Mr. Usher the elder had settled down in Ayresford a few months after
the death of Sylvester's mother. At first he had taken a small cottage,
then a semi-detached villa. Finally, he had transferred his household
gods to a comfortable little house standing in its own grounds not far
from Woodlands. He was not beloved in Ayresford on account of his habit
of telling dull stories of uninteresting incidents in his past career;
but as he went to church regularly and did no particular harm to
anybody, he was accepted as a member of the humdrum society of the
somnolent little town. No one knew much of his antecedents. He had been
something in Australia and now lived on his means. That he had chummed
with Mr. Lanyon,--a fact which he proclaimed so unceasingly that people
grew nervous with teasing anticipation whenever Australia was mentioned
in his presence,--was a sufficient guarantee of his respectability.
Then Roderick came on flying visits and with his brilliant ways acquired
popularity. Later, when he produced plays, painted pictures for the
Academy, and wrote novels, Ayresford was quite proud of him. The
father gained a vicarious reputation. They wanted to make him people's
church-warden. But here Matthew Lanyon intervened.
“I'm not a church-goer myself,” said he, “but I'm hanged if I'll let you
make a mockery of the whole thing.”
Whereupon Usher replied that it was a pity for lifelong friends
to quarrel over such a trifle, and wrote a letter to decline
the church-wardenship. But he put a little black mark and some
hieroglyphics, with the date, in a little black book, half filled with
similar inscriptions, which he kept locked up in his safe. This was some
years before Sylvester had left for London, and the black marks had gone
on increasing. Ebenezer Usher was a methodical man.
He was very proud of his house, which was tastefully furnished
and contained a choice collection of old china, of which he was a
connoisseur. Ayresford naturally put him down as a man of substance,
and though he entertained as little as decency allowed, he avoided the
reputation of a miser. His elegant leisure was passed in collecting
the china above mentioned, postage-stamps, and book plates, and in
speculating through outside brokers.
One morning in June he sat at his table, by the open window, through
which came all the scents of the lawn, immersed in his morning's work
of sorting book plates. He had them before him in cardboard boxes neatly
labelled on the back. They were divided into their several countries,
subdivided into noble families and commoners, further divided into
“Armorial,” “Artistic-Armorial,” and “Fanciful,” and they were all
arranged according to date. A manuscript catalogue by his side gave the
reference to case and position. A pile of loose plates, unmounted, lay
immediately in front of him, through which he was going one by one. If
the plate happened to be new, he put it aside for mounting. If it was
a duplicate, he fished out his original from its case and subjected the
two to anxious scrutiny through a magnifying-glass, to decide which was
the better impression. Of the subject he had profound knowledge, and he
had a sincere appreciation of beauty of workmanship. At such times as
this he was the most harmless of old gentlemen, dignifying the evening
of his days with a learned pastime.
He was leaning back in his chair, lovingly scrutinising the almost
fragile tenderness of an exquisite Bewick, when a servant brought in two
letters that had come by the second post. He bade her put them on
the table, and there they lay for some time while he continued the
inspection of his Bewick. At last he laid it down with a sigh and opened
the first letter. It ran:--
_Dear Sir,--We regret to inform you that the Great Elephant
stock has fallen to 3 1/8. Kindly wire advice as to cover.
We have every confidence in the stock and its ultimate
recovery.
Yours faithfully,
Peter Vavasour & Co._
Mr. Usher groaned and threw the letter away from him. He felt a most
ill-used man. The ingratitude of the world after a laborious lifetime
spent in its service pained him exceedingly. The sight of Roderick's
handwriting on the other envelope by no means brought him comfort.
Roderick's letters were rare, but unpleasantly to the point. He unfolded
it with distrustful resignation. But when his glance had taken in its
contents, his expression changed. He took off his gold spectacles,
breathed on them, and wiped them with his handkerchief, and putting them
on again, beamed at his son's letter:--
_Revered Parent,--I'm going to marry Ella Defries. Can't get
shekels without Lanyon's consent to union. A silly will
gives him the hold. Am writing now for his blessing. Better
let me overhaul the draft of your letter of paternal welcome
to her, as I know your effusive little habits.
Yours,
Roderick._
“Ah, the flippant ways of youth,” said he, with an indulgent smile.
The bucket-shop shark's application for cover came to him now through
the rosy cloud of his content. What did a few hundreds matter when his
only son was putting himself into a position to relieve from want his
aged father's declining years? He almost caressed Mr. Vavasour's letter
as he folded it up carefully and placed it with Roderick's in the
breast-pocket of his old frock-coat. He felt kindly disposed towards all
mankind, and prepared with a benevolent air to go forth and visit
his friend, Matthew Lanyon. He cleared his table of the book plates,
scrupulously putting each in its proper case, and then rang the bell.
“My hat, Olivia. And my stick. No. The sun is warm. It is very hot. I
shall take the green umbrella.”
The elderly servant brought him these articles. He put on the Panama
straw hat with his accustomed deliberation, while Olivia held the
umbrella. Then he took the latter in his hand, and went out with his
slow old man's tread.
On his way through the wide straggling main street of Ayresford, he
paused, according to long custom, to look into the window of a little
poverty-stricken bric-à-brac shop, garnished with a few rusty old
pistols, bits of china, and worm-eaten books. To-day was displayed a
couple of leaves torn from an old postage-stamp album. The eye of the
collector at once fixed itself on a Canada, green and unused. He hurried
into the shop.
“Good-morning, Mrs. Driscoll; it is a very hot day.”
A dejected old woman rose from a stool by the counter.
“The Lord sends it, Mr. Usher. We must abide by His mercies.”
“We must indeed,” replied Usher, wagging his head.
“I thought I would come in and help you, Mrs. Driscoll, by making a
little purchase.”
“You 're very kind, sir,” said the old woman, mournfully.
“What might you be asking for these two sheets of postage stamps?”
“Ten shillings, I was told, sir.”
Usher lifted up his hands pityingly and smiled.
“My dear Mrs. Driscoll, they are not worth half a crown. But I will be
generous. It is one's duty to be generous to the poor and needy. I will
give you five shillings.”
“Very well, sir,” said the old woman. The bargain was concluded, and
Mr. Usher went out a very happy man. For a green, unused 7 1/2d. Canada
postage stamp, as all philatelists know, will fetch some eight or nine
pounds, if judiciously put on the market, and Mr. Usher had a beautiful
specimen already in his collection. Fortune was really smiling on him
this morning.
He reached Matthew Lanyon's office in a seraphic temper, which a quarter
of an hour's wait did not ruffle. When Mr. Lanyon's client had departed,
he was shown into the office, where Matthew was seated at his desk.
“I thought you would come,” said Matthew, without further greeting. “Sit
down.”
“You are not looking at all well, my dear friend,” said Usher. “You
should really take care of yourself. I always say it is wrong for a man
to let his business affairs get the upper hand with him.”
It was true. Matthew had been ailing considerably of late, and his
doctor had urged him to do a number of impossible things,--to go for a
sea voyage, to reduce his practice, to take a partner. He was killing
himself. He must stop, or human science wouldn't answer for the
consequences.
“Human science can wait till she's asked,” the old man had replied with
a certain humour. The past year had aged him considerably. His hair was
greyer, his figure slightly bent, his face and hands thinner, his brow
more care worn. Characteristically he had told Sylvester of none of his
ailments, and during the weekends Sylvester had spent at Woodlands, he
had made special efforts to appear bright and strong. When Sylvester,
anxiously informed by his aunt, questioned him, he had laughed in his
cheery way, but with a touch of petulance, and asked how he, a man of
science, could attribute any importance to Agatha's silly whimsies.
He was not the man to be fond of pity, even from those dearest to him;
_a fortiori_, he found Usher's sympathy particularly obnoxious.
“I'm exceedingly well,” he said somewhat irritably. “Better than I have
been for months.”
“Perhaps the pleasant news has cheered you,” said Usher. “There is
nothing like the happiness of others to make the heart young again. I am
always rejoiced at the happiness of others. It is my nature.”
He said it with such an air of dull simplicity, uttering each vocable
with weighty deliberation, that a smile flickered around Matthew's lips.
“I really think you believe it.”
“I never disguise my sentiments. Falsehood is abhorrent to me.”
“Rubbish!” said Matthew, curtly. “I'm busy. I can only give you ten
minutes. What have you come for?”
“To share your happiness in the engagement of our dear children,--my
son, your ward.”
“I am not pleased at all. Even you ought to know that.”
“Not pleased?”
“No. A marriage like that is an impossibility.”
Usher opened his eyes in reproachful astonishment.
“Why?”
“How can I let my ward marry a man like Roderick?”
“My son is a fine fellow,” said Usher.
“He 's an infernal scamp,” said Matthew, “and you know it.”
“He has been a little wild, I allow,” said Usher, indulgently. “But
all young men sow their wild oats. Even you, Matthew, have committed
indiscretions--”
“And I've paid for them a million times over,” said Matthew. “My God! I
have paid the uttermost farthing.”
He passed his hand with a quick movement across his face, as if to wipe
out a sudden contortion of features.
“We needn't discuss the matter,” he said in business tones. “I shall not
give my consent.”
“I don't understand why it is necessary,” said Usher.
Matthew put him briefly into possession of the facts that Sylvester had
disclosed to Roderick.
“They will marry without your consent,” said Usher. Matthew laughed.
“It takes two to make a marriage, Usher.” Usher looked at him dully and
sighed. “I did not expect this ungenerosity from you, Matthew. Remember
I am a father. I have always been a most affectionate father. My
affection has always stood in my way. I plead for my poor son.”
“Your poor son! Why, I've supported him in comfort all his life. He
earns a decent living himself, and twice I have saved him from gaol.
By George, sir, he would have got there--and richly deserved it. If
you think I'm going to give my consent to Ella marrying that confounded
attitudinising swindler, you take me for a greater rascal than
yourself.” Matthew got up and walked about the room.
He was not a man who easily lost his temper, but the idea of this
marriage infuriated him. Usher lifted a deprecating hand.
“Perhaps it can be arranged,” said he.
“No, it can't. So you can go.”
“We will withdraw our claim for five thousand pounds.”
“Where do you suppose I'm to find five thousand pounds?”
“You can do what you like with Miss Defries's money, Matthew.”
Matthew stopped in his walk, and his face grew livid. He pointed to the
door.
“Go out,” he said in a trembling voice, “or I'll have you turned out.”
Usher rose to his feet and shuffled towards the door.
“Then poor Sylvester shall know what were the parents in whom he
trusted.”
“Let him know and be damned to you!” said Matthew.
He flung open the door into the outer office, and stood rigid and white
with anger, as Usher passed out. Then, when he was alone, he put his
hand to his heart, and staggering to an old couch threw himself down
half fainting among the papers with which it was piled.
A clerk, coming in a few moments later to announce a client, found him
white and gasping. But he insisted to the frightened youth on his being
well again, drank a glass of water, and with a sheer effort of will,
dragged himself to his feet and concentrated his faculties.
“Show Sir Trevor in,” said he.
But the sudden attack rendered him weak and anxious for the rest of the
day. He had never fainted like that before. It must have been the heat
and the fury he had flown into with Usher. When he went home to lunch
Miss Lanyon was alarmed at his appearance.
“Perhaps I'm a little bilious. It is the heat. It's nothing,” he said
obstinately.
Miss Lanyon looked at him sadly out of her faded blue eyes. If Dorothy,
herself, or any of the household showed signs of poorliness, he would
worry himself to death about it, get the doctors in, ransack the town
for delicacies, and send special messengers from the office during
the day to make inquiries. But where he himself was concerned, he
was impatient of interference. Miss Lanyon shook her head. Men were
insoluble enigmas.
In the afternoon he went round the garden with his little granddaughter,
submitting to be decorated with whatever flowers her childish fancy
selected. He wore carnations round the ribbon of his hat, a Maréchal
Niel rose in the lapel of his coat, and pansies stuck down his
waistcoat, and he stalked on, gravely holding the child's hand and
chatting with her on terms of comradeship. As they passed by the
strawberry beds in the kitchen garden, Dorothy pointed to some
ragamuffin children pressing their faces against the iron gate.
“Dirty little boys,” she announced fastidiously.
“What would you sooner give them,--soap or strawberries?” asked the old
man.
Dorothy reflected a moment.
“Soap is nasty,” she said.
“Well, we'll give them some strawberries. Open the gate and call them.”
She ran to the gate and gave the invitation. The children came in shyly,
their mouths watering.
“Show them how to pick,” said Matthew.
She bent down and picked and gave a berry to each of the children. The
old man walked away. Presently Dorothy came running after him. Why had
he gone off?
“They'll eat more if I'm not there,” said he. “But why don't you stay?”
“One of them ate a slug,” replied Dorothy, in disgusted dignity.
The old man threw himself down on a garden seat and laughed. Dorothy
clambered on to his knees.
“Tell me about the kangaroos,” she commanded. So for the next hour he
entertained her with stories of kangaroos and monkeys and crocodiles
and the strange beasts of far lands. Then Miss Lanyon came upon them, in
search of Dorothy.
“There are some horrid little boys stealing the strawberries,” she said.
“What! are they there still? They began an hour ago. I gave them leave.”
“And they have been picking some of the green peaches that were coming
on so nicely.”
“They'll enjoy them green better than we shall enjoy them ripe,” said
Matthew. “So let them be.”
“I sha'n't. They'll be ill,” said Miss Lanyon, with spirit.
The old man went off to distribute halfpence among the children as a
sort of compensation for loss of stomach aches, and his sister carried
off Dorothy.
“Dorothy,” she said on the way, “your grandfather is a saint.”
“You said he was the worry of your life to-day,” said Dorothy.
“Because he's too good, dear. We're none of us good enough for him,”
said Miss Lanyon.
Matthew returned to the seat and slowly divested himself of his flowers,
giving himself up for the moment to the peaceful charm of the afternoon
hour. The place was dear to him. It was more or less the creation of his
life. It was a small house in a little garden when he had brought his
wife to Ayresford. And he had added on to both, bit by bit, building
a wing, buying a few adjacent acres, until it had come to be a large
property perfectly laid out.
The house stood mellow and homelike in the soft sunshine, with ivy and
clematis clustering on walls and around windows. The lawn, smooth and
well trimmed, stretched into the dimness of a little wilderness marked
by shrubs. The sycamores on the other side of the house waved their tops
above the roof. He remembered when they were planted. She planted them.
What a number of years ago! And there in the old part of the house was
her window. The clematis had always been there. He remembered how it
used to brush her cheek as she leaned out to call to him. It was just
such an afternoon as this that her delicate face, like a pink shell,
flushed with excitement, had appeared and she had summoned him nearer.
“Mat, Baby has cut a tooth.”
My God! He could hear her voice now; almost wondered whether she had not
withdrawn within, and whether the five and thirty years had not been a
vague dream, and he himself was not young and vigorous and defiant
of fate. But the quick memories of the day rushed back upon him and
obscured the dearer vision.
The marriage was impossible. His heart yearned towards the girl whom
he loved with an old man's tender affection. How could he allow her to
marry a man whom he knew, from heredity, from actual facts that had come
miserably within his own knowledge, to be an unprincipled adventurer?
The misery of it was that his lips were sealed. He could not tell her
of Roderick's real character. To do that would be to break virtually the
promise he had kept for over thirty years.
“Whatever I do for my own son, I shall do for yours.”
He could no more blacken Roderick's reputation than he could
Sylvester's. Perhaps the marriage would redeem him. Yet to stake the
life's happiness of a human soul that was dear to him upon the chance of
another's redemption was too great a responsibility. Why had she engaged
herself to this man? It was not through love. He drew from his pocket
the letter he had received from her that morning and read it through.
It was constrained, artificial. The tone jarred upon their intimacy.
Perhaps Ella had changed, grown worldly and cynical, lost her love for
him. Or was it only the letter of a girl at war with her own heart? He
had seen many such battles in his time.
“At any rate, I withhold my consent,” he said decisively.
Yet Usher's threat agitated him more than he dared confess. He had never
defied him before on that point. For a moment he was racked with a spasm
of fear lest Sylvester should know the secret of his relations with
Usher. The fear had grown with the years into the roots of his life, had
become an unreasoning terror. To save his son the knowledge, he had been
killing himself by inches with work and worry.
Suddenly he rose, shook himself as if impatient of the clinging doubts,
and walked briskly across the lawn. Usher daren't do it, for his own
sake.
Usher turned the corner of the house and met him by the door. Matthew
frowned and regarded him angrily.
“I told you to go and be damned to you,” he said.
“You made use of improper language, Matthew. You lost your temper. I
never lose my temper. I am a most peaceful man. And I forgive. It is a
Christian virtue. I thought you might change your mind on reflection.”
“I haven't changed my mind,” said Matthew.
Usher took an envelope from his pocket, withdrew a letter, and handed it
to Matthew.
“Would you like me to send that to Sylvester?”
Matthew glanced through it; his fingers trembled in spite of his will.
But he tore the paper across and across and put the fragments into his
jacket-pocket.
“You would not be such a fool as to kill the goose with the golden
eggs,” he said.
“I thought you would do that,” said Usher, drawing another paper from
his pocket; “but I have prepared a duplicate. I have always been a man
of foresight. It is my firm intention to post this to Sylvester unless
you give me your written consent to the marriage. I do not want money,
Matthew. I have earned enough to keep me in comfort for the rest of
my old age, and your promise to help my poor boy was based on no
conditions. All the country says you are an upright man, Matthew. When
I mentioned the five thousand pounds to-day, I was forgetting your
scrupulous honour. I apologise. I always apologise when I am wrong. I am
a just man.”
All through this harangue Matthew's stern gaze had never left the puffy,
white-bearded, common face. And he saw, not for the first time, beneath
the old man's dull and red-rimmed eyes, a hard gleam of hate. But
for the first time he realised that even to such a man there might be
something dearer even than money, and the chill fear fastened round his
heart. He made an impatient movement across the threshold of the open
door.
“Come into the library,” he said. “It is an insult to God's sweet air to
discuss such things here.”
Usher followed him indoors. Some time later Miss Lanyon came down,
having changed her dress for dinner, and leaned against the jamb of the
creeper-covered porch and drank in the softness of the summer evening
with the country-bred gentlewoman's vague mingling of happiness and
regret. She had heard of the engagement. It had made her sad. Why had it
not been Sylvester instead of Roderick? She sighed over the grave of her
old maid's vicarious romance. A footstep behind her caused her to turn.
It was Mr. Usher, buttoning his old frock-coat. His face showed grave
benevolence.
“A father lives in his children,” he said, after receiving her reluctant
congratulations. “I live in my son.”
The dinner-bell rang.
“I must go,” he continued. “I came to see my old friend on business. He
is so good. His time is always at the disposal of his friends.”
“I told Dorothy this evening that he was a saint,” she said.
Usher squeezed her hand impressively.
“He is indeed, Miss Lanyon. He is indeed.”
But Matthew sat in his library chair staring in front of him in agony of
spirit. He had yielded. The trace of the writing was there on the fresh
blotting-paper before him. The strong man writhed under the humiliation
of defeat. The proud, sensitive gentleman was tortured in his Nessus
shirt of dishonour. And it comforted him not that it was for his
son's sake. He felt as if he had ransomed him at the price of Ella's
deliverance to the Minotaur.