to adopt Jemmie. He would really have been a most satisfactory child if
he would only have abstained from continually reminding her that age
was creeping fast upon both of them. It was difficult to be motherly to
a man who would talk all the time about his stiff joints and hardening
arteries, who would grunt and groan when he rose from an arm-chair,
and who after dinner had scarcely read half a dozen headlines of _The
Times_ before he was fast asleep. Mary did not want to be as old as
all that, and she wished that her husband would remember that there
were fifteen years between them. Fifteen long years. Or was it only
because Richard was away that the years seemed longer nowadays? They
had fled by so swiftly when he was little. She must go in for gardening
more seriously this Autumn. If Richard came back next Spring, he would
appreciate her English flowers after Africa; and if he did not come
back, the flowers would be a small consolation. It was a pity that she
had begun so early to work among girls. That club would have been such
an interesting occupation for the present. But if she began again now,
it would mean arguments with Jemmie, who would never understand why,
when he was always at home, she wanted to wear herself out ministering
to a lot of strange girls. Strangeness was Jemmie's bugbear. Strange
people, strange ideas, strange manners, strange places, strange
clothes, they were all equally abhorrent to Jemmie nowadays.
"I may not be very distinguished or anything like that," he boasted.
"But at any rate I'm not always running after new-fangled ideas. Some
people would call me old-fashioned and consider me out of date; but
I don't care what they call me or what they think me. When I was at
school we used to kick fellows who tried to be original. We were rough
and ready in those days, my dear, but, by George, we were men! Yes, by
George, m-e-n. Men!"
"I thought you were boys," Mary laughed.
"Now, my dear, you know perfectly well what I mean."
"Yes, yes, you foolish old thing, of course I know what you mean. And I
wish you could make Geoffrey a little less original."
"Ah, Geoffrey! Geoffrey is becoming a problem. I cannot think where he
inherits his low tastes."
"Haven't we agreed to call him original?" said Mary. "Don't let's
bother about the hereditary side of his misbehavior. You and I
between us must be responsible for him, and we ought to shoulder our
responsibility. I really am worried about his future."
They were sitting in the garden of High Corner on a fine afternoon at
the end of September, and surely never had the phloxes been finer than
they were this Autumn. If Richard admired them last year, what would he
have said if he could have seen them now?
Muriel had already gone back to school, so that Geoffrey, as the only
child at home, became for the time the chief object of his parents'
solicitude.
"You've always taken his part when I've tried to be severe with him,"
the father pointed out.
"Yes, I know I have, and I think rather foolishly. But I suppose it's
natural for a mother. It's what remains of the instinct to defend one's
young. I wish he were a little boy again. I believe I should bring him
up quite differently, if I had another chance."
Jemmie shook his head.
"Ah, if," he murmured sapiently. "If if's were horses, old lady,
beggars might ride."
"Yes, and I think I've been rather foolish," Mary continued, "in
keeping from you certain things about Geoffrey. You know, three times
already since he went to Oxford I've lent him comparatively large sums
for him to pay his debts. Gambling debts, I'm afraid."
"Gambling debts?" Jemmie echoed. "You don't mean to tell me that the
young fool has been gambling? Gambling debts at nineteen? Why, the
notion is ridiculous. Think of me. There was I, my own master from the
time I left school. But I never had any gambling debts. I never had any
debts at all. Why, when I was not much older than Geoffrey, my poor old
father died and I was left in sole charge of the business. Suppose I
had had gambling debts? A pretty stockbroker I should have made."
"There's no need for you to imagine that I'm trying to defend Geoffrey
for running into debt," Mary observed.
"But why did you keep it from me? Why didn't you tell me before?"
"I know it was silly of me. I've admitted it was silly. Let that pass."
"How much have you paid for him?"
"About three hundred pounds."
"Three hundred what? Did you say three hundred pounds, or am I going
mad and deaf? Three hundred pounds? Why, that's nearly a whole year's
allowance. Do you seriously mean to tell me that you've allowed
Geoffrey to play ducks and drakes with three hundred pounds of your
money?"
"Frankly, Jemmie, I don't think that the amount matters," she said.
"Three hundred pounds or three hundred pence, if he can't pay, the
large sum is morally no worse than the smaller."
Jemmie began to splutter.
"Now that's a woman all over. No idea whatever of the value of money.
It's not a question of morality, my dear. It's a question of finance.
He knows very well, even if you don't, that he has no more business to
risk three hundred pounds than I have to risk three thousand. A fine
father my children would call me if I started gambling and gambled away
all their inheritance."
"Jemmie dear, there is really no need for you to get angry with me,"
she protested. "I am as well aware as you how wrong it is of Geoffrey
to gamble. But I do blame my own indulgence. I ought to have refused
to give him the money and sent him to you. I don't know why I didn't.
I suppose it was an absurd kind of jealousy. I suppose really that I
hoped to make him fonder of me by giving him the money he wanted."
"But why have you told me now?" her husband asked in sudden
bewilderment.
Mary looked unhappy.
"Promise me," she began, "that if I tell you something more you won't
fly into a rage with Geoffrey and by losing your temper perhaps do
him more harm than good. Promise me that, Jemmie, before I tell you
anything more."
"He's not been stealing? He hasn't committed forgery or anything like
that, has he?" stammered an apprehensive father.
"No, it's not quite so bad as that," she laughed sadly. "But you
haven't promised."
"As long as it's nothing criminal, I promise to do my utmost to be
patient with the boy."
Mary hesitated for a few moments, half regretting that she had raised
the subject of Geoffrey's behavior. Then she plunged.
"It's this girl at the White Hart. Mrs. Woldingham came to see me this
morning...."
"Girl at the White Hart?" Jemmie interrupted. "What has Mrs. Woldingham
got to do with girls at the White Hart, even if she is the Rector's
wife?"
"Jemmie, I must beg you not to interrupt me. If you will have the
patience to let me say what I was going to say, you'll hear. Mrs.
Woldingham, who came to see me about the Bazaar which is being got
up for the debt on the new peal of bells, spoke very nicely about
Geoffrey, and I'm sure she had not the least idea of making mischief
or repeating village gossip. But people are beginning to talk about
Geoffrey's being seen so often at the White Hart."
"Drinking too!" the father apostrophized. "Great Heavens, my second son
appears to have every vice."
"No, not drinking," Mary contradicted irritably. "At least Mrs.
Woldingham did not suggest that he was drinking. The attraction is this
girl."
"What girl?"
"The girl at the White Hart."
"Do you mean the barmaid?"
"I suppose that's what she is. I really don't know anything more except
that Geoffrey is credited with having a love affair with some girl at
the White Hart."
Jemmie shook his head to Heaven.
"I really don't know what's happening to the young men of to-day. They
stop at nothing. Still, I'm relieved to hear it's only that. At least,
I suppose it's only that."
"Only what?" Mary asked frowning.
"Only a flirtation with a barmaid. Of course, he ought not to do that
kind of thing in his own village; but I'm relieved to hear it's only
that."
"That was all Mrs. Woldingham said."
"She didn't suggest that there was the likelihood of an open scandal?"
Mary looked puzzled.
"Come, come," her husband scoffed. "You are not a schoolgirl. I suppose
Mrs. Woldingham didn't suggest that the young woman was going to have
a child?"
"Jemmie, sometimes you really are unnecessarily coarse in the way you
blurt things out. No, Mrs. Woldingham didn't say anything about that
or indeed hint anything of the sort. At least, I don't think she did.
But, oh dear, what a horrible notion! Please, I do beg of you, speak
seriously to Geoffrey. If there were anything like that he would have
to admit it to you."
When Mary was alone, she reproached herself for being so disloyal to
Geoffrey as to tell his father about the money she had given him.
It was no use trying to pretend to herself that her only motive
for telling was a desire for Geoffrey to make a complete avowal of
everything and after he had been forgiven to be able to start fair in
his first encounter with life. She had not had the least temptation to
say a word about his debts until Mrs. Woldingham had thrown out those
hints about his behavior at the White Hart.
"I really believe I was jealous," she told herself. Jealous? Could she
possibly be jealous of this girl? It sounded too absurd when stated in
words. But there certainly had been an impulse to hurt Geoffrey and
a desire to punish him not for his generally unsatisfactory behavior
so much as for presuming at his age to fancy himself in love. It
was not the knowledge that people were talking which had roused her
indignation, but the suggestion that Geoffrey was madly in love with
this girl, this common, crude, flamboyant creature, this barmaid. Even
now her heart was beating fast with rage at the thought of such a
disgraceful entanglement.
"Of course, my dear Mrs. Alison, it may be nothing but a youthful
infatuation. At the same time I think I ought to warn you that they do
say he has proposed to the girl."
She had not told Jemmie that. She had unjustly allowed him to suppose
that the only scandal to be feared was Geoffrey's treatment of the
girl. Jemmie had jumped to the commonplace conclusion, and she had
been able to do no more than simulate the shocked feelings of a prude.
She had been annoyed by her husband's clumsy assumption of Geoffrey's
guilt, and she had found no better way to display her annoyance than by
that pretense of delicacy.
"One always thinks that one is going to find it easier to be better in
a few years' time; but, when the few years roll by, there is always a
new trap for one's self-confidence," Mary reflected.
She made up her mind to be patient with Geoffrey, and went down to
dinner with the intention of persuading Jemmie to be as patient as
she hoped to be herself. But her good intentions were frustrated by
Geoffrey's failure to appear.
"Keep nothing hot for Mr. Geoffrey," his father commanded.
Mary realized the extent of his wrath from this order, for nothing in
life seemed more important to Jemmie than the temperature of food.
Deliberately to let his son's dinner spoil was in his case almost the
equivalent of open excommunication. Another sign of his anger was
manifested after dinner, when, before he fell asleep in his chair,
instead of reading the headlines of _The Times_, the list of killed and
wounded in South Africa, and the sum of Roberts' points at billiards,
he neither read nor slept; when instead he paced up and down the
drawing-room, always tripping on the same head of a grizzly bear shot
by himself long ago in the Rocky Mountains, always saying "damn,"
always begging his wife's pardon for the oath with an implication that
Cæsar as well as Cæsar's wife should be above suspicion in dealing with
Cæsar's son.
"This is a bit too much of a good thing," he declared when the clock
struck ten without Geoffrey's arrival. "A little bit too much of a
good thing, by George! He's staying down at that confounded inn till
closing-time. That's what he's doing, you mark my words."
Half-past ten struck; but there was still no sign of Geoffrey.
"If his highness thinks that he's going to keep the whole household up
while he wanders about with that girl in the moonlight, he's mistaken.
I'll lock him out. By George, I will."
"But Jemmie, he may have had an accident."
"Fiddlesticks, my dear. If he'd had an accident, we should have heard
of it by now. I'll give him until eleven. If he isn't home by then,
the house shall be locked against him. I'll give him a lesson. I'll
frighten him this time."
The clock struck eleven; but Geoffrey did not come. His father rang the
bell.
"Please, Jemmie," his wife expostulated. "I'd rather you didn't say too
much in front of the servants."
"You're weakening. You're not backing me up. You're perfectly ready to
let him in. I tell you he has got to have a lesson."
"But the servants...."
"Bother the servants. I decline to let Geoffrey flout me, because I'm
afraid of the servants."
However, Jemmie did so far humor his wife as to imply when he was
giving orders to lock up the house, that he and she knew where their
son was.
"Although I was in half a mind to forbid anybody in the house to go
downstairs and let him in when he does come."
"I'm glad you didn't," Mary said. "I think that would only have made
ourselves look ridiculous."
She resolved not to go to sleep, so that when Geoffrey did come back,
she should hear him herself and be able to go downstairs and let him
in. She felt certain that she should be able to do this and that
Jemmie, who had announced his own intention of admitting this errant
son, would be fast asleep by that time. Jemmie must be very sleepy by
now, for he had been awake ever since dinner.
But Geoffrey did not come back at all that night, and in the morning
his mother received a letter.
Hawkins' Hotel,
Buckingham Street, Strand, W.C.
_Sept. 27th, 1901._
_My dearest Mother_,
_I find this a very difficult letter to write, but it has got to be
written, and you may as well know at once that by the time you get
this letter I shall be married to Mary Wyatt who was at the White
Hart Inn. I made up my mind to do this a month ago and I would have
told you if I had not been afraid that somehow or other I would have
been prevented. Of course I know that you and Father will be angry,
but it can't be helped. It's done now. At least it will be by the
time you get this. I'm going out to make arrangements now. Of course
I'm rather worried about what you will say, but she is a charming
girl and if you could only get over your prejudice and meet her I
think you would agree with me. She is only three years older than me.
Of course I cannot dictate what you are or are not to do. But unless
you can see your way to being decent to Mary I would rather cut
myself off from the family altogether. It would only make me angry
if I thought she was being snubbed, and she is very sensitive. I am
sorry for the way I am getting married, but please do not think that
I am sorry about getting married, if you can understand what I mean.
If I am old enough to know what profession I want to choose, I am
old enough to know what wife I want to choose. I mention this because
Father said to me last week that if I hadn't made up my mind yet
what I wanted to do with my life, I never would make up my mind. I'm
afraid this letter sounds rather defiant, but it's not meant to be
defiant. Only I do want you both to understand that I'm in earnest. I
will spare you the boredom of hearing how fond I am of Mary, partly
because I know it would probably bore you and partly because I could
not possibly express what I would like to say about her in writing.
I know that this will mean giving up Oxford. But I do not mind about
that. I think most people stay there too long. It's no good doing
nothing for three years. We are going to stay for three or four
days in London, and then we are going to spend our honeymoon in the
village where Mary lives in Berkshire. After that I had an idea of
emigrating to Canada._
_Your loving son,
Geoffrey._
Mary gave this letter to her husband without comment and left him to
read it alone. She did not feel that there was any possible comment
except an outburst of bad language, and she was sure that Jemmie would
manage that better than herself. When she rejoined him, he was still
spluttering with rage, damning and disinheriting his son with equal
fervor. For one thing Mary was grateful. He did not say it was all due
to the way she had spoilt him. Indeed, he offered no reproaches. The
blow was as inevitable as an apoplexy. There was no human being to be
blamed apart from the unhappy principal.
"Married at nineteen to a barmaid! What a future! It isn't as if
I'd set him a bad example. I can't blame myself. It's his natural
wickedness and selfishness. It's the sort of thing young men do
nowadays. No sense of decency. Want of proportion. Form ... no good
form. Fancy comparing the choice of a profession with the choice of
a wife! You can't compare things like that. The boy's mad. He's been
touched by the sun playing golf. He's not normal. I consider we might
get the marriage annulled on the ground that he was _non compos_ when
he committed it. Yes, _non compos_! We'll shut him up in a nursing-home
for a couple of months. A rest cure. He's mad. The damned lunatic!
Emigrate indeed? Canada! He might as well talk of emigrating to the
moon. In fact, it strikes me that's the place to which his brains have
emigrated...."
Jemmie went on railing like this until his wife interposed with
a suggestion that she should go up to town this very morning and
interview Geoffrey. There was just a chance he was not married yet. He
probably had not realized how hard it was to get married without some
preparation. Yes, there was just a chance that he was still free, and
that if he were tactfully handled he might consent to remain free.
"You see, he's evidently nervous about us," Mary pointed out. "He had
to run away in order to bring himself to do it. I expect the girl is a
hussy. I expect she hooked him. Oh dear, how vulgar it makes oneself,
when one mixes oneself up with vulgarity. Hooked him! And yet there's
no other word for it."
"He's no longer a son of mine," the father swore. "By George, Mary,
he is no longer my son. A lazy spendthrift who gets married with less
preparation than he would give to ordering himself a lunch. This money
he's been wheedling out of you. Depend upon it, his gambling debts
were nothing but an excuse, a mean subterfuge. If he'd really been
losing money at roulette, he'd have come to me. He'd have known that I
wouldn't be hard on him."
"I should prefer to think that the money I gave him was spent upon
getting married," said Mary unreasonably. "I loathed the idea of my
son's being a weak gambler."
"Well, don't let you and me start arguing. Whatever he did with it,
he has had the money. A barmaid! A girl who spends her day listening
to beastly chaff! A crimped, corseted, vulgar barmaid to be my
daughter-in-law! It's incredible."
"But there is a slight chance that she is not your daughter-in-law
yet. So, if you've no objection, dear, I think I'll catch the midday
train and go straight to this hotel in the Strand. I will take my
dressing-case, and if necessary I can stay in town. I might go to
Morley's Hotel. That would be close by."
Hawkins' Hotel was a tall, narrow, gloomy house with a German porter,
sluttish chambermaids, and a manageress like a large doll with hair
of tow. In the lower half of the house there was a perpetual odor of
vegetables being cooked, and in the upper part there was a smell of
dusty muslin.
Mary was shown into what was called the writing-room while inquiries
were made for Number Nineteen, which was as far as Geoffrey's
individuality was recognized. In each of the windows of the
writing-room there was a frayed aspidistra growing apparently in a
compost of cigarette-ends, matches, and old plaster. In one corner of
the room a man in a stained check-suit with cuffs that were continually
trying to swallow his hands was seated at a spindle-shanked desk
working out from a Bradshaw fifteen months old a railway journey across
country.
"Number Nineteen's gone out," announced the waiter, who looked like the
negative of a photograph, so black were his face and shirt-front, so
greasy and begrimed were his clothes.
Mary told him that she would wait and asked him to bring her a cup
of tea, which he brought half an hour later in a breakfast cup with
blunted lumps of dead-looking sugar lying in the saucer beside it, and
a hare-lipped jug of pale blue milk.
"I'll bring the bread and butter in a minute," he promised, and though
Mary told him that she did not want anything to eat, he brought her
four slices a quarter of an hour later.
It was growing dusk in the writing-room of Hawkins' Hotel; the man in
the check-suit, unable to read the figures in the railway-guide, was
moping in an arm-chair by the empty grate, before Geoffrey came in
followed by the waiter, who lighted the two burners of the gaselier
which had been fitted with incandescent mantles and pulled down the
blinds.
"We can't talk here," said Mary, glancing across at the man in the
check-suit, who as soon as the room was lighted up had returned to his
railway-guide. "You'd better walk round with me to Morley's Hotel,
where I'm staying for to-night."
"I can't leave Mary alone here," Geoffrey replied.
His mother winced at the name.
"If you want to talk private," said the man with the railway-guide,
"I'll leave you to yourselves. I've found what I was looking for."
He pushed his cuffs well up with the aid of the edge of the desk, and,
whistling "The Honeysuckle and the Bee," went out of the room, leaving
mother and son together.
"Geoffrey, are you married?"
"Well, as a matter of fact, no, I'm not," he admitted sulkily.
"Apparently you have to live in a parish for a certain amount of
time first. One would imagine it was a crime to get married by the
difficulties the parson made."
"Then you'll think better of it?" his mother pleaded. "You'll change
your mind and come back with me to High Corner? Father will say
nothing. Your mad freak shall be forgiven and forgotten."
"Steady on, Mother. I can't leave Mary like that. You see, it's a bit
awkward. I thought I should have been married to-day, and so we should
have been if I hadn't made a muddle about the license. I wanted to be
married in a register office, but Mary stuck out for a church. She
can't believe that any other kind of marriage is genuine. Besides, I
don't want to give her up, if that's what you mean by coming back to
High Corner."
His mother argued with him in vain. He did not attempt to answer her,
but stood sulkily first on his right leg, then on his left leg until
she stopped talking.
"I don't agree with you that she'll drag me down, as you say. I think
it will buck me up to be married."
"But, my dear boy, look at your surroundings already. Look at this
horrible hotel. How on earth did you ever come to discover such a
place? It's like some dreadful place in a French novel."
"The bedrooms are all right," Geoffrey said. "And we've been eating
out. I think if you'd let me bring Mary down to see you, you wouldn't
be so much upset by the prospect of my future. Anyway, you needn't
think I'll disgrace the family. I've made up my mind to emigrate. It's
a funny thing, but when a fellow does what he thinks is the right thing
to do, he gets more blamed than if he just plays about with a girl."
"Geoffrey," said his mother, "I'm grieved that I cannot see things
from your point of view; but you are too young, my dear boy, to hamper
yourself like this so early in your life. I have never told you
before; but I think that it is only fair that I should tell you about
your grandfather. He quarreled with his father because he insisted on
marrying my mother. They emigrated, and both he and my mother were
drowned. I was a baby then, and I was about the only person saved from
the wreck."
"Well, it's much safer traveling nowadays," argued Geoffrey
obstinately. "And anyway I don't see that it did you much harm."
"But it caused infinite misery to others. My grandmother never really
got over it. It brought about the extinction of the Flowers."
"I'm sorry, Mother, but I can't go back on my word. Besides, we've been
living here as man and wife. It wouldn't be right."
This boy of nineteen to be talking of living here as man and wife!
Mary was suddenly chilled.
"Very well, Geoffrey, if you will not listen to me, I must see what
your father can do. You must remember that you are not yet of age, and
if your father sees fit to exercise his authority you will _have_ to
obey. I shall telegraph for him at once."
"Perhaps Father will condescend to see Mary before he does anything,"
Geoffrey said. "Perhaps he won't judge her as you have judged her
without seeing her."
Mary turned away from her son and went quickly from the room. She
felt when she walked up Buckingham Street as if she was struggling up
through some horrible drain to reach the air.
In the hall of her own hotel the porter told her that Mr. Alison had
arrived and was waiting for Mrs. Alison in Mrs. Alison's room. Mary
went upstairs, glad that he had come, because he might do something
with Geoffrey. He might remonstrate with the girl and persuade her to
give him up. In books it would have been herself who would have done
that; but books seemed to forget that a mother could be as proud as
anybody when her deepest feelings were outraged.
"Mary, my poor little wife, prepare yourself for a dreadful shock,"
Jemmie cried when she entered her room.
In an instant she guessed that it was bad news about Richard.
"South Africa," she heard herself murmur with a tongue that was parched
with apprehension and horror.