The Pottery House was a square, ugly, brick house girt in by the wall
that enclosed the whole grounds of the pottery itself. To be sure, a
privet hedge partly masked the house and its ground from the
pottery-yard and works: but only partly. Through the hedge could be
seen the desolate yard, and the many-windowed, factory-like pottery,
over the hedge could be seen the chimneys and the outhouses. But inside
the hedge, a pleasant garden and lawn sloped down to a willow pool,
which had once supplied the works.
The Pottery itself was now closed, the great doors of the yard
permanently shut. No more the great crates with yellow straw showing
through, stood in stacks by the packing shed. No more the drays drawn
by great horses rolled down the hill with a high load. No more the
pottery-lasses in their clay-coloured overalls, their faces and hair
splashed with grey fine mud, shrieked and larked with the men. All that
was over.
“We like it much better—oh, much better—quieter,” said Matilda Rockley.
“Oh, yes,” assented Emmie Rockley, her sister.
“I’m sure you do,” agreed the visitor.
But whether the two Rockley girls really liked it better, or whether
they only imagined they did, is a question. Certainly their lives were
much more grey and dreary now that the grey clay had ceased to spatter
its mud and silt its dust over the premises. They did not quite realise
how they missed the shrieking, shouting lasses, whom they had known all
their lives and disliked so much.
Matilda and Emmie were already old maids. In a thorough industrial
district, it is not easy for the girls who have expectations above the
common to find husbands. The ugly industrial town was full of men,
young men who were ready to marry. But they were all colliers or
pottery-hands, mere workmen. The Rockley girls would have about ten
thousand pounds each when their father died: ten thousand pounds’ worth
of profitable house-property. It was not to be sneezed at: they felt so
themselves, and refrained from sneezing away such a fortune on any mere
member of the proletariat. Consequently, bank-clerks or nonconformist
clergymen or even school-teachers having failed to come forward,
Matilda had begun to give up all idea of ever leaving the Pottery
House.
Matilda was a tall, thin, graceful fair girl, with a rather large nose.
She was the Mary to Emmie’s Martha: that is, Matilda loved painting and
music, and read a good many novels, whilst Emmie looked after the
house-keeping. Emmie was shorter, plumper than her sister, and she had
no accomplishments. She looked up to Matilda, whose mind was naturally
refined and sensible.
In their quiet, melancholy way, the two girls were happy. Their mother
was dead. Their father was ill also. He was an intelligent man who had
had some education, but preferred to remain as if he were one with the
rest of the working people. He had a passion for music and played the
violin pretty well. But now he was getting old, he was very ill, dying
of a kidney disease. He had been rather a heavy whisky-drinker.
This quiet household, with one servant-maid, lived on year after year
in the Pottery House. Friends came in, the girls went out, the father
drank himself more and more ill. Outside in the street there was a
continual racket of the colliers and their dogs and children. But
inside the pottery wall was a deserted quiet.
In all this ointment there was one little fly. Ted Rockley, the father
of the girls, had had four daughters, and no son. As his girls grew, he
felt angry at finding himself always in a house-hold of women. He went
off to London and adopted a boy out of a Charity Institution. Emmie was
fourteen years old, and Matilda sixteen, when their father arrived home
with his prodigy, the boy of six, Hadrian.
Hadrian was just an ordinary boy from a Charity Home, with ordinary
brownish hair and ordinary bluish eyes and of ordinary rather cockney
speech. The Rockley girls—there were three at home at the time of his
arrival—had resented his being sprung on them. He, with his watchful,
charity-institution instinct, knew this at once. Though he was only six
years old, Hadrian had a subtle, jeering look on his face when he
regarded the three young women. They insisted he should address them as
Cousin: Cousin Flora, Cousin Matilda, Cousin Emmie. He complied, but
there seemed a mockery in his tone.
The girls, however, were kind-hearted by nature. Flora married and left
home. Hadrian did very much as he pleased with Matilda and Emmie,
though they had certain strictnesses. He grew up in the Pottery House
and about the Pottery premises, went to an elementary school, and was
invariably called Hadrian Rockley. He regarded Cousin Matilda and
Cousin Emmie with a certain laconic indifference, was quiet and
reticent in his ways. The girls called him sly, but that was unjust. He
was merely cautious, and without frankness. His Uncle, Ted Rockley,
understood him tacitly, their natures were somewhat akin. Hadrian and
the elderly man had a real but unemotional regard for one another.
When he was thirteen years old the boy was sent to a High School in the
County town. He did not like it. His Cousin Matilda had longed to make
a little gentleman of him, but he refused to be made. He would give a
little contemptuous curve to his lip, and take on a shy, charity-boy
grin, when refinement was thrust upon him. He played truant from the
High School, sold his books, his cap with its badge, even his very
scarf and pocket-handkerchief, to his school-fellows, and went raking
off heaven knows where with the money. So he spent two very
unsatisfactory years.
When he was fifteen he announced that he wanted to leave England and go
to the Colonies. He had kept touch with the Home. The Rockleys knew
that, when Hadrian made a declaration, in his quiet, half-jeering
manner, it was worse than useless to oppose him. So at last the boy
departed, going to Canada under the protection of the Institution to
which he had belonged. He said good-bye to the Rockleys without a word
of thanks, and parted, it seemed, without a pang. Matilda and Emmie
wept often to think of how he left them: even on their father’s face a
queer look came. But Hadrian wrote fairly regularly from Canada. He had
entered some electricity works near Montreal, and was doing well.
At last, however, the war came. In his turn, Hadrian joined up and came
to Europe. The Rockleys saw nothing of him. They lived on, just the
same, in the Pottery House. Ted Rockley was dying of a sort of dropsy,
and in his heart he wanted to see the boy. When the armistice was
signed, Hadrian had a long leave, and wrote that he was coming home to
the Pottery House.
The girls were terribly fluttered. To tell the truth, they were a
little afraid of Hadrian. Matilda, tall and thin, was frail in her
health, both girls were worn with nursing their father. To have
Hadrian, a young man of twenty-one, in the house with them, after he
had left them so coldly five years before, was a trying circumstance.
They were in a flutter. Emmie persuaded her father to have his bed made
finally in the morning-room downstairs, whilst his room upstairs was
prepared for Hadrian. This was done, and preparations were going on for
the arrival, when, at ten o’clock in the morning the young man suddenly
turned up, quite unexpectedly. Cousin Emmie, with her hair bobbed up in
absurd little bobs round her forehead, was busily polishing the
stair-rods, while Cousin Matilda was in the kitchen washing the
drawing-room ornaments in a lather, her sleeves rolled back on her thin
arms, and her head tied up oddly and coquettishly in a duster.
Cousin Matilda blushed deep with mortification when the self-possessed
young man walked in with his kit-bag, and put his cap on the sewing
machine. He was little and self-confident, with a curious neatness
about him that still suggested the Charity Institution. His face was
brown, he had a small moustache, he was vigorous enough in his
smallness.
“_Well_, is it Hadrian!” exclaimed Cousin Matilda, wringing the lather
off her hand. “We didn’t expect you till tomorrow.”
“I got off Monday night,” said Hadrian, glancing round the room.
“Fancy!” said Cousin Matilda. Then, having dried her hands, she went
forward, held out her hand, and said:
“How are you?”
“Quite well, thank you,” said Hadrian.
“You’re quite a man,” said Cousin Matilda.
Hadrian glanced at her. She did not look her best: so thin, so
large-nosed, with that pink-and-white checked duster tied round her
head. She felt her disadvantage. But she had had a good deal of
suffering and sorrow, she did not mind any more.
The servant entered—one that did not know Hadrian.
“Come and see my father,” said Cousin Matilda.
In the hall they roused Cousin Emmie like a partridge from cover. She
was on the stairs pushing the bright stair-rods into place.
Instinctively her hand went to the little knobs, her front hair bobbed
on her forehead.
“Why!” she exclaimed, crossly. “What have you come today for?”
“I got off a day earlier,” said Hadrian, and his man’s voice so deep
and unexpected was like a blow to Cousin Emmie.
“Well, you’ve caught us in the midst of it,” she said, with resentment.
Then all three went into the middle room.
Mr. Rockley was dressed—that is, he had on his trousers and socks—but
he was resting on the bed, propped up just under the window, from
whence he could see his beloved and resplendent garden, where tulips
and apple-trees were ablaze. He did not look as ill as he was, for the
water puffed him up, and his face kept its colour. His stomach was much
swollen. He glanced round swiftly, turning his eyes without turning his
head. He was the wreck of a handsome, well-built man.
Seeing Hadrian, a queer, unwilling smile went over his face. The young
man greeted him sheepishly.
“You wouldn’t make a life-guardsman,” he said. “Do you want something
to eat?”
Hadrian looked round—as if for the meal.
“I don’t mind,” he said.
“What shall you have—egg and bacon?” asked Emmie shortly.
“Yes, I don’t mind,” said Hadrian.
The sisters went down to the kitchen, and sent the servant to finish
the stairs.
“Isn’t he _altered_?” said Matilda, _sotto voce_.
“Isn’t he!” said Cousin Emmie. “_What_ a little man!”
They both made a grimace, and laughed nervously.
“Get the frying-pan,” said Emmie to Matilda.
“But he’s as cocky as ever,” said Matilda, narrowing her eyes and
shaking her head knowingly, as she handed the frying-pan.
“Mannie!” said Emmie sarcastically. Hadrian’s new-fledged, cock-sure
manliness evidently found no favour in her eyes.
“Oh, he’s not bad,” said Matilda. “You don’t want to be prejudiced
against him.”
I’m not prejudiced against him, I think he’s all right for looks,” said
Emmie, “but there’s too much of the little mannie about him.”
“Fancy catching us like this,” said Matilda.
“They’ve no thought for anything,” said Emmie with contempt. “You go up
and get dressed, our Matilda. I don’t care about him. I can see to
things, and you can talk to him. I shan’t.”
“He’ll talk to my father,” said Matilda, meaningful.
“_Sly—!_” exclaimed Emmie, with a grimace.
The sisters believed that Hadrian had come hoping to get something out
of their father—hoping for a legacy. And they were not at all sure he
would not get it.
Matilda went upstairs to change. She had thought it all out how she
would receive Hadrian, and impress him. And he had caught her with her
head tied up in a duster, and her thin arms in a basin of lather. But
she did not care. She now dressed herself most scrupulously, carefully
folded her long, beautiful, blonde hair, touched her pallor with a
little rouge, and put her long string of exquisite crystal beads over
her soft green dress. Now she looked elegant, like a heroine in a
magazine illustration, and almost as unreal.
She found Hadrian and her father talking away. The young man was short
of speech as a rule, but he could find his tongue with his “uncle”.
They were both sipping a glass of brandy, and smoking, and chatting
like a pair of old cronies. Hadrian was telling about Canada. He was
going back there when his leave was up.
“You wouldn’t like to stop in England, then?” said Mr. Rockley.
“No, I wouldn’t stop in England,” said Hadrian.
“How’s that? There’s plenty of electricians here,” said Mr. Rockley.
“Yes. But there’s too much difference between the men and the employers
over here—too much of that for me,” said Hadrian.
The sick man looked at him narrowly, with oddly smiling eyes.
“That’s it, is it?” he replied.
Matilda heard and understood. “So that’s your big idea, is it, my
little man,” she said to herself. She had always said of Hadrian that
he had no proper _respect_ for anybody or anything, that he was sly and
_common_. She went down to the kitchen for a _sotto voce_ confab with
Emmie.
“He thinks a rare lot of himself!” she whispered.
“He’s somebody, he is!” said Emmie with contempt.
“He thinks there’s too much difference between masters and men, over
here,” said Matilda.
“Is it any different in Canada?” asked Emmie.
“Oh, yes—democratic,” replied Matilda, “He thinks they’re all on a
level over there.”
“Ay, well he’s over here now,” said Emmie dryly, “so he can keep his
place.”
As they talked they saw the young man sauntering down the garden,
looking casually at the flowers. He had his hands in his pockets, and
his soldier’s cap neatly on his head. He looked quite at his ease, as
if in possession. The two women, fluttered, watched him through the
window.
“We know what he’s come for,” said Emmie, churlishly. Matilda looked a
long time at the neat khaki figure. It had something of the charity-boy
about it still; but now it was a man’s figure, laconic, charged with
plebeian energy. She thought of the derisive passion in his voice as he
had declaimed against the propertied classes, to her father.
“You don’t know, Emmie. Perhaps he’s not come for that,” she rebuked
her sister. They were both thinking of the money.
They were still watching the young soldier. He stood away at the bottom
of the garden, with his back to them, his hands in his pockets, looking
into the water of the willow pond. Matilda’s dark-blue eyes had a
strange, full look in them, the lids, with the faint blue veins
showing, dropped rather low. She carried her head light and high, but
she had a look of pain. The young man at the bottom of the garden
turned and looked up the path. Perhaps he saw them through the window.
Matilda moved into shadow.
That afternoon their father seemed weak and ill. He was easily
exhausted. The doctor came, and told Matilda that the sick man might
die suddenly at any moment—but then he might not. They must be
prepared.
So the day passed, and the next. Hadrian made himself at home. He went
about in the morning in his brownish jersey and his khaki trousers,
collarless, his bare neck showing. He explored the pottery premises, as
if he had some secret purpose in so doing, he talked with Mr. Rockley,
when the sick man had strength. The two girls were always angry when
the two men sat talking together like cronies. Yet it was chiefly a
kind of politics they talked.
On the second day after Hadrian’s arrival, Matilda sat with her father
in the evening. She was drawing a picture which she wanted to copy. It
was very still, Hadrian was gone out somewhere, no one knew where, and
Emmie was busy. Mr. Rockley reclined on his bed, looking out in silence
over his evening-sunny garden.
“If anything happens to me, Matilda,” he said, “you won’t sell this
house—you’ll stop here—”
Matilda’s eyes took their slightly haggard look as she stared at her
father.
“Well, we couldn’t do anything else,” she said.
“You don’t know what you might do,” he said. “Everything is left to you
and Emmie, equally. You’do as you like with it—only don’t sell this
house, don’t part with it.”
“No,” she said.
“And give Hadrian my watch and chain, and a hundred pounds out of
what’s in the bank—and help him if he ever wants helping. I haven’t put
his name in the will.”
“Your watch and chain, and a hundred pounds—yes. But you’ll be here
when he goes back to Canada, father.”
“You never know what’ll happen,” said her father.
Matilda sat and watched him, with her full, haggard eyes, for a long
time, as if tranced. She saw that he knew he must go soon—she saw like
a clairvoyant.
Later on she told Emmie what her father had said about the watch and
chain and the money.
“What right has _he”—he_—meaning Hadrian—“to my father’s watch and
chain—what has it to do with him? Let him have the money, and get off,”
said Emmie. She loved her father.
That night Matilda sat late in her room. Her heart was anxious and
breaking, her mind seemed entranced. She was too much entranced even to
weep, and all the time she thought of her father, only her father. At
last she felt she must go to him.
It was near midnight. She went along the passage and to his room. There
was a faint light from the moon outside. She listened at his door. Then
she softly opened and entered. The room was faintly dark. She heard a
movement on the bed.
“Are you asleep?” she said softly, advancing to the side of the bed.
“Are you asleep?” she repeated gently, as she stood at the side of the
bed. And she reached her hand in the darkness to touch his forehead.
Delicately, her fingers met the nose and the eyebrows, she laid her
fine, delicate hand on his brow. It seemed fresh and smooth—very fresh
and smooth. A sort of surprise stirred her, in her entranced state. But
it could not waken her. Gently, she leaned over the bed and stirred her
fingers over the low-growing hair on his brow.
“Can’t you sleep tonight?” she said.
There was a quick stirring in the bed. “Yes, I can,” a voice answered.
It was Hadrian’s voice. She started away. Instantly, she was wakened
from her late-at-night trance. She remembered that her father was
downstairs, that Hadrian had his room. She stood in the darkness as if
stung.
“It is you, Hadrian?” she said. “I thought it was my father.” She was
so startled, so shocked, that she could not move. The young man gave an
uncomfortable laugh, and turned in his bed.
At last she got out of the room. When she was back in her own room, in
the light, and her door was closed, she stood holding up her hand that
had touched him, as if it were hurt. She was almost too shocked, she
could not endure.
“Well,” said her calm and weary mind, “it was only a mistake, why take
any notice of it.”
But she could not reason her feelings so easily. She suffered, feeling
herself in a false position. Her right hand, which she had laid so
gently on his face, on his fresh skin, ached now, as if it were really
injured. She could not forgive Hadrian for the mistake: it made her
dislike him deeply.
Hadrian too slept badly. He had been awakened by the opening of the
door, and had not realised what the question meant. But the soft,
straying tenderness of her hand on his face startled something out of
his soul. He was a charity boy, aloof and more or less at bay. The
fragile exquisiteness of her caress startled him most, revealed unknown
things to him.
In the morning she could feel the consciousness in his eyes, when she
came downstairs. She tried to bear herself as if nothing at all had
happened, and she succeeded. She had the calm self-control,
self-indifference, of one who has suffered and borne her suffering. She
looked at him from her darkish, almost drugged blue eyes, she met the
spark of consciousness in his eyes, and quenched it. And with her long,
fine hand she put the sugar in his coffee.
But she could not control him as she thought she could. He had a keen
memory stinging his mind, a new set of sensations working in his
consciousness. Something new was alert in him. At the back of his
reticent, guarded mind he kept his secret alive and vivid. She was at
his mercy, for he was unscrupulous, his standard was not her standard.
He looked at her curiously. She was not beautiful, her nose was too
large, her chin was too small, her neck was too thin. But her skin was
clear and fine, she had a high-bred sensitiveness. This queer, brave,
high-bred quality she shared with her father. The charity boy could see
it in her tapering fingers, which were white and ringed. The same
glamour that he knew in the elderly man he now saw in the woman. And he
wanted to possess himself of it, he wanted to make himself master of
it. As he went about through the old pottery-yard, his secretive mind
schemed and worked. To be master of that strange soft delicacy such as
he had felt in her hand upon his face,—this was what he set himself
towards. He was secretly plotting.
He watched Matilda as she went about, and she became aware of his
attention, as of some shadow following her. But her pride made her
ignore it. When he sauntered near her, his hands in his pockets, she
received him with that same commonplace kindliness which mastered him
more than any contempt. Her superior breeding seemed to control him.
She made herself feel towards him exactly as she had always felt: he
was a young boy who lived in the house with them, but was a stranger.
Only, she dared not remember his face under her hand. When she
remembered that, she was bewildered. Her hand had offended her, she
wanted to cut it off. And she wanted, fiercely, to cut off the memory
in him. She assumed she had done so.
One day, when he sat talking with his “uncle”, he looked straight into
the eyes of the sick man, and said:
“But I shouldn’t like to live and die here in Rawsley.”
“No—well—you needn’t,” said the sick man.
“Do you think Cousin Matilda likes it?”
“I should think so.”
“I don’t call it much of a life,” said the youth. “How much older is
she than me, Uncle?”
The sick man looked at the young soldier.
“A good bit,” he said.
“Over thirty?” said Hadrian.
“Well, not so much. She’s thirty-two.”
Hadrian considered a while.
“She doesn’t look it,” he said.
Again the sick father looked at him.
“Do you think she’d like to leave here?” said Hadrian.
“Nay, I don’t know,” replied the father, restive.
Hadrian sat still, having his own thoughts. Then in a small, quiet
voice, as if he were speaking from inside himself, he said:
“I’d marry her if you wanted me to.”
The sick man raised his eyes suddenly, and stared. He stared for a long
time. The youth looked inscrutably out of the window.
“_You!_” said the sick man, mocking, with some contempt. Hadrian turned
and met his eyes. The two men had an inexplicable understanding.
“If you wasn’t against it,” said Hadrian.
“Nay,” said the father, turning aside, “I don’t think I’m against it.
I’ve never thought of it. But—But Emmie’s the youngest.”
He had flushed, and looked suddenly more alive. Secretly he loved the
boy.
“You might ask her,” said Hadrian.
The elder man considered.
“Hadn’t you better ask her yourself?” he said.
“She’d take more notice of you,” said Hadrian.
They were both silent. Then Emmie came in.
For two days Mr. Rockley was excited and thoughtful. Hadrian went about
quietly, secretly, unquestioning. At last the father and daughter were
alone together. It was very early morning, the father had been in much
pain. As the pain abated, he lay still, thinking.
“Matilda!” he said suddenly, looking at his daughter.
“Yes, I’m here,” she said.
“Ay! I want you to do something—”
She rose in anticipation.
“Nay, sit still. I want you to marry Hadrian—”
She thought he was raving. She rose, bewildered and frightened.
“Nay, sit you still, sit you still. You hear what I tell you.”
“But you don’t know what you’re saying, father.”
“Ay, I know well enough. I want you to marry Hadrian, I tell you.”
She was dumbfounded. He was a man of few words.
“You’ll do what I tell you,” he said.
She looked at him slowly.
“What put such an idea in your mind?” she said proudly.
“He did.”
Matilda almost looked her father down, her pride was so offended.
“Why, it’s disgraceful,” she said.
“Why?”
She watched him slowly.
“What do you ask me for?” she said. “It’s disgusting.”
“The lad’s sound enough,” he replied, testily.
“You’d better tell him to clear out,” she said, coldly.
He turned and looked out of the window. She sat flushed and erect for a
long time. At length her father turned to her, looking really
malevolent.
“If you won’t,” he said, “you’re a fool, and I’ll make you pay for your
foolishness, do you see?”
Suddenly a cold fear gripped her. She could not believe her senses. She
was terrified and bewildered. She stared at her father, believing him
to be delirious, or mad, or drunk. What could she do?
“I tell you,” he said. “I’ll send for Whittle tomorrow if you don’t.
You shall neither of you have anything of mine.”
Whittle was the solicitor. She understood her father well enough: he
would send for his solicitor, and make a will leaving all his property
to Hadrian: neither she nor Emmie should have anything. It was too
much. She rose and went out of the room, up to her own room, where she
locked herself in.
She did not come out for some hours. At last, late at night, she
confided in Emmie.
“The sliving demon, he wants the money,” said Emmie. “My father’s out
of his mind.”
The thought that Hadrian merely wanted the money was another blow to
Matilda. She did not love the impossible youth—but she had not yet
learned to think of him as a thing of evil. He now became hideous to
her mind.
Emmie had a little scene with her father next day.
“You don’t mean what you said to our Matilda yesterday, do you,
father?” she asked aggressively.
“Yes,” he replied.
“What, that you’ll alter your will?”
“Yes.”
“You won’t,” said his angry daughter.
But he looked at her with a malevolent little smile.
“Annie!” he shouted. “Annie!”
He had still power to make his voice carry. The servant maid came in
from the kitchen.
“Put your things on, and go down to Whittle’s office, and say I want to
see Mr. Whittle as soon as he can, and will he bring a will-form.”
The sick man lay back a little—he could not lie down. His daughter sat
as if she had been struck. Then she left the room.
Hadrian was pottering about in the garden. She went straight down to
him.
“Here,” she said. “You’d better get off. You’d better take your things
and go from here, quick.”
Hadrian looked slowly at the infuriated girl.
“Who says so?” he asked.
“_We_ say so—get off, you’ve done enough mischief and damage.”
“Does Uncle say so?”
“Yes, he does.”
“I’ll go and ask him.”
But like a fury Emmie barred his way.
“No, you needn’t. You needn’t ask him nothing at all. We don’t want
you, so you can go.”
“Uncle’s boss here.”
“A man that’s dying, and you crawling round and working on him for his
money!—you’re not fit to live.”
“Oh!” he said. “Who says I’m working for his money?”
“I say. But my father told our Matilda, and _she_ knows what you are.
_She_ knows what you’re after. So you might as well clear out, for all
you’ll get—guttersnipe!”
He turned his back on her, to think. It had not occurred to him that
they would think he was after the money. He _did_ want the money—badly.
He badly wanted to be an employer himself, not one of the employed. But
he knew, in his subtle, calculating way, that it was not for money he
wanted Matilda. He wanted both the money and Matilda. But he told
himself the two desires were separate, not one. He could not do with
Matilda, _without_ the money. But he did not want her _for_ the money.
When he got this clear in his mind, he sought for an opportunity to
tell it her, lurking and watching. But she avoided him. In the evening
the lawyer came. Mr. Rockley seemed to have a new access of strength—a
will was drawn up, making the previous arrangements wholly conditional.
The old will held good, if Matilda would consent to marry Hadrian. If
she refused then at the end of six months the whole property passed to
Hadrian.
Mr. Rockley told this to the young man, with malevolent satisfaction.
He seemed to have a strange desire, quite unreasonable, for revenge
upon the women who had surrounded him for so long, and served him so
carefully.
“Tell her in front of me,” said Hadrian.
So Mr. Rockley sent for his daughters.
At last they came, pale, mute, stubborn. Matilda seemed to have retired
far off, Emmie seemed like a fighter ready to fight to the death. The
sick man reclined on the bed, his eyes bright, his puffed hand
trembling. But his face had again some of its old, bright handsomeness.
Hadrian sat quiet, a little aside: the indomitable, dangerous charity
boy.
“There’s the will,” said their father, pointing them to the paper.
The two women sat mute and immovable, they took no notice.
“Either you marry Hadrian, or he has everything,” said the father with
satisfaction.
“Then let him have everything,” said Matilda boldly.
“He’s not! He’s not!” cried Emmie fiercely. “He’s not going to have it.
The guttersnipe!”
An amused look came on her father’s face.
“You hear that, Hadrian,” he said.
“I didn’t offer to marry Cousin Matilda for the money,” said Hadrian,
flushing and moving on his seat.
Matilda looked at him slowly, with her dark-blue, drugged eyes. He
seemed a strange little monster to her.
“Why, you liar, you know you did,” cried Emmie.
The sick man laughed. Matilda continued to gaze strangely at the young
man.
“She knows I didn’t,” said Hadrian.
He too had his courage, as a rat has indomitable courage in the end.
Hadrian had some of the neatness, the reserve, the underground quality
of the rat. But he had perhaps the ultimate courage, the most
unquenchable courage of all.
Emmie looked at her sister.
“Oh, well,” she said. “Matilda—don’t bother. Let him have everything,
we can look after ourselves.”
“I know he’ll take everything,” said Matilda, abstractedly.
Hadrian did not answer. He knew in fact that if Matilda refused him he
would take everything, and go off with it.
“A clever little mannie—!” said Emmie, with a jeering grimace.
The father laughed noiselessly to himself. But he was tired....
“Go on, then,” he said. “Go on, let me be quiet.”
Emmie turned and looked at him.
“You deserve what you’ve got,” she said to her father bluntly.
“Go on,” he answered mildly. “Go on.”
Another night passed—a night nurse sat up with Mr. Rockley. Another day
came. Hadrian was there as ever, in his woollen jersey and coarse khaki
trousers and bare neck. Matilda went about, frail and distant, Emmie
black-browed in spite of her blondness. They were all quiet, for they
did not intend the mystified servant to learn anything.
Mr. Rockley had very bad attacks of pain, he could not breathe. The end
seemed near. They all went about quiet and stoical, all unyielding.
Hadrian pondered within himself. If he did not marry Matilda he would
go to Canada with twenty thousand pounds. This was itself a very
satisfactory prospect. If Matilda consented he would have nothing—she
would have her own money.
Emmie was the one to act. She went off in search of the solicitor and
brought him with her. There was an interview, and Whittle tried to
frighten the youth into withdrawal—but without avail. The clergyman and
relatives were summoned—but Hadrian stared at them and took no notice.
It made him angry, however.
He wanted to catch Matilda alone. Many days went by, and he was not
successful: she avoided him. At last, lurking, he surprised her one day
as she came to pick gooseberries, and he cut off her retreat. He came
to the point at once.
“You don’t want me, then?” he said, in his subtle, insinuating voice.
“I don’t want to speak to you,” she said, averting her face.
“You put your hand on me, though,” he said. “You shouldn’t have done
that, and then I should never have thought of it. You shouldn’t have
touched me.”
“If you were anything decent, you’d know that was a mistake, and forget
it,” she said.
“I know it was a mistake—but I shan’t forget it. If you wake a man up,
he can’t go to sleep again because he’s told to.”
“If you had any decent feeling in you, you’d have gone away,” she
replied.
“I didn’t want to,” he replied.
She looked away into the distance. At last she asked:
“What do you persecute me for, if it isn’t for the money. I’m old
enough to be your mother. In a way I’ve been your mother.”
“Doesn’t matter,” he said. “You’ve been no mother to me. Let us marry
and go out to Canada—you might as well—you’ve touched me.”
She was white and trembling. Suddenly she flushed with anger.
“It’s so _indecent_,” she said.
“How?” he retorted. “You touched me.”
But she walked away from him. She felt as if he had trapped her. He was
angry and depressed, he felt again despised.
That same evening she went into her father’s room.
“Yes,” she said suddenly. “I’ll marry him.”
Her father looked up at her. He was in pain, and very ill.
“You like him now, do you?” he said, with a faint smile.
She looked down into his face, and saw death not far off. She turned
and went coldly out of the room.
The solicitor was sent for, preparations were hastily made. In all the
interval Matilda did not speak to Hadrian, never answered him if he
addressed her. He approached her in the morning.
“You’ve come round to it, then?” he said, giving her a pleasant look
from his twinkling, almost kindly eyes. She looked down at him and
turned aside. She looked down on him both literally and figuratively.
Still he persisted, and triumphed.
Emmie raved and wept, the secret flew abroad. But Matilda was silent
and unmoved, Hadrian was quiet and satisfied, and nipped with fear
also. But he held out against his fear. Mr. Rockley was very ill, but
unchanged.
On the third day the marriage took place. Matilda and Hadrian drove
straight home from the registrar, and went straight into the room of
the dying man. His face lit up with a clear twinkling smile.
“Hadrian—you’ve got her?” he said, a little hoarsely.
“Yes,” said Hadrian, who was pale round the gills.
“Ay, my lad, I’m glad you’re mine,” replied the dying man. Then he
turned his eyes closely on Matilda.
“Let’s look at you, Matilda,” he said. Then his voice went strange and
unrecognisable. “Kiss me,” he said.
She stooped and kissed him. She had never kissed him before, not since
she was a tiny child. But she was quiet, very still.
“Kiss him,” the dying man said.
Obediently, Matilda put forward her mouth and kissed the young husband.
“That’s right! That’s right!” murmured the dying man.