It is needless to say that the years which developed Elinor’s child into
a youth on the verge of manhood, had not passed by the others of the
family without full evidence of its progress. John Tatham was no longer
within the elastic boundaries of that conventional youth which is
allowed to stretch so far when a man remains unmarried. He might have
been characterized as _encore jeune_, according to the fine distinction
of our neighbours in France, had he desired it. But he did not desire
it. He had never altogether neglected society, having a wholesome liking
for the company of his fellow creatures, but neither had he ever plunged
into it as those do who must keep their places in the crowd or die. John
had pursued the middle path, which is the most difficult. He had
cultivated friends, not a mob of acquaintances, although as people say
he “knew everybody,” as a man who had attained his position and won his
success could scarcely fail to do. He had succeeded indeed, not in the
fabulous way that some men do, but in a way which most men in his
profession looked upon as in the highest degree satisfactory. He had a
silk gown like any dowager. He had been leading counsel in many cases
which were now of note. He was among, not the two or three perhaps, but
the twenty or thirty, who were at the head of his profession. If he had
not gone further it was perhaps more from lack of ambition than from
want of power. He had been for years in Parliament, but preferred his
independence to the chance of office. It is impossible to tell how
John’s character and wishes might have been modified had he married and
had children round him like other men. Had the tall boy in the north,
the young hero of Lakeside, been his, what a difference would that have
made in his views of life! But Philip was not his, nor Philip’s
mother--probably, as he always said to himself, from his own fault.
This, as the reader is aware, had always been fully recognised by John
himself. Perhaps in the old days, in those days when everything was
possible, he had not even recognised that there was but one woman in the
world whom he could ever wish to marry. Probably it was only her
appropriation by another that revealed this fact to him. There are men
like this to be found everywhere; not so hotly constituted as to seize
for themselves what is most necessary for their personal
happiness--possessed by so many other subjects that this seems a thing
to be thought of by-and-by--which by-and-by is generally too late.
But John Tatham was neither a disappointed nor an unhappy man. He might
have attained a higher development and more brilliant and full life, but
that was all; and how few men are there of whom this could not be said!
He had become Mr. Tatham of Tatham’s Cross, as well as Q.C. and M.P., a
county gentleman of modest but effective standing, a lawyer of high
reputation, quite eligible either for the bench or for political
elevation, had he cared for either, a member of Parliament with a
distinct standing, and therefore importance of his own. There was
probably throughout England no society in which he could have found
himself where his position and importance would have been unknown. He
was a man approaching fifty, who had not yet lost any of the power of
enjoyment or begun to feel the inroads of decay, at the very height of
life, and unconscious that the ground would shortly begin to slope
downwards under his feet; indeed, it showed no such indication as yet,
and probably would not do so for years. The broad plateau of middle age
lasts often till sixty, or even beyond. There was no reason to doubt
that for John Tatham it would last as long as for any man. His health
was perfect, and his habits those of a man whose self had never demanded
indulgences of the vulgar kind. He had given up with some regret, but
years before, his chambers in the Temple: that is, he retained them as
chambers, but lived in them no longer. He had a house in one of the
streets about Belgrave Square, one of those little bits of awkward,
three-cornered streets where there are some of the pleasantest houses of
a moderate kind in London; furnished from top to bottom, the stairs, the
comfortable quaint landings, the bits of corridor and passage, nothing
naked or neglected about it--no cold corner; but nothing fantastic; not
very much ornament, a few good pictures, a great deal of
highly-polished, old-fashioned dark mahogany, with a general flavour of
Sherraton and Chippendale: and abundance of books everywhere. John was
able to permit himself various little indulgences on which wives are
said to look with jealous eyes. He had a fancy for rare editions (in
which I sympathise) and also for bindings, which seems to me a
weakness--however, it was one which he indulged in moderation. He
possessed in his drawing-room (which was not very much used) a beautiful
old-fashioned harpsichord, and also he had belonging to him a fiddle of
value untold. I ought, of course, to say violin, or rather to
distinguish the instrument by its family name; I have no doubt it was a
Stradivarius. But there is an affectionate humour in the fiddle which
does not consist with fine titles. He had always been fond of music, but
even the Stradivarius did not beguile him, in the days of which I speak,
to play, nor perhaps was his performance worthy of it, though his taste
was said to be excellent. It will be perceived by all this that John
Tatham’s life had many pleasures.
And I am not myself sorry for him because he was not married, as many
people will be. Perhaps it is a little doleful coming home, when there
is never anybody looking out for you, expecting you. But then he had
never been accustomed to look for that, and the effect might have been
irksome rather than pleasant. His household went on velvet under the
care of a respectable couple who had “done for” Mr. Tatham for years.
He would not have submitted to extortion or waste, but everything was
ample in the house; the cook by no means stinted in respect to butter or
any of those condiments which are as necessary to good cooking as air is
to life. Mr. Tatham would not have understood a lack of anything, or
that what was served to him should not have been the best, supplied and
served in the best way. Failure on such points would have so much
surprised him that he would scarcely have known what steps to take. But
Jervis, his butler, knew what was best as well as Mr. Tatham did, and
was quite as little disposed to put up with any shortcoming. I say I am
not sorry for him that he was not married--up to this time. But, as a
matter of fact, the time does come when one becomes sorry for the
well-to-do, highly respectable, refined, and agreeable man who has
everything that heart can desire, except the best things in life--love,
and the companionship of those who are his very own. When old age looms
in sight everything is changed. But Mr. Tatham, as has been said, was
not quite fifty, and old age seemed as far off as if it could never be.
He was a man who was very good to a number of people, and spent almost
as much money in being kind as if he had possessed extravagant children
of his own. His sister Mary, for instance, had married a clergyman not
very well off, and the natural result had followed. How they could have
existed without Uncle John, much less how they could have stumbled into
public schools, scholarships, and all the rest of it, would be difficult
to tell, especially now in these days when a girl’s schooling ought, we
are told, to cost as much as a boy’s. This latter is a grievance which
must be apparent to the meanest capacity. Unless the girl binds herself
by the most stringent vows _not_ to marry a poor curate or other
penniless man the moment that you have completed her expensive
education, I do not think she should in any case be permitted to go to
Girton. It is all very well when the parents are rich or the girls have
a sufficiency of their own. But to spend all that on a process which,
instead of fructifying in other schools and colleges, or producing in
life a highly accomplished woman, is to be lost at once and swallowed up
in another nursery, is the most unprofitable of benefactions. This is
what Mary Tatham’s eldest girl had just done, almost before her bills at
Newnham had been paid. A wedding present had, so to speak, been demanded
from Uncle John at the end of the bayonet to show his satisfaction in
the event which had taken all meaning out of his exertions for little
Mary. He had given it indeed--in the shape not of a biscuit-box, which
is what she would have deserved, but of a cheque--but he was not
pleased. Neither was he pleased, as has been seen, by the proceedings of
Elinor, who had slighted all his advice yet clung to himself in a way
some women have. I do not know whether men expect you to be quite as
much their friend as ever after they have rejected your counsel and
taken their own (exactly opposite) way: but women do, and indeed I
think expect you to be rather grateful that they have not taken amiss
the advice which they have rejected and despised. This was Elinor’s
case. She hoped that John was ashamed of advising her to make her boy
acquainted with his family and the fact of his father’s existence, and
that he duly appreciated the fact that she did not resent that advice;
and then she expected from him the same attention to herself and her son
as if the boy had been guided in his and not in her way. Thus it will be
seen his friends and relations expected a very great deal from John.
He had gone to his chambers one afternoon after he left the law courts,
and was there very busily engaged in getting up his notes for
to-morrow’s work, when he received a visit which awakened at once echoes
of the past and alarms for the future in John’s mind. It was very early
in the year, the end of January, and the House was not sitting, so that
his public duties were less overwhelming than usual. His room was the
same in which we have already seen on various occasions, and which
Elinor in her youth, before anything had happened to make life serious
for her, had been in the habit of calling the Star Chamber, for no
reason in the world except that law and penalties or judgments upon
herself in her unripe conviction, and suggestions of what ought to be
done, came from that place to which Mrs. Dennistoun had made resort in
her perplexities almost from the very beginning of John’s reign there.
Mr. Tatham had been detained beyond his usual time by the importance of
the case for which he was preparing, and a clerk, very impatient to get
free, yet obliged to simulate content, had lighted the lamp and
replenished the fire. It had always been a comfortable room. The lamp by
which John worked had a green shade which concentrated the light upon a
table covered with that litter of papers in which there seemed so little
order, yet which Mr. Tatham knew to the last scrap as if they had been
the tidiest in the world. The long glazed bookcase which filled up one
side of the room gave a dark reflection of the light and of the leaping
brightness of the fire. The curtains were drawn over the windows. If the
clerk fumed in the outer rooms, here all was studious life and quiet. No
spectator could have been otherwise than impressed by the air of
absolute self-concentration with which the eminent lawyer gave himself
up to his work. He was like his lamp, giving all the light in him to the
special subject, indifferent to everything outside.
“What is it, Simmons?” he said abruptly, without looking up.
“A lady, sir, who says she has urgent business and must see you.”
“A lady--who _must_ see me.” John Tatham smiled at the very ineffectual
_must_, which meant coercion and distraction to him. “I don’t see how
she is going to accomplish that.”
“I told her so,” said the clerk.
“Well, you must tell her so again.” He had scarcely lifted his head
from his work, so that it was unnecessary to return to it when the door
closed, and Mr. Tatham went on steadily as before.
It is easy to concentrate the light of the lamp when it is duly shaded
and no wind to blow it about, and it is easy to concentrate a man’s
attention in the absolute quiet when nothing interrupts him; but when
there suddenly rises up a wind of talk in the room which is separated
from him only by a door, a tempest of chattering words and laughter,
shrill and bursting forth in something like shrieks, making the student
start, that is altogether a different business. The lady outside, who
evidently had multiplied herself--unless it was conceivable that the
serious Simmons had made himself her accomplice--had taken the cleverest
way of showing that she was not to be beat by any passive resistance of
busy man, though not even an audible conversation with Simmons would
have startled or disturbed his master, to whom it would have been
apparent that his faithful vassal was thus defending his own stronghold
and innermost retirement. But this was quite independent of Simmons, a
discussion in two voices, one high-pitched and shrill, the other softer,
but both absolutely unrestrained by any consciousness of being in a
place where the chatter of strange voices is forbidden, and stillness
and quiet a condition of being. The sound of the talk rang through Mr.
Tatham’s head as if all the city bells were ringing. One of the unseen
ladies had a very shrill laugh, to which she gave vent freely. John
fidgeted in his chair, raised up his eyes above the level of his
spectacles (he wore spectacles, alas! by this time habitually when he
worked) as if lifting a voiceless appeal to those powers who interest
themselves in law cases to preserve him from disturbance, then made a
manly effort to disregard the sounds that filled the air, returning with
a shake of his head to his reading. But at the end of a long day, and in
the dulness of the afternoon, perhaps a man is less capable than at
other moments to fight against interruption of this kind and finally he
threw down his papers and touched his bell. Simmons came in full of pale
indignation, which made itself felt even beyond the circle illuminated
by the lamp.
“What can I do?” he said. “They’ve planted themselves by the fire, and
there they mean to stay. ‘Oh, very well, we’ll wait,’ they said, quite
calm. And I make no doubt they will, having nothing else to do, till all
is blue.”
Mr. Simmons had a gift of expression of which all his friends were
flatteringly sensible, and he was very friendly and condescending to
John, of whom he had taken care for many years.
“What is to be done?” said Mr. Tatham. “Can’t you do anything to get
them away?”
Simmons shook his head. “There’s two of them,” he said, “and they
entertain each other, and they think it’s fun to jabber like that in a
lawyer’s office. The young one says, ‘What a queer place!’ and the
other, she holds forth about other times when she’s been here.”
“Oh, she’s been here other times---- Do you know her, Simmons?”
“Not from Adam, Mr. Tatham--or, I should say, from Eve, as she’s a lady.
But a real lady I should say, though she don’t behave herself as
such--one of the impudent ones. They are never impudent like that,” said
Mr. Simmons, with profound observation, “unless they are real high
or--real low.”
“Hum!” said John, hesitating. And then he added, “There is a young one,
you say?”
But I do not myself think, though the light-minded may imagine it to be
so, that it was because there was a young one that John gave in. It was
because he could do nothing else, the noise and chatter of the voices
being entirely destructive of that undisturbed state of the atmosphere
in which work can be done. It was not merely the sounds but the
vibration they made in the air, breaking all its harmony and
concentration. He tried a little longer, but was unsuccessful, and
finally in despair he said to Simmons, “You had better show them in, and
let me get done with them,” in an angry tone.
“Oh, he will see us after all,” said the high-pitched voice. “So good of
Mr. Tatham; but of course I should have waited all the same. Dolly, take
Toto; I can’t possibly get up while I have him on my knee. You can tell
Mr. Tatham I did not send in my name to disturb him, which makes it all
the more charitable of him to receive me; but, dear me, of course I can
tell him that himself as he consents to see us. Dolly, don’t strangle my
poor darling! I never saw a girl that didn’t know how to take up a dear
dog before.”
“He’s only a snappish little demon, and you spoil him so,” said the
other voice. This was attended by the sound of movement as if the party
were getting under weigh.
“My poor darling pet, it is only her jealousy: is that the way? Yes, to
be sure it is the next room. Now, Dolly, remember this is where all the
poor people are ruined and done for. Leave hope behind all ye who enter
here.” A little shriek of laughter ended this speech. And John, looking
up, taking off his spectacles, and raising a little the shade of the
lamp, saw in the doorway Lady Mariamne, altered as was inevitable by the
strain and stress of nearly twenty years.