Squire Raleigh was a philanthropist. But philanthropy in town is a
costly amusement, and Squire Raleigh had a large family, whose claims
could not comfortably be ignored in favor of charitable institutions,
although a philanthropist with a love for mankind cannot be expected to
do as much for his own children as an ordinary domesticated egoist.
Nevertheless, after the endowment of an orphan asylum, and the failure
of a Liberal newspaper speculation, and the gift of a public park to the
people had been followed by the reduction of his income to one-third of
its original value, the vigorous reformer yielded to the persuasions of
his sons and his lawyers and retired to his country estate, with a
knighthood, a troublesome liver, and a firm resolve to get to the
bottom of the land question.
At Murville Manor, an old Georgian house standing near a quaint little
village in one of the home counties, Sir Marcus Raleigh once more tried
to forget the disagreeable facts of an income with decreasing resources
and a family of increasing claims, and plunged into fresh philanthropic
schemes, this time relating to small holdings, and the growth of
potatoes for the million, and the advancement in general of the
agricultural laborer. Such energy naturally brought the enthusiast into
collision with his own farming tenants, who liked to preserve the
monopoly of grumbling to themselves, and although not hesitating to
complain of the difficulties of making their land pay, yet objected
strongly to having small portions of it wrested from them and given to
their own laborers instead, who throve upon them straightway. It
likewise bred strained relations between the Squire and the old rector,
who in his own way of Sunday-schools, and coal clubs, and relief funds,
was a philanthropist of an old world form, and could not understand why
the traditional supporter of church charities should prefer to invent
charities of his own and allow the church to fall into debt meanwhile.
His family also, who had not inherited philanthropic tendencies, failed
to appreciate the unselfishness of their father in this direction, and
complained with the grossest individualism of the want of pocket money.
They complained, too, of being forced to exchange a town life, where
they could at least sink their father's personality in the oblivion of
society, for a country one, where it was impossible to remain unknown
for miles round, where philanthropy was cheap and therefore more rife
than before, and where a large staff of men-servants was replaced by a
so-called handy man. The handy man, by the way, in spite of advertising
himself in the county paper as competent to look after "pony, cart,
garden, boots, knives, fifteen shillings a week, Sundays, and beer,"
had as yet shown no decided talent in any of these particulars, except
in the last-mentioned one.
Among a mass of other inconsistencies, which almost likened him to a
schoolboy who is having a romp through life instead of playing the game
seriously, the Squire, while considering his children in the light of
impedimenta, yet cherished a passionate affection for the least worthy
of them all, for the one to whom nature had decreed that he should
bequeath, with a liberality he had shown his children in no other
respect, the largest share of his own failings. Jack Raleigh was
handsome, fascinating, improvident to a degree, with no fixed code of
morality and no definite powers of reasoning, ruling himself and his
actions entirely by a kind of blind instinct such as we find in healthy
animals or in children. His love, like his antipathy, was of an
elementary character; if he found himself in a complicated situation,
which was not rare, he would merely choose the most pleasant course
open to him, without giving it a moment's consideration, and would
follow it gayly until another obstacle arose which would have to be
treated in a similar manner. Whether he was the happier for feeling
nothing deeply, belongs to those questions which are argued by thousands
of lives every day without a conclusive answer being found to them. That
his temperament was the sunnier for it and that his misdeeds were less
harmful, is most certain; and since the God whom he believed in, if he
believed in one at all, was a kind of inexhaustible Being who could
offer him as many fresh opportunities as he had squandered already, and
seemed to be the cause, in some indirect way that Jack never attempted
to fathom, of occasional magnificent music in churches and cathedrals,
his religion as well as his excellent digestion saved him from the fits
of depression that usually accompany the sanguine disposition. He had
discovered before he was out of his teens that England was not the
place for one so restless as he, and he had been sent out to more than
one colony "to try his luck," as the Squire said, in a vague hope of
shifting his uneasy responsibility for his son's actions on to fortune.
But fortune, although not philanthropic in her tendencies, and having no
nobler vocation to distract her from her plain duty of looking after her
prodigal sons, refused to help him, and he inevitably returned home with
more debts, more friends, more anecdotes, but no more stability than
before.
It was on a dull morning in July, at breakfast time, that Jack caused
his father for the hundredth time to recognize his existence in an
unpleasant manner. It was an unfortunate time for his letter to arrive,
for there was a mist that day, and as Sir Marcus was profoundly ignorant
both of meteorology and the crops, and pretended to be an authority on
both, he chose to feel injured because Helen assured him that it was not
going to rain, and that his hay was not going to be spoiled. To which
the Squire, who never could endure the plain truths of his eldest
daughter, replied testily that the mist did mean rain, that his hay was
going to be spoiled as it always was, and that he himself was a ruined
man; he then sat down at the now silent table and sighed in a dejected
manner. Presently, finding that no one was looking at him, he roused
himself partially, and made a hearty breakfast behind his newspaper; and
when the conversation around him was once more in full swing he
condescended to look at his letters. He opened Jack's first, as he
always did. It was the old story, told in the boy's usual careless
manner: Canada had grown too small for him, he was feeling homesick, and
was about to sail for England, and would be with his father almost as
soon as his letter, to which effect he was his loving son Jack.
It was not the first letter of the kind that the Squire had received
from the same source, and he knew what this one meant: Jack would be
back again before the week was out, with an accumulation of debts and
not a dollar in his pocket, Jack, with his sunny smile, and his
nonchalance, and his utter unconsciousness of offence. Jack meant money,
family meant money, and Sir Marcus was close upon overdrawing his
banking account already, and had promised a large subscription only the
day before to the building fund of the village reading-room. If there
had been no stranger present he would have relieved his feelings by a
characteristic outburst; but Lady Joan sat opposite to him and saw as
much as she wished to see without raising her eyes from her plate, and
he felt instinctively that he might merely succeed in making himself
ridiculous if he spoke before the opportunity occurred; and, impetuous
man as he was, something he could not define restrained him from
creating a situation just then which should not be dignified. So he read
the letter over again, and he listened mechanically to the conversation
of his offending children, without heeding what they said.
"After all," Digby was saying, with a gravity which the subject hardly
merited, for in the heart of his own family, although he still remained
the prophet, yet he refrained from provoking the serious discussions
which were only fitting within the sacred walls of the studio, "after
all, it does not matter how bad a fellow is, if he is only artistically
so, I mean if he will only be thorough over it."
"It does not matter how wicked we all are, so long as we can see the
humor of sin. To be able to laugh at ourselves is the great thing,"
murmured Lady Joan.
"There is nothing so depressing," continued the musician, without
heeding the interruption, "as the spectacle of a man who will not face
his own wickedness--or even his own goodness. It is a sign of the age,
this wretched spirit of compromise; we don't live in town because it is
unhealthy, and the fogs are so bad--"
"My dear, that was not the reason," Lady Raleigh murmured--also
unheeded.
"--and we don't live in the country because it is too far to come up to
the concerts; so we live at Crouch End or Putney, where an exasperating
local railway lies between us and St. James's Hall, and where the ends
of the fogs hang about for days. We haven't the pluck to say yea or nay;
we leave all our decisions to the gods, who throw them back upon us
again, or to--to fate, who only plays with us at will; we would do
anything to shirk the responsibility of the ego. Look at Helen, now; the
bent of her character is towards religion, yet she hesitates to go into
a convent. Therefore her religion does not make her picturesque."
"Digby! How _can_ you argue at breakfast time? And I think you might
keep your horrid atheistical notions to yourself before the children,"
cried Helen, crossly. She had not recovered from her passage of arms
with the Squire.
Digby plodded on with his breakfast and his theory.
"We are all the same, as a family. Take the father: he would lay down
his life for the working-man, or he thinks so; and yet he is afraid to
go in for Socialism, which offers the only solution to the labor
question. It is an age of compromise; we are all cowards."
"Digby is so fond of taking his own particular failings and generalizing
them," said the still ruffled Helen to nobody in particular.
"People with decided opinions, picturesque people, as you call them, are
people with fads; and I hate people with fads," said Lady Joan, "they
are ten times more uninteresting than the weathercock sort of people who
make compromises. Why should you always behave as if you went by
clockwork? It is far too much trouble when, after all, nothing matters.
And why do you want to be quarrelling with the age perpetually? It seems
a nice comfortable sort of age to me; I suppose it has a different
aspect for musical people."
Digby's end of the table was always the most popular whenever he was at
home, which was not often enough to spoil his reputation,--more popular
at all events than the other end, where Lady Raleigh insisted on making
the tea, and made it very badly, and where the Squire opened his letters
and found they were mostly bills. If his eldest son had not been
monopolizing the conversation on this morning in particular, the efforts
of Sir Marcus to make a sensation by sighing deeply and rustling the
letter in his hand might have succeeded in attracting some notice; but
as it was, he was quite unheeded, and his wife went on spilling the milk
behind the urn, and filling up the teapot with water which had boiled
half an hour ago, while the noisy chatter was carried on uninterruptedly
round Digby and Lady Joan.
"Of all forms of self-indulgence, unintelligent self-sacrifice is the
most degrading. Somebody says that the time of the clever people is
taken up in undoing the harm done by the good people."
"By the stupid people," objected Helen brusquely.
"That is just the point," began Digby, vigorously; but his mother's
complaining voice broke in upon the conversation.
"What _is_ to be done, Helen? Have you heard, my dear? Mrs. Bates says
she cannot let me have more than three pounds of butter a week. Did you
ever know anything more provoking? Oh, the difficulty of getting dairy
produce in the country! Why did we ever leave Cadogan Square?"
Perhaps country life was more trying to Lady Raleigh than to any other
member of her family; for, with the inconsequence of woman, she could
not forgive her husband for selling their London house, although herself
the first instigator of the scheme. To remind him continually of the
fact that the place did not agree with her, she refused to trust herself
to the handy man's whip, and never walked further than the garden gate,
by which means she preserved her constitution admirably, and ruined her
nervous system; and in this unhealthy condition of mind she shut herself
up in Murville Manor, where her sole occupations became the
mismanagement of her household, and the perusal of the illustrated
papers.
Her last remark caught the Squire's ear, and gave him the opportunity he
wanted.
"_Why_ did we leave Cadogan Square, Lettice?" he shouted, wheeling round
upon her suddenly. "I will tell you why, if you can't see for yourself
by merely looking down the table. Because I am a poor man, Lettice;
because I have a large family that would swallow up any income; because
it is money, money, all day long, until I feel I can't give a shilling
to a poor laboring man to--to improve his mind and--and his position,
without feeling, without feeling extravagant, in short."--The Squire
always found that his philanthropic sentiments did not sound nearly so
effective in his own home as when thundered forth from a rickety
platform in the village schoolroom; the family circle is at all times a
great leveller, and his constant terror of the ridiculous brought him
swiftly back to the present actual grievance: "Do you ask me _why_, when
I receive a letter like this from the son I have loved and educated and
denied myself for? I will tell you why, if you like, Lettice. Because I
am not a millionnaire, Lettice; because I have four sons doing nothing
but spend money; because Jack, confound the fellow, is in England at the
present moment, and may be here to-day--"
Lady Raleigh gave a little scream, and possessed herself of the
offending letter. The children began to ask innumerable questions in
hushed voices, the elder ones looked dejected, and Lady Joan sipped her
coffee with an exaggerated look of unconcern on her face, and a twinkle
in the gray eyes which all the powers of dissimulation that she
possessed could not quite conceal.
"He does not say he is in debt," said Lady Raleigh, through a mist of
joyful tears.
Sir Marcus twisted his napkin into a tangle and threw it on the floor.
"Say?" he cried, striding towards the door; "don't I know what he means,
the rascal? I tell you I've done with him for once and for always; he
shall enter my house no more; and if he comes here with his intolerable
impudence, I shall show him the door. It is right that I should make an
example of him, whatever it costs me to do it; and though he is my own
son I will harden my heart and do it. Not a penny more shall he get out
of me; I wash my hands of him and his debts; it is my--my duty as a
father to--to do it, in short, and you may tell him so when he comes,
the young scapegrace!"
And with a sense almost of relief at having found a justifiable reason
for avoiding this fresh trouble, and moreover a lurking suspicion that
any such reason was wholly ineffectual to prevent Jack from coming home,
Sir Marcus flung himself out of the room and banged the door.
"Jack ought to be ashamed of himself; how can he expect papa to do any
more for him?" said the implacable Helen. There is a kind of religious
woman who, although she is a woman and although she is religious, is a
slave to her own ideal of justice.
"Helen, don't be unjust," complained her mother, wiping her tears, and
alive to half-a-dozen sensations at the same instant; "the dear boy
cannot help being fond of his home, so sweet and affectionate of him.
Dear Lady Joan, you must pay no heed to what Sir Marcus said just now;
he does not mean all he says, you know, and he was just a little
startled by the suddenness of dear Jack's decision; it is my husband's
way of hiding his real emotion. I'm sure I don't know why he should make
so much fuss over a trifle when we have so many real troubles to
bear.--Now, my _dear_ Digby, you know I do not allow smoking in the
dining-room; how can you be so unkind as to add wilfully to all my
worries? I shall have a headache for certain, now.--Tom, darling, open
the window, and try to get the horrid smell out; I feel distracted! And
has any one seen my key-basket?"
"When will Jack be here, I wonder?" observed Digby, holding the
offending cigarette out of the window, and trying to hide by a supreme
indifference his consciousness at that moment that a prophet is without
honor in his own country. Lady Joan, from a studied attitude on the wide
old window seat, was not in the least deceived by his manner, and
laughed clearly and mockingly.
"Oh, the dear boy," said Lady Raleigh, in a restored and cheerful tone,
"to think that he may come at any moment, and there is no ale in the
house. Helen, you must write at once, and, dear me! we must watch for
every footstep all day; and there are the sheets too,--where _is_
Nurse? Dear Lady Joan, you must forgive the emotions of a foolish old
mother; I assure you I am _never_ flurried like this; but even the best
of housekeepers would be disturbed by such a sudden event. And he really
must not have damp sheets; he has slept in a blanket for two years, he
tells me, and damp sheets are _so_ dangerous; but he shall have them
to-night, bless him! Oh, children! look, look! who is that coming along
behind the hedge? Move out of the way, Digby, and don't make so much
noise, everybody. Why can't I make myself heard in my own house? Is
it--can it--oh, tell me who it is!"
A moment's breathless silence was followed by a shout of laughter as the
unmistakable corduroys of the handy man came into view.
"George, George, come here," exclaimed Lady Raleigh; "you must not leave
this spot all day long, as Master Jack may be here at any minute. Do you
understand? So go into the field at once and get the pony in, and you
had better have him harnessed, all ready to go to the station. And will
you go now to the post-office and see if there is a telegram? You might
wait there on the chance, or at all events be in readiness. But don't go
beyond the grounds, whatever you do. Dear boy, how I love him!"
And perfectly happy in the certainty of everything being properly
arranged now that she had given her own orders, Lady Raleigh swept away
to arrange a royal feast for the prodigal.
"Please, Mr. Digby, be I to stop here till Master Jack comes?" asked the
bewildered George.
Digby laughed quietly, and re-lighted his cigarette.
"If you take my advice, George, do your work as usual, and don't bother
about Master Jack. When he does come he won't dream of sending a
telegram to say so. That is not Jack's way."
"Will he walk from the station?" asked Lady Joan, carelessly. The others
had all strolled away; and, in the presence of the maid who was
clearing away the breakfast things, she felt it incumbent upon her to
say something commonplace. Digby, who, being a man, felt no such
necessity, looked at the pretty little foot that was swinging backwards
and forwards, and wondered why she wanted to know.
"Not he! That is not Jack's way either. He will drive up in a coach and
four when we have given up expecting him, and want to know why we did
not all go down to the station in a body to meet him. Then there will be
a hubbub, and Jack will be king of the house again."
"And you will be dethroned?" she asked maliciously.
He heard the question, and did not notice the malice in it.
"Only until he begins to say why he has come, and the rain has spoiled
the hay," he said, with another laugh.