THE TRIALS OF WOODVILLE
Several hours of the morning had been passed by Woodville in an
occupation that, one might think, would easily pall on a spirited young
man--addressing envelopes and filling in invitation cards. The cards
stated with tedious repetition that Miss Crofton and Sir James Crofton,
M.P., would be At Home on the 30th April at ten o'clock. In the
left-hand corner were the words, "Herr Yung's White Viennese Orchestra."
Woodville's desk was close to the long French window, which opened on to
a charming garden. From this garden came the sound of excited
twitterings of birds and other pleasant suggestions of spring. Suddenly
a tall and graceful young girl, with hair like sunshine, came up to the
open window and smiled at him. She held up to show him some wonderful
mauve and blue hyacinths that she carried, and then passed on. Woodville
sighed. _It_ was too symbolic. The scent lingered. Like a
half-remembered melody, it seemed to have the insidious power of
recalling something in the past that was too wonderful ever to have
happened, and of suggesting vague hopes of the most improbable joys.
Sylvia seemed to the young man the incarnation of April. He put down his
pen, and shaded his eyes with his hand. Then the inner door from the
hall opened, and a pompous but genial voice exclaimed with heavy
briskness--
"Well, Woodville, finished, eh?"
"Not yet, Sir James, but I can go on later, if you want me now."
The secretary spoke with a deference that seemed surprising. He did not
look like a man who would be supple to an employer, or obsequious to any
one--even a woman.
"No hurry, no hurry," said Sir James, with that air of self-denial that
conveys the urgent necessity of intense speed. He was a handsome old
man, with thick grey hair, a white military moustache, bushy dark
eyebrows, and in his eyes that humorous twinkle that is so often seen in
those men of the last generation who are most devoid of a sense of
humour. Sir James was liable to the irritable changes of mood that would
nowadays be called neurotic or highly strung, but was in his young days
merely put down as bad temper. He had a high estimation of his mental
powers, and a poor opinion of those who did not share this estimation.
He took a special pride in his insight into character, and in that
instinctive penetration that is said to enable its fortunate possessor
to see as far through a brick wall as most people. (A modest ambition,
when all is said and done!) His contemporaries liked him: at least, they
smiled when his name was mentioned. He was warm-hearted and generous; he
had a curious mania for celebrities; was a hospitable host, a tedious
guest, and a loyal friend. His late wife (who was lovely, but weary) had
always described him in one word. The word was "trying".
Sir James sat down slowly on a depressed leather uneasy chair, and said,
"Presently I want you to take notes of a speech I intend making in the
House on Russia--I mean the present situation in Russia," he added
instructively.
"Of course," said Woodville, trying to look intelligently sympathetic,
and restraining his inclination to say that he had not expected a speech
at this time of day on our victories in the Crimea.
"Do let's have the speech while it's fresh in your mind. I can easily
return to this afterwards, Sir James."
"Later on, later on; when it's more matured--more matured...." He
pondered a few moments about nothing whatever, and then said, "Sent a
card to Roy Beaumont, the young inventor? That's right. That boy has a
future. Mark my words, he has a future before him."
"Oh! I thought it had begun some time ago, and was still going on. He is
quite twenty-three, isn't he?" asked Frank.
"About that--about that. He's a young man with Ideas, Woodville."
"Yes. I heard he had grown tired of button-holes, and is thinking of
training a creeper to crawl up the lapel of his coat."
"An original notion," said Sir James judicially. "If practicable. And
what else did he invent?"
"Wasn't it he who invented some new way of not posting letters--by
electricity?"
"I rather think you're confusing him with Marconi," said Sir James,
shaking his head. "But I always detect genius! It's a curious thing,
Woodville, but I never make a mistake! By the way, I should like to send
a card to the Leader of the Opposition and his wife. Inquire of Sylvia
about their address. I don't know them, socially, but I fancy they would
be rather surprised if I omitted them."
"It might, indeed, be rather marked," said Woodville, making a note, and
remembering that it is as impossible nowadays to ask every one one
knows as to know every one one asks.
"Well, I'll leave you to your work, and we'll do the speech later, a
little later ... much later," and Sir James meditatively bent his elbows
on the arms of the chair, accurately placed all the tips of his fingers
together, and slowly blinked his eyes. He did not mean any harm by this.
In fact, he meant nothing. His gestures and expression had no
significance at all. He simply behaved like any other elderly
Anglo-Saxon who believes himself to be political and to resemble the
"Younger Pitt."
"I rather wanted to ask Miss Crofton about a change of address," said
Woodville, glancing swiftly and hypocritically through the Red Book.
"I'll send her to you--I'll send her. Don't move. Sit still, sit still."
Woodville followed with his eyes the closing of the door; then he put
down his pen and gazed at the closed door. Sometimes he thought his life
was like a closed door. Yet, perhaps, there might be some one on the
other side of the door? (According to Maeterlinck--or is it Owen
Seaman?--there is always some one on the other side of a door.)
At a casual glance Woodville seemed the conventional type of a
good-looking young Englishman, tall, fair-haired, and well built. He
possessed, however, a forehead unnecessarily intellectual; and a
sparkle of more than mere animal spirits lurked in the depths of his
dark brown eyes. An observer would also have noticed that his mouth and
chin had something of the stern and sad look of fatalism that one sees
in the pictures of Rossetti and Burne-Jones. He had the unmistakable
public-school and University hall-mark, and if he had been fairly liked
at Eton, at Oxford, where (as Mr. Max Beerbohm so rightly says) the
nonsense knocked out of one at school is carefully and painlessly put
back, Woodville was really popular, and considered remarkably clever,
capable of enjoying, and even of conceiving, Ideas. Detesting the
ready-made cheap romantic, and yet in vague search of the unusual, he
often complained bitterly that his history--so far--was like the little
piece of explanation of the plot (for those who have missed it) at the
beginning of a chapter of a feuilleton in the _Daily Mail_. It was
rather hard to have to admit that he had been left an orphan at three
years old and adopted by his bachelor uncle, a baronet called Sir Bryce
Woodville, who had brought him up as his acknowledged heir, with the
prospect of a big estate.
Frank had gone with careless gaiety through school and college, when his
apparently sane and kind relative, growing tired of romantic drama,
suddenly behaved like a guardian in an old-fashioned farce. Instead of
making his wife his housekeeper, as most men do, he made his housekeeper
his wife. She was a depressing woman. In a year he had a son and heir,
and within two months after this event, he died, leaving his nephew
exactly one hundred pounds a year.
This curiously unpractical joke taught the young man that absurdly
improbable things are quite as liable to happen in real life as in weak
literature.
The legacy was, of course, abject poverty to a man who, having always
had an exceptionally large allowance, had naturally never thought about
money, and though Frank believed himself not to be extravagant because
he had never made large debts, his ideas of the ordinary necessities of
life were not conspicuously moderate, including, as they did, horses,
hospitality, travel, Art, and at least the common decency of a jolly
little motor of his own. He had often been warned by his uncle to spend
the twenty thousand a year to which he was heir freely but not lavishly.
Why Sir Bryce Woodville had shown so sudden and marked an interest in a
child he had known but for two months (and who had screamed most of
that time), preferring him to a young man of talent and charm for whom
he had shown indulgent affection for twenty-two years, was one of those
mysteries that seem unsolvable in elderly gentlemen in general and in
wicked uncles in particular. Sir Bryce had always been particularly fond
of young people, and certainly greater youth and the nearer relationship
were obviously the only points in which the son had the advantage over
the nephew.
When Woodville found himself really hard up he sought a certain
consolation in trying to do without things and in the strenuous hourly
endeavour to avoid spending sixpence; no easy task to a man whose head
was always in the clouds and his hand always in his pocket. As a novelty
even economy may have its pleasures, but they are not, perhaps to all
temperaments, either very sound or very lasting.
At the moment when omnibuses, cheap cigarettes, and self-denial were
beginning to pall he had accepted the offer of the secretaryship,
intending to look about to try to get something more congenial; perhaps
to drift into diplomacy. Nothing could be less to his taste than the
post of shorthandwriter to a long-winded old gentleman, to writing out
speeches that in all probability would never be made, and copying
pamphlets that would (most fortunately) never be printed. Often he
thought he would rather "break stones on the road," drive a hansom cab,
or even go on the stage, than be the superfluous secretary of such a
dull, though dear nonentity.
Woodville also went in for painting: he had a little talent and a great
deal of taste, sufficient, indeed, to despise his own work though he
enjoyed doing it. In his leisure time he even tried to make money by
copying old masters, and often sold them for quite amazing prices
(amazingly low, I mean) to a few people who honestly preferred them to
the originals on the undeniable grounds that they were at once cleaner
and less costly. He was ambitious and knew he had brains and energy,
besides being rather unusually well-turned-out in the matter of culture.
And yet he had remained at Onslow Square for five years! As a career it
was nothing. It could lead to nothing. Was there, then, some other
attraction, something that outweighed, transcended for him all the petty
pangs and penalties of his position?
This arch surmise of the writer will be found by the persevering reader
to be perfectly reasonable and founded on fact.