, or
whatever you choose to call it—he had taken up a book of mine. It was
the only thing he had been able to read for months and months! And now,
whenever he felt himself run down—his brain like a squeezed orange (that
was his simile)—he would put everything else aside and read a book of
mine—any one: it didn’t matter which. I suppose one ought to be glad
that one has saved somebody’s life; but I should like to have the
choosing of them myself.
I am not sure that Ethelbertha is going to like Mrs. St. Leonard; and I
don’t think Mrs. St. Leonard will much like Ethelbertha. I have gathered
that Mrs. St. Leonard doesn’t like anybody much—except, of course, when
it is her duty. She does not seem to have the time. Man is born to
trouble, and it is not bad philosophy to get oneself accustomed to the
feeling. But Mrs. St. Leonard has given herself up to the pursuit of
trouble to the exclusion of all other interests in life. She appears to
regard it as the only calling worthy a Christian woman. I found her
alone one afternoon. Her manner was preoccupied; I asked if I could be
of any assistance.
“No,” she answered, “I am merely trying to think what it can be that has
been worrying me all the morning. It has clean gone out of my head.”
She remembered it a little later with a glad sigh.
St. Leonard himself, Ethelbertha thinks charming. We are to go again on
Sunday for her to see the children. Three or four people we met I fancy
we shall be able to fit in with. We left at half-past six, and took Bute
back with us to supper.