With the peculiar good fortune which has attended the oracle of all
ages, Digby's prediction came true, and Jack did come home that evening
when every one had stopped talking about him, and there was a universal
tendency among his brothers and sisters to avoid the topic of his
arrival. It was tea-time, and the Squire was standing in the middle of
the drawing-room and allowing himself to be coaxed on to his favorite
subjects by certain methods known only to his children; though Lady
Joan, with her accustomed shrewdness, and partly from a desire to fall
into the spirit of her surroundings, however dull they might be, also
lent her aid in drawing him out, and Sir Marcus became a willing and
unconscious victim.
"Interested in duck-breeding, did you say?" he exclaimed eagerly; "then
you shall see something you can't see in Pont Street or any of your
swell West End places," forgetting for the moment his envy of Lady
Joan's charming house in town. "You shall come over one of our famous
duckeries, and see what you've been eating with green peas all the
season, and learn how we breed ducks in Murville. It isn't every one who
gets the opportunity of coming to the very centre of the most important
village industry in the home counties, and it is quite time you saw how
the laboring man is kept from starvation by a little help and a little
encouragement. Why, let me tell you, though I am a modest man, God
knows, and it is not I who should say it, that if it had not been for my
letters to the papers, the duck interest would have completely died out
in Murville long ago. And where would the working-man have been then? Do
you know, my dear young lady, that I, that is, Murville, or rather, I
should say, my letter to the county paper has been quoted in the 'Daily
Liberal'? There's fame for you! You didn't know you had come to such a
world-renowned place, eh? Ah, we are not so hidden in Murville, after
all; that is, the--the cause of the elevation of the laborer has its
opportunities even in a small village like this."
"Even a duck has its portion in the scheme of Providence," murmured Lady
Joan into her tea-cup; "I wish I could find out all these wonderful
things for myself, they are so improving. For instance, I shall never
mind paying a guinea a couple in February, now that I know I shall be
doing a great national good by buying them."
"You have got hold of quite the wrong idea," interrupted Digby, "a most
anti-socialistic idea, of which I could not believe even _you_ to be
capable. As if the luxury of the rich could be of the least avail--"
A jaded expression crept over the visage of Helen at this point, and
his younger brothers irreverently urging him to "play lightly, as they
had heard that old wheeze before," the derided prophet merely regretted
the absence of bears, and smiled sadly. His father gladly filled up the
breach.
"Eh, what? Socialism, did you say? Of course it is Socialism in its
noblest form, when--when we get a notice in the 'Daily Liberal,' and
without paying for it too! It was none of your cooked-up jobs, carried
through with bribery and corruption, let me tell you, it was all fair
and above board; Editor's a personal friend of mine, don't you see, and
_he_ wouldn't have quoted from my letter if he hadn't thoroughly
appreciated it. You can't get over facts with any amount of Socialism;
give me facts, that's what I always say," concluded Sir Marcus, happily
innocent that all his life his one aim had been to avoid facts and the
unpleasant truths they had forced upon him.
"I can hear wheels," said Lady Raleigh, suddenly. As she had made the
same remark at intervals during the day, no one paid her any particular
attention except Helen, who put out a protecting hand to the tea-table,
as if she anticipated a rush. This time, however, there was undoubtedly
a carriage coming up the drive; and Lady Raleigh rose to her feet
unsteadily, and became melodramatic.
"I can feel it is my boy," she said, winding her shawl tightly round
her; "come to him, Marcus, come to our long-lost child."
"Don't make a fool of yourself," growled Sir Marcus, bluntly; he had
suddenly resigned his position in the middle of the room, and was
sitting uncomfortably on the edge of the sofa instead; "he's only been
away two years, and there's no more chance of his being lost than there
is of your going on a five-mile walk."
He felt he had fired a double shot by his remark; but there came a yell
from the children on the doorstep, and his wife swept out of the room
with theatrical movements, and Sir Marcus felt more uncomfortable than
before.
"Leave him to me, children; let me have my boy's first kiss," cried Lady
Raleigh, in the hall.
"Just look," said the practical Helen, from the window: "he has hired
Bunce's best trap, and we haven't paid his bill for two quarters."
Lady Joan sat, and turned over the leaves of a magazine with her eyes
discreetly lowered, and wished that the means of escape were not so
completely cut off, and that she could get into the garden. Family jars
were intensely amusing to her critical nature; but after a whole day of
them she felt that she could reasonably dispense with any more just now,
and, from the Squire's attitude, another storm was evidently brewing.
"Hadn't you better come out, sir?" suggested Digby.
"No, sir, I will not come out," answered Sir Marcus, with a show of
determination. "Have I not already told you that I have done with the
rascal forever? I meant what I said, sir, and I will not see him nor
speak to him; he--he can go to some one else to pay his debts!"
And, unconscious that he had put more feeling into the end of his speech
than into anything else he had said, the Squire looked at his son and
his daughter as if vaguely imploring them to support him in the step he
had taken. In his most impetuous actions Sir Marcus always looked for a
supporter. Yet, much as Digby admitted the justice of his father's
anger, and much as Helen might censure the prodigal herself, there was
too much of the _esprit de corps_ in them that ran through the blood of
all the Raleighs and made them a formidable enemy to the outsider, to
allow them to acquiesce in the Squire's resentment; and he shifted his
ground a little and tried another stratagem.
"Don't you see the trouble and the misery that is coming upon me
through the extravagance of this young scamp? How is it you are so
short-sighted, so dense about it? I tell you he is _ruining_ me, this
Jack you are all so fond of; and in ruining me he is taking the bread
out of your own mouths, and out of the mouths of your brothers and
sisters. Hey? Do you see now?"
And finding that mercenary argument did not produce the effect he
wanted, Sir Marcus fled from the sound of voices coming dangerously
near, and beat a sheepish retreat into his library on the opposite side
of the hall.
"It is curious," said Digby, in his oratorical way, "how the father can
forgive anything but want of solid success. He doesn't care a hang that
Jack has been the most popular fellow in the colony, but if he had made
his pile and had something to show for his popularity, then he would
proclaim it on the housetops. What a curious age it is, and how we love
to judge by results! By the way, Jack will have a warm time if the
father keeps it up, won't he?"
Even the prophet has to drop into the colloquial sometimes.
"Good thing too, it's what he wants," said the inconsistent Helen; and
they both glanced at the expressionless face of Lady Joan as she scanned
the article on "Chinese architecture," and they left her to go and join
the throng in the porch.
In the library on the other side of the hall stood Sir Marcus, his back
to the door and his feet set very square on the hearthrug, trying to
drown the noise of welcome in the porch by rustling the newspaper in his
hands loudly, while he kept his eyes obstinately fixed on the Premier's
speech on fruit-growing for the million.
"Capital speech, capital speech," he said out loud, beginning it vaguely
for the third time; "what I have always said myself in fact, but I never
could get anybody to listen to me. Why--why the devil are they making
such a row in the garden?"--as the window became darkened by the
passing of many figures--"coming into the hall, are they? Let them come
into the hall by all means, _I_ can't stop them, it's no longer my own
house, I suppose; but they sha'n't come in here anyhow; I hope I have a
remnant of authority left--and--eh, what? is that the beggar laughing?
bless him!--that is, confound his impudence! what right has he to laugh
when I don't mean to forgive him? I--I've been a weak fool all my life,
but I'm not going to give in this time; it--it's a duty I owe to the
younger ones to make an example of him, whatever it costs me to do it;
not that it costs me anything, of course, not anything at all, of
course; he--he has forfeited my love, the--the rascal, and I _won't_
give in this time. Why--why the devil don't they stop his laughing when
I mean to cast him off? Pack of women and children, with no sense of the
responsibilities of life!--" the columns began to vanish into mist, and
the hall seemed filled with one shout of laughter; the Squire gasped
and recovered himself--"It's my duty as a father to withhold my
forgiveness; what else is a poor man to do when he has such an enormous
family? A mountain of debts at his back, I'll be bound, and he thinks he
is going to get round me to pay them all--as if I wouldn't help him if I
could, bless his--hang his improvidence! but when there are eleven of
them--such absurdity on the part of Lettice, always told her it was an
unnecessary thing to have such a tribe of them; but there! no one ever
has listened to me, and now they must bear the consequences among them.
Wh--what? who's that at the door? There's no one in here, I tell you,
the--the room's empty, and I don't mean to see you--I'm not going to be
made a fool of when I've kept it up all day--why doesn't he go away,
eh?"
The Squire's voice had sunk into a whisper, and the "Daily Liberal"
shook like a leaf in the breeze.
"And the dear old guv, where is he? Why doesn't he come out as he always
does? Hasn't any one told him I am here?"
"I tell you this is my room; it isn't much that belongs to me, except
five sons doing nothing, and six unmarried daughters, but--but this room
is my property, and I won't have any one in, I tell you--what a fool I
was not to lock the door--eh, what? who's that, eh? Damn the
looking-glass!"
There was a mirror over the fireplace, and the fireplace was opposite
the door. It was too much for Sir Marcus; if the boy had shown the least
sign of shame, of nervousness at meeting him, it would have been easier
to keep up a semblance of anger; but, as usual, Jack's bluntness of
vision saved him where finer instincts would have been his ruin.
"Hullo, father, here I am! All right, father? I say, isn't it awfully
jolly to be together again, eh, father?"
The premier's speech on fruit-growing for the million fluttered down
into the coal scuttle; and the Squire wiped his spectacles violently,
and gave in to the fascination of the single man who never worked. And
when Digby strolled in ten minutes later, he found the prodigal filling
his father's pipe with Canadian tobacco, and telling him American
anecdotes, while the little room resounded with their laughter.
"Come in, Digby, and listen to this fellow," said Sir Marcus, jovially;
"did you ever know such a fellow as Jack? It's a pity _you_ don't try
America, Digby, it would do you a world of good, man!"
Digby accepted the situation and his eviction with a laugh, not only
because, as he had said to Lady Joan, he knew he would be received back
into favor again on the morrow when the fascination of the prodigal
would have exhausted itself for the time, but also from a lurking hope
that he would at last have some chance of talking to their fair guest,
whom the Squire had as yet entirely monopolized, in the way he usually
monopolized any stranger who would lend a willing and fresh ear to his
hobbies. But the musician did not get his chance that evening, though he
tried very hard for it. Jack's return proved but a doubtful assistance
to him: to begin with, it caused an alteration in the dinner-table, by
which he found himself out of the range of her conversation; it also
made the conversation in the drawing-room afterwards more hopelessly
general than ever, for they all sat round in a circle and listened to
the American anecdotes, and when the American anecdotes flagged for a
moment Digby had to go to the piano and play the returned wanderer's
favorite airs, while the hero himself took the opportunity of opening a
desperate flirtation with Lady Joan under cover of the crashing chords
of his eldest brother.
The musician was full thirty years old, and had been in love almost as
many times as he had photos in his West End studio; like his father, it
was only the trifling circumstances of life, or its visions, that
seemed to him to be worthy of serious consideration, and like his father
he had retained his boyish temperament past the age when such a
temperament is sufficient for the demands of circumstance. From the
first his connection with Lady Joan had been unusual. She had not begun
by fascinating him, and he had not begun by giving her singing-lessons.
She was one of the few people of his acquaintance who knew of that
secret marriage of his which had left him a widower three years ago,
with a baby son whom Sir Marcus would not acknowledge, and who did not
regard it either as a boyish entanglement from which his wife's death
had luckily released him, or as a reason for abstaining from future
marriage altogether. Not that she had any definite views on the subject
of boyish entanglements or second marriages, for Lady Joan never had
definite views on anything, they were too much trouble to defend, and
she would not have taken up any position which would not lend itself to
modification on occasion; but she was unconventional, and she knew it,
and in spite of her boast that she was a woman of the world, there was
enough of the school-girl in her to give her an exquisite delight in
shocking other people who were not unconventional. So hers was the only
hand that was held out to Digby when he came to Relton after his wife's
death, in search of a home for his child; and it was she who braved the
many-tongued slander of an idle country town, and helped him to find
what he wanted in the motherly landlady of the "Relton Arms," with whom
he could leave the boy in safety. The arrangement necessarily brought
him constantly to Relton, when he was naturally prompted by gratitude
and courtesy to leave his card at the Hall; but it was some time before
she began to have any real interest for him. It was true that she was a
beautiful woman, but her beauty and her wit were of a subtle kind,
unlike the obvious and doll-like charms that usually attracted him in
women; she showed him that she found him interesting, but she did not
adore him like his other lady friends, and she disputed his dicta, and
she did not understand his music. After a time these very differences
drew them together, and they passed into the desperately dangerous stage
of friendship, in which the man had to confess to himself that he was
again in love, and the woman had to ask herself if he meant anything,
and whether she was to continue to be natural and pleasant to him, or
whether the time had come for her in the eyes of society to avoid him
and pretend she did not care for him. Lady Joan, hating the laws of
society, and dreading still more the chain of another man's will, broke
the connection at this point and went abroad for a year, and was away
long enough for Digby to fall in and out of another hot love affair, and
returned on the day of his reception in the studio to find him rather
more interesting than before, and herself made weaker in her resolution
by a year's sojourn with a lady companion. Digby on his part was
persuading himself that her return to England had caused the revival of
his old love, and that this attachment which had begun so coldly and
forced itself into his heart by the most estimable instincts of
gratitude and friendship, was superior to all the other attachments of
his life, which had begun with infatuation and ended with indifference,
and was therefore to be cherished as the only real feeling he had ever
had for any woman.
"I'm not the sort of man to be a bachelor," he said to himself
earnestly, somewhere about midnight that evening, as he leaned out of
his bedroom window and smoked a cigarette meditatively. "Some fellows
ought never to marry; I told Dick Stephens so when he got engaged, and
he was separated from his wife within a year of their marriage. But I am
not like Dick Stephens. I am really a most domesticated sort of man, and
it is time I settled down. I am tired of being a Bohemian; every
wretched little pygmy who writes ballads and lets his hair grow and
doesn't wash, is a Bohemian. And there is the boy, too; he ought to
have a mother of course, poor little chap: we both want a woman about
us, don't we, Sonny? Yes, there is no doubt that it is my duty to Sonny
to marry very soon."
In the room above, among the cushions on the sofa, lay Lady Joan with
her hair down and a fan in her hand, opposite a full-length mirror; in
her most secret moments Lady Joan liked to assure herself that she
played the part picturesquely.
"I like him. He is fresh, and original, and amusing. He doesn't bore me,
and I can flirt with him--safely. He has no theories about things, and
he does not want to upset creation, and he doesn't take life so
desperately seriously. It is such a blessing to meet some one who is
content with the age as it is--bah! what a smell of tobacco smoke!"
And she rose, shut the window with a bang, and went to bed, where she
slept soundly till the morning.
"It is curious," murmured the musician, lighting another cigarette,
"how Fate seems to have propelled her towards me at every crisis of my
life; just after Mary died, for instance, and again before I met
Norah!--poor little Norah! and then again the other day, when I really
had made up my mind to go to Africa, and she came back from the
Continent in time to prevent me. And now--ah, I believe I could write
that song now."
And he went to the writing-table and tried to set some impassioned words
of Swinburne to music; but although the situation demanded that he
should have been specially inspired, he found himself incapable of
writing a note, and had to give up the task in despair.
"My brain is overwrought; I am not going to sleep to-night," he said,
and put the bromide by his bedside.
After that he also shut the window and went to bed, where he likewise
slept soundly till the morning.