select with even more discrimination and rigour than his father before
him. He had first to make up his mind that the Puseyite party was not
going to oust the Evangelical party to which he had attached himself. He
had later on to decide whether he should anathematize Darwin or uphold
Bishop Colenso, a dilemma which he dodged by doing neither. He had also
to choose a wife. He chose Martha Rouncivell, who brought him L1000 a
year from slum rents in Sheffield and presented him with five children.
Apart from the continual assertions of scurrilous High Church papers
that he had ceased to believe in his Saviour, Andrew Grant's earthly
life was mercifully free from the bitterness, the envy, and the
disillusionment that wait upon success. His greatest grief was when the
spiritual power that he fancied was perceptible in his youngest son
Sholto, a spiritual power that might carry him to Canterbury itself,
turned out to be nothing but an early manifestation of the artistic
temperament. But that disappointment was mitigated by his consecration
in 1890 as Lord Bishop Suffragan of Clapham, in which exalted rank he
guarded London against the southerly onslaughts of Satan even as his
brothers of Hampstead, Chelsea, and Bow were vigilant North, West, and
East. It was a powerful alliance, for if the Bishop of Hampstead was
High, the Bishop of Bow was Low, and if the Bishop of Chelsea was Broad,
the Bishop of Clapham was Deep; although he preferred to characterize
himself as Square.
When Archdeacon Grant was consecrated, he had to find a suitable
episcopal residence, and this was not at all easy to find in South
London. At last, however, he secured the long lease of a retired
merchant's Gothic mansion on Lavender Hill, which after three years of
fervid Lenten courses was secured to Holy Church by three appeals to the
faithful rich. As soon as the Bishop was firmly installed in Bishop's
House, he who had observed with displeasure the number of empty shields
in the roll of Suffragan Bishops in Crockford's clergy list, applied for
a grant of arms. He came from an old Scots family, and he felt strongly
on the subject of coat-armour. When he first went up to Cambridge he had
interested himself in heraldry to such purpose that he had been
convinced of old Jamie's right to the three antique crowns of the House
of Grant. And though the old boy said he should think more of three new
half-crowns, he offered to use them as his trade-mark if Andrew really
hankered after them. Andrew discouraged the proposed sacrilege, but all
the way up from curate to vicar, from vicar to rural dean, from rural
dean to archdeacon, from archdeacon to suffragan bishop, he did hanker
after them, for the shadows of mighty ancestors loomed immense upon that
impenetrable Scotch mist. When his eldest son was born, instead of
calling him Matthew after his wife's brother, a safe candidate for
future wealth, he called him Hector, because Hector was a fine old
Scottish name, and most unevangelically he christened the three sons who
followed Eneas, Alexander, and Sholto. When he became a bishop, he was
more Caledonian than ever; perhaps the apron reminded him of the kilt.
With his empty shield in Crockford's staring at him he went right out
for the three antique crowns and applied to Lyon Court for a
confirmation of these arms. His mortification may be imagined when he
was informed that he was actually not armigerous at all, and that the
coat which he proposed to wear, of course with a difference, was not his
to wear. It was useless for the Bishop to claim, like Joseph, that the
coat had been given to him by his father. The Reubens, Dans, and
Naphtalis of the house of Grant were not going to put up with it; the
three antique crowns were disallowed. For a while the Bishop pretended
to exult in his empty shield. After all, he might hope to become a real
bishop and contemplate one day the arms of the see against his name; in
any case he felt that his mind should be occupied with a heavenly crown.
But the ancestral ghosts haunted him; he could not bear the thought of
Crockford's coming out year by year with that empty shield, and at last
he applied for arms that should be all his own. On his suggestion Lyon
granted him _Or, three chaplets of peaseblossom purpure, slipped and
leaved vert;_ but when for crest the Bishop demanded _A Bible displayed
proper_, even that was disallowed, because another branch of the Grants
had actually appropriated the Bible in the days of Queen Anne. "Then I
will have the Book of Common Prayer displayed proper," said the Bishop.
And the Book of Common Prayer he got, together with the Gaelic motto
_Suas ni bruach_, which neither he nor his descendants ever learnt to
pronounce properly, though they always understood that it meant
something like _Excelsior_.
With such a motto it was not surprising that Sholto Grant's refusal to
climb should upset his relations. Old Jamie must have dealt with many
throwbacks when he was selecting his sweet peas; but it is improbable
that any of them refused to climb at all, and though there is now a
variety inappropriately called "Cupid" with scarcely more ambition than
moss, these dwarfs have a commercial value. Sholto Grant had no
commercial value. Sholto indeed had so little sense of profit that he
actually failed to arrive in time to see his father die, and if the old
gentleman's paternal instinct had not been much developed by his
episcopate, and if he had not imbibed every evangelical maxim on the
subject of forgiveness, he would probably have cut Sholto off with a
shilling. As it was, he divided his money equally between his five
children, and it can be readily imagined how indignant Hector, Eneas,
and Alexander, who had all married well, had all worked hard to justify
the family motto, and not one of whom could count on less than L2000 a
year, felt on finding that the L20,000; which was all that the Bishop of
Clapham's devotion to the Gospel had allowed him to leave to his family,
was to be robbed of L4000 for Sholto, who had married an Italian peasant
girl and spent his whole life painting unsaleable pictures in the island
of Sirene. "Besides," as they acutely said, "Sholto does not appreciate
money. He will only go and spend it." And spend it Sholto did, much to
the disgust of his brothers, Sir Hector Grant, Bart., K.C.V.O., C.B.;
Eneas Grant, Esq., C.M.G.; Lieutenant-Colonel Alexander Grant, D.S.O.;
and even of his sister, Mrs. Arnold Lightbody, the wife of the Very
Reverend the Dean of Silchester. Thus far had they climbed in the ten
years that succeeded the Bishop of Clapham's death. Perhaps if they had
reached such altitudes ten years before they might have been more
willing to share with Sholto; but Dr. Grant of Harley Street, Mr. Grant
of the Levant Consular Service, Captain Grant of the Duke of Edinburgh's
Own Strathspey Highlanders (Banffshire Buffs), and Mrs. Lightbody, the
wife of Canon Lightbody, were not far enough up the pea-sticks to
neglect such a stimulus to growth as gold. Mrs. Hector, Mrs. Eneas, and
Mrs. Alexander had their own grievance, for, as they reasonably asked,
what had Sholto's wife contributed to the family ascent? They, who had
followed the example set by Miss Jukes and Miss Rouncivell before them,
were surely entitled to reproach the unendowed Gelsomina. It seemed so
extraordinary too that a bishop should have nothing better to occupy a
mind on the brink of eternity than speculating whether his youngest son
would arrive in time to see him die. They had never yet observed the
death of a prelate, but they could imagine well enough what it ought to
be to know that a continental Bradshaw was not the book to prepare for a
heavenly journey. And when a double knock sounded on the studded door of
Bishop's House, the Bishop had actually sat up in bed, because he
thought that it was his youngest son, arrived in time after all. But it
was not Sholto, and the old man had had no business to sit up in bed and
grab at the telegram like that. _"Wife dying in Paris forgive delay,"_
he read out, gasping. After which with a smile he murmured, "Perhaps I
shall meet poor Sholto's wife above," and without another word died. It
was all very well for the chaplain to fold his arms upon his breast, but
the assembled family felt that a bishop ought to have died in the hope
of meeting his Maker, not an Italian daughter-in-law of peasant
extraction.
During the ten years that had elapsed since then, Sholto had behaved
exactly as his family had foreseen that he would behave. He had lost his
wife, his money, and then most carelessly his own life, leaving an
orphan to be provided for by her relatives. Luckily Sir Hector Grant,
because he was the head of the family and because he had climbed a
little higher than the rest, was willing to see what could be done with
and what could be made of poor Sholto's daughter. Not that the others
were slow in coming forward with offers of hospitality. Their letters to
Jasmine were a proof of that. But they all felt that Strathspey House
was the obvious place for the experiment to begin.
Strathspey House occupied what is called a commanding position on the
fashionable South Cliff of Spaborough, looking seaward over the
shrubberies of the Spa gardens. Sir Hector Grant had bought it about
fifteen years ago, to the relief of the many ladies whom in a
professional capacity he had advised to recuperate their nerves at the
famous old resort. That trip to Spaborough had become such a recognized
formula in his consultations that it would hardly have been decent for
Dr. Grant himself to seek anywhere else recreation from his practice. In
his Harley Street consulting room a coloured print of the eighteenth
century entitled _A Trip to Spaborough_ hung above the green marble
clock that had been presented to him by a ruling sovereign for keeping
his oldest daughter moderately sane long enough to marry the son of
another ruling sovereign, and, what is more, cheat an heir presumptive
with an heir apparent. In the caricaturist's representation a line of
monstrously behooped and bewigged ladies and of gentlemen with bulbous
red noses stood upon a barren cliff gazing at the sea. "Even in those
days," Dr. Grant used to murmur, "you see, my dear lady ... yes ... even
in those days ... but of course it's not quite like that now. No,
it's--not--quite--like--that--now." The neurasthenic lady would
certainly have made the prescribed trip even if it had been; but before
she could express her complete subservience Dr. Grant would go on: "Air
... yes, precisely ... that's what you require ... air!... plenty of
good--fresh--air! Bathing? Perhaps. That we shall have to settle later
on. Yes, a little--later--on." And Dr. Grant's patients were usually so
much braced up by their visit that they would begin telegraphing to him
at all hours of the day and night to find out the precise significance
of various symptoms unnoticed before the cure began to work its
wonders.
But the claims of exigent ladies were not the only reason that
determined Dr. Grant to acquire a house at the seaside. As a
prophylactic against his two daughters', Lettice and Pamela, ever
reaching the condition in which the majority of his female patients
found themselves, their mother, who had an even keener instinct than her
husband for the mode, suggested that he should build a house in the
country, choosing a design that could be added to year by year as his
fame and fortune increased. But when Mrs. Grant suggested building, the
doctor replied, "Fools, May, build houses for wise men to live in," and
forthwith bought Strathspey House to conclude the discussion. In this
case the fool was a Huddersfield manufacturer whose fortunes had
collapsed in some industrial earthquake and left him saddled with a
double-fronted, four-storied, porticoed house, in which he had planned
to meditate for many years on a successful business career put behind
him. Actually he spent his declining years in a small boarding-house on
the unfashionable north side of Spaborough, where he existed in a
miserable obscurity, except as often as he could persuade a
fellow-pensioner to walk with him all the way up to South Parade for the
purpose of admiring the exterior of the house that had once been his--a
habit, by the way, that vexed the new owner extremely, but for which,
under the laws of England, he could discover no satisfactory remedy.
It is scarcely necessary to add that the Huddersfield manufacturer never
called it Strathspey House. That was Dr. Grant's way of saying "My
heart's in the Highlands a-chasing the deer," for it was down the dim
glens of Strathspey that the prehistoric Grants had hunted in the mists
of antiquity.
Although Mrs. Grant had never tried to persuade her husband into
anything like the baronial castle that would have so well become him,
she had never ceased to protest against a country seat in a popular
seaside resort; but she had to wait fifteen years before she was able to
say "I told you so" with perfect assurance that her husband would have
to bow his head in acknowledgment of her clearer foresight. The actual
date of her triumph was the first of August in the year before Jasmine's
arrival, when the very next house in South Parade, separated from
Strathspey House by nothing but a yard of sky and a hedge of ragged
aucubas, was turned into a boarding-house and actually called Holyrood.
Sir Hector Grant, K.C.V.O., C.B., would have found the proximity of a
boarding-house irritating enough as he was; but a few months later he
was created a baronet, and what had been merely irritating became
intolerable. How could he advertise himself in Debrett as Sir Hector
Grant, of Strathspey House, Spaborough, when next door was a boarding
establishment called Holyrood? And if he described himself as Sir Hector
Grant, of Harley Street, Borough of Marylebone, all the flavour would be
taken out of the fine old Highland name and title. There was only one
course of action. He must change Strathspey House to Balmoral, sell it
to another boarding establishment, remove _A Trip to Spaborough_ from
his consulting room, buy a small glen in Banff or Elgin with a good
Gaelic sound to its name, and send his patients to Strathpeffer. Yet
after all, why should he bother? He had no male heir. What did it matter
if he was Sir Hector Grant, of Harley Street, Borough of Marylebone? Sir
Hector Grant, Bt., was good enough for anybody; he need not waste his
money on glens. If old Uncle Matthew Rouncivell died soon and left him
his fortune, and the old miser owed as much to his nephew's title, he
should be able to buy a castle and retire from practice. Meanwhile his
business was to make the most of that title while he was alive to enjoy
it.
"Yes, perhaps it was a mistake to settle so definitely in Spaborough,"
he admitted to his wife. "But it's too late to begin building now. You
and the girls won't want to keep up an establishment when I'm gone.
Extraordinary thing that Ellen"--Ellen was his only sister--"should have
six boys. However," he went on hurriedly, "we mustn't grumble."
The result of having no heir was that Sir Hector had to make the most of
his title in his own lifetime, and he used to carry it about with him
everywhere as a miner carries his gold. Journeys which a long and
successful life should have made arduous at fifty-eight were now
sweetened by his being able to register himself in hotel books as
_Hector Grant, Bart_. Once a malevolent wit added an _S_ to the _Bart_,
in allusion to the hospital that produced him, and Sir Hector, gloating
over the hotel book next morning, was so much shocked that he insisted
upon the abbreviation _Bt_. ever afterwards. It was the second time that
verbal ingenuity had made free with his titles. For his voluntary
services to his country during the Boer war as consulting
physician--people used to say that he had been called in to pronounce
upon the sanity of the British generals on active service--he was made a
Companion of the Bath, and when soon after appeared _Traumatic
Neuroses_. _By Hector Grant, C.B._, one reviewer suggested that the
initials should be put the other way round, so old and out of date were
the distinguished doctor's theories.
In appearance Sir Hector was extremely tall, extremely thin, extremely
fair, with prominent bright blue eyes and a nodulous complexion. His
manner, except with his wife and daughters, was masterful. Old maids
spoke of his magnetism: women confided to him their love affairs: girls
disliked him. It would be unjust to dispose of his success as lightly as
the frivolous and malicious critic mentioned just now. He was not
old-fashioned; he did keep abreast of all the Teutonic excursions into
the vast hinterland of insanity; even at this period he was clicking his
tongue in disapproval of the first stammerings of Freud. He was
sensitive to the popular myth that alienists end by going mad
themselves, and with that suggestion in view he was on his guard against
the least eccentricity in himself or his family. _Mens sana in corpore
sano_, he boasted that he had never worn an overcoat in his life.
He was once approached by the proprietors of a famous whisky for
permission to put his portrait if not on the bottle at least on the
invoice. Although he felt bound to refuse, the compliment to his
typically Caledonian appearance pleased him, and now on his holiday, in
a suit of homespun with an old cap stuck over with flies, Sir Hector
regretted that the necessity for keeping one hand in his patients'
pockets prevented his setting more than one foot upon his native heath,
and even that one foot only figuratively.
Lady Grant, who had been the only daughter of a retired paper-maker and
had brought her husband some two thousand pounds a year, was at fifty a
tall fair woman with cheeks that formerly might not unludicrously have
been compared to carnations, but which now with their network of little
crimson lines were more like picotees. She was one of those women whom
it is impossible to imagine with nothing on. Inasmuch as she changed her
clothes three times a day, went to bed at night, got up in the morning,
and in fact behaved as a woman of flesh and blood does behave, it was
obvious that she and her clothes were not really one and indivisible.
Yet so solid and coherent were they that if one of her dresses had
hurried downstairs after her to say that she had put on the wrong one,
it might not have surprised an onlooker with any effect of strangeness.
At fifty her best feature was her nose, which of all features is least
able to call attention to itself. Women with pretty complexions, women
with shapely ankles, women with beautiful hair, women with liquid or
luminous eyes, women with exquisite ears, women with lovely mouths,
women with good figures, women with snowy arms, women with slim hands,
women with graceful necks, all these have a property that bears a steady
interest in becoming gestures. Powder-puffs, petticoats, combs,
ear-rings, and a hundred other excuses are not wanting; but the only way
of calling attention to a nose, at any rate in civilized society, is by
blowing it, which, however delicate the laced handkerchief, is never a
gesture that adds to the pleasure of the company. Lady Grant could do
nothing with her magnificent nose except bring it into profile, and this
gave her face a haughty and inattentive expression that made people
think that she was unsympathetic. Enthusiasm cannot display itself
nasally except among rabbits, and of course elephants. Lady Grant,
resembling neither a rabbit nor an elephant, became more impassive than
ever at those critical moments which, had she been endowed with good
eyes, might have changed her whole character. As it was, her nose just
overweighted her face, not with the effect of caricature that a toucan's
nose produces, but with the stolidity and complacency of a grosbeak's.
She was, for instance, as much gratified to be the wife of a baronet as
her husband was to be a baronet itself; that intractable feature of hers
turned all the simple pleasure into pompousness. It is true that by
calling attention to her daughters' noses she was sometimes able to
extract a compliment to her own; but at best this was a vicarious
satisfaction, and when one day a stupid woman responded by suggesting
that Pamela and Lettice had noses like their father, Lady Grant had to
deny herself even this demand on the flattery of her friends, because
Sir Hector's nose was hideous, really hideous.
Lady Grant had grumbled a good deal about her niece's arrival; actually
she was looking forward to it. Several people had told her how splendid
it was of her, and how like her it was to be so ready, and what a
wonderful thing it would be for the niece. In fact in the ever-widening
circle of her aunt's acquaintance Jasmine had already reached the
dimensions of a large charitable organization. For some time Lady Grant
had been protecting a poor cousin of her own, a Miss Edith Crossfield,
who was so obviously an object for charity that the glory of being kind
to her was rather dimmed. Miss Crossfield was so poor and so humble and
so worthy that her ladyship would have had to own a heart as impassive
as her nose not to have protected her. At first it had been interesting
to impress poor Edith; but as time went on poor Edith proved so willing
to be impressed by the least action of dear May that it became no longer
very interesting to impress her. Moreover, now that she was the wife of
a baronet, Lady Grant was not sure that it reflected creditably upon her
to have such a poor relation. There was no romance in Edith; to speak
bluntly, even harshly, she gave the show away. No, Edith must find
herself lodgings somewhere in a nice unfashionable seaside town and be
content with a pension. Sholto's existence in Sirene, his romantic and
unfortunate marriage, his career as a painter, his death in the Bay of
Salerno, such a history added to the family past, and if poor Jasmine
would be more expensive than poor Edith, she would be more useful to
her aunt, and more useful to darling Lettice and Pamela.
Lady Grant's daughters were tall blondes in their mid-twenties who had
always hated each other, and whose hatred had never been relieved by
being able to disparage each other's appearance, owing to their both
looking exactly alike. They too, perhaps, were fairly pleased at the
notion of Jasmine's arrival, because Cousin Edith was no use at all as a
contrast to themselves; she merely lay untidily about the house like a
duster left behind by a careless maid. Pamela and Lettice wanted to get
married well and quickly; but since either was afraid of the other's
getting married first, it began to seem as if neither of them would get
married at all. Their passion was golf, and it was a pity that the
pre-matrimonial methods of savages were not in vogue on the Spaborough
links; Lettice and Pamela would have willingly been hit on the head by a
suitor's golf club if they could have found themselves married on
returning to consciousness. Such was the family to whose bosom Jasmine
was being jogged along through the lamp-lit dusk of Spaborough.
It may be easily imagined that Lady Grant, after taking the trouble to
send Nuckett with the car to meet her niece's arrival at Spaborough, was
not pleased to find that she had driven up to Strathspey House behind an
orange postilion.
"Didn't you see Nuckett?" she asked of Jasmine, whose attempt to kiss
her aunt had been rather like biting hard on a soft pink sweet and
finding nougat or some such adamantine substance within. Jasmine,
wondering who Nuckett might be, assured her aunt that she had not seen
him.
"Which means that he will wait down there for the 9.38. Hector!" she
called to her husband, who was at that moment bending down to salute
his niece, "Nuckett will be waiting at the station for the 9.38. What
can we do about it?"
Sir Hector recoiled from the kiss, blew out his cheeks, and looked at
his niece with the expression he reserved for wantonly hysterical young
girls. There ensued a long discussion of the methods of communication
with Nuckett, during which Jasmine's spirits, temporarily exhilarated by
the ride behind the orange postilion, sank lower than at any point on
the journey. Nor were they raised by the entrance of her two cousins,
who were looking at her as if one of the servants had upset a bottle of
ink which had to be mopped up before they could advance another step. At
last the problem of Nuckett's evening was solved by entrusting the
postilion with authority to recall him.
"You mustn't bother to dress for dinner to-night," conceded Lady Grant,
apparently swept by a sudden gust of benevolence. "Pamela dear, take
Jasmine to her room, will you?"
"Do you get much golf in Sirene?" enquired Pamela on the way upstairs.