nothing to me now.” He took up the tradesman’s book and played with it
idly. On its crimson cover was stamped a grotesque sheep. How stale and
stupid their life had become!
“Don’t talk like that, though,” she said uneasily. “Think how
disastrous it would be if you made a slip in speaking to him.”
“Would it? It would have been disastrous once. But I expect, as a
matter of fact, that Aunt Emily has made the slip already.”
His wife was displeased. “You need not talk in that cynical way. I
credit Aunt Emily with better feeling. When I was there she did mention
the matter, but only once. She, and I, and all who have any sense of
decency, know better than to make slips, or to think of making them.”
Agnes kept up what she called “the family connection.” She had been
once alone to Cadover, and also corresponded with Mrs. Failing. She had
never told Rickie anything about her visit nor had he ever asked her.
But, from this moment, the whole subject was reopened.
“Most certainly he knows nothing,” she continued. “Why, he does
not even realize that Varden lives in our house! We are perfectly
safe—unless Aunt Emily were to die. Perhaps then—but we are perfectly
safe for the present.”
“When she did mention the matter, what did she say?”
“We had a long talk,” said Agnes quietly. “She told me nothing
new—nothing new about the past, I mean. But we had a long talk about
the present. I think” —and her voice grew displeased again—“that you
have been both wrong and foolish in refusing to make up your quarrel
with Aunt Emily.”
“Wrong and wise, I should say.”
“It isn’t to be expected that she—so much older and so sensitive—can
make the first step. But I know she’d he glad to see you.”
“As far as I can remember that final scene in the garden, I accused her
of ‘forgetting what other people were like.’ She’ll never pardon me for
saying that.”
Agnes was silent. To her the phrase was meaningless. Yet Rickie was
correct: Mrs. Failing had resented it more than anything.
“At all events,” she suggested, “you might go and see her.”
“No, dear. Thank you, no.”
“She is, after all—” She was going to say “your father’s sister,” but
the expression was scarcely a happy one, and she turned it into, “She
is, after all, growing old and lonely.”
“So are we all!” he cried, with a lapse of tone that was now
characteristic in him.
“She oughtn’t to be so isolated from her proper relatives.”
There was a moment’s silence. Still playing with the book, he remarked,
“You forget, she’s got her favourite nephew.”
A bright red flush spread over her cheeks. “What is the matter with you
this afternoon?” she asked. “I should think you’d better go for a walk.”
“Before I go, tell me what is the matter with you.” He also flushed.
“Why do you want me to make it up with my aunt?”
“Because it’s right and proper.”
“So? Or because she is old?”
“I don’t understand,” she retorted. But her eyes dropped. His sudden
suspicion was true: she was legacy hunting.
“Agnes, dear Agnes,” he began with passing tenderness, “how can you
think of such things? You behave like a poor person. We don’t want any
money from Aunt Emily, or from any one else. It isn’t virtue that makes
me say it: we are not tempted in that way: we have as much as we want
already.”
“For the present,” she answered, still looking aside.
“There isn’t any future,” he cried in a gust of despair.
“Rickie, what do you mean?”
What did he mean? He meant that the relations between them were
fixed—that there would never be an influx of interest, nor even of
passion. To the end of life they would go on beating time, and this was
enough for her. She was content with the daily round, the common task,
performed indifferently. But he had dreamt of another helpmate, and of
other things.
“We don’t want money—why, we don’t even spend any on travelling. I’ve
invested all my salary and more. As far as human foresight goes, we
shall never want money.” And his thoughts went out to the tiny grave.
“You spoke of ‘right and proper,’ but the right and proper thing for my
aunt to do is to leave every penny she’s got to Stephen.”
Her lip quivered, and for one moment he thought that she was going to
cry. “What am I to do with you?” she said. “You talk like a person in
poetry.”
“I’ll put it in prose. He’s lived with her for twenty years, and he
ought to be paid for it.”
Poor Agnes! Indeed, what was she to do? The first moment she set foot
in Cadover she had thought, “Oh, here is money. We must try and get
it.” Being a lady, she never mentioned the thought to her husband, but
she concluded that it would occur to him too. And now, though it had
occurred to him at last, he would not even write his aunt a little note.
He was to try her yet further. While they argued this point he flashed
out with, “I ought to have told him that day when he called up to our
room. There’s where I went wrong first.”
“Rickie!”
“In those days I was sentimental. I minded. For two pins I’d write to
him this afternoon. Why shouldn’t he know he’s my brother? What’s all
this ridiculous mystery?”
She became incoherent.
“But _why_ not? A reason why he shouldn’t know.”
“A reason why he _should_ know,” she retorted. “I never heard such
rubbish! Give me a reason why he should know.”
“Because the lie we acted has ruined our lives.”
She looked in bewilderment at the well-appointed room.
“It’s been like a poison we won’t acknowledge. How many times have you
thought of my brother? I’ve thought of him every day—not in love;
don’t misunderstand; only as a medicine I shirked. Down in what they
call the subconscious self he has been hurting me.” His voice broke.
“Oh, my darling, we acted a lie then, and this letter reminds us of
it and gives us one more chance. I have to say ‘we’ lied. I should be
lying again if I took quite all the blame. Let us ask God’s forgiveness
together. Then let us write, as coldly as you please, to Stephen, and
tell him he is my father’s son.”
Her reply need not be quoted. It was the last time he attempted
intimacy. And the remainder of their conversation, though long and
stormy, is also best forgotten.
Thus the first effect of Varden’s letter was to make them quarrel. They
had not openly disagreed before. In the evening he kissed her and said,
“How absurd I was to get angry about things that happened last year. I
will certainly not write to the person.” She returned the kiss. But he
knew that they had destroyed the habit of reverence, and would quarrel
again. On his rounds he looked in at Varden and asked nonchalantly for
the letter. He carried it off to his room. It was unwise of him, for
his nerves were already unstrung, and the man he had tried to bury was
stirring ominously. In the silence he examined the handwriting till he
felt that a living creature was with him, whereas he, because his child
had died, was dead. He perceived more clearly the cruelty of Nature, to
whom our refinement and piety are but as bubbles, hurrying downwards on
the turbid waters. They break, and the stream continues. His father, as
a final insult, had brought into the world a man unlike all the rest of
them, a man dowered with coarse kindliness and rustic strength, a kind
of cynical ploughboy, against whom their own misery and weakness might
stand more vividly relieved. “Born an Elliot—born a gentleman.” So the
vile phrase ran. But here was an Elliot whose badness was not even
gentlemanly. For that Stephen was bad inherently he never doubted for a
moment and he would have children: he, not Rickie, would contribute to
the stream; he, through his remote posterity, might be mingled with the
unknown sea.
Thus musing he lay down to sleep, feeling diseased in body and soul. It
was no wonder that the night was the most terrible he had ever known.
He revisited Cambridge, and his name was a grey ghost over the door.
Then there recurred the voice of a gentle shadowy woman, Mrs. Aberdeen,
“It doesn’t seem hardly right.” Those had been her words, her only
complaint against the mysteries of change and death. She bowed her head
and laboured to make her “gentlemen” comfortable. She was labouring
still. As he lay in bed he asked God to grant him her wisdom; that he
might keep sorrow within due bounds; that he might abstain from extreme
hatred and envy of Stephen. It was seldom that he prayed so definitely,
or ventured to obtrude his private wishes. Religion was to him a
service, a mystic communion with good; not a means of getting what he
wanted on the earth. But tonight, through suffering, he was humbled,
and became like Mrs. Aberdeen. Hour after hour he awaited sleep and
tried to endure the faces that frothed in the gloom—his aunt’s, his
father’s, and, worst of all, the triumphant face of his brother. Once
he struck at it, and awoke, having hurt his hand on the wall. Then he
prayed hysterically for pardon and rest.
Yet again did he awake, and from a more mysterious dream. He heard his
mother crying. She was crying quite distinctly in the darkened room. He
whispered, “Never mind, my darling, never mind,” and a voice echoed,
“Never mind—come away—let them die out—let them die out.” He lit a
candle, and the room was empty. Then, hurrying to the window, he saw
above mean houses the frosty glories of Orion.
Henceforward he deteriorates. Let those who censure him suggest what
he should do. He has lost the work that he loved, his friends, and his
child. He remained conscientious and decent, but the spiritual part of
him proceeded towards ruin.
XXIV
The coming months, though full of degradation and anxiety, were to
bring him nothing so terrible as that night. It was the crisis of this
agony. He was an outcast and a failure. But he was not again forced
to contemplate these facts so clearly. Varden left in the morning,
carrying the fatal letter with him. The whole house was relieved. The
good angel was with the boys again, or else (as Herbert preferred to
think) they had learnt a lesson, and were more humane in consequence.
At all events, the disastrous term concluded quietly.
In the Christmas holidays the two masters made an abortive attempt to
visit Italy, and at Easter there was talk of a cruise in the Aegean.
Herbert actually went, and enjoyed Athens and Delphi. The Elliots paid
a few visits together in England. They returned to Sawston about ten
days before school opened, to find that Widdrington was again stopping
with the Jacksons. Intercourse was painful, for the two families were
scarcely on speaking terms; nor did the triumphant scaffoldings of
the new boarding-house make things easier. (The party of progress
had carried the day.) Widdrington was by nature touchy, but on this
occasion he refused to take offence, and often dropped in to see them.
His manner was friendly but critical. They agreed he was a nuisance.
Then Agnes left, very abruptly, to see Mrs. Failing, and while she was
away Rickie had a little stealthy intercourse.
Her absence, convenient as it was, puzzled him. Mrs. Silt, half goose,
half stormy-petrel, had recently paid a flying visit to Cadover, and
thence had flown, without an invitation, to Sawston. Generally she was
not a welcome guest. On this occasion Agnes had welcomed her, and—so
Rickie thought—had made her promise not to tell him something that she
knew. The ladies had talked mysteriously. “Mr. Silt would be one with
you there,” said Mrs. Silt. Could there be any connection between the
two visits?
Agnes’s letters told him nothing: they never did. She was too clumsy
or too cautious to express herself on paper. A drive to Stonehenge;
an anthem in the Cathedral; Aunt Emily’s love. And when he met her at
Waterloo he learnt nothing (if there was anything to learn) from her
face.
“How did you enjoy yourself?”
“Thoroughly.”
“Were you and she alone?”
“Sometimes. Sometimes other people.”
“Will Uncle Tony’s Essays be published?”
Here she was more communicative. The book was at last in proof. Aunt
Emily had written a charming introduction; but she was so idle, she
never finished things off.
They got into an omnibus for the Army and Navy Stores: she wanted to do
some shopping before going down to Sawston.
“Did you read any of the Essays?”
“Every one. Delightful. Couldn’t put them down. Now and then he spoilt
them by statistics—but you should read his descriptions of Nature.
He agrees with you: says the hills and trees are alive! Aunt Emily
called you his spiritual heir, which I thought nice of her. We both so
lamented that you have stopped writing.” She quoted fragments of the
Essays as they went up in the Stores’ lift.
“What else did you talk about?”
“I’ve told you all my news. Now for yours. Let’s have tea first.”
They sat down in the corridor amid ladies in every stage of
fatigue—haggard ladies, scarlet ladies, ladies with parcels that
twisted from every finger like joints of meat. Gentlemen were scarcer,
but all were of the sub-fashionable type, to which Rickie himself now
belonged.
“I haven’t done anything,” he said feebly. “Ate, read, been rude to
tradespeople, talked to Widdrington. Herbert arrived this morning. He
has brought a most beautiful photograph of the Parthenon.”
“Mr. Widdrington?”
“Yes.”
“What did you talk about?”
She might have heard every word. It was only the feeling of pleasure
that he wished to conceal. Even when we love people, we desire to keep
some corner secret from them, however small: it is a human right:
it is personality. She began to cross-question him, but they were
interrupted. A young lady at an adjacent table suddenly rose and cried,
“Yes, it is you. I thought so from your walk.” It was Maud Ansell.
“Oh, do come and join us!” he cried. “Let me introduce my wife.” Maud
bowed quite stiffly, but Agnes, taking it for ill-breeding, was not
offended.
“Then I will come!” she continued in shrill, pleasant tones, adroitly
poising her tea things on either hand, and transferring them to the
Elliots’ table. “Why haven’t you ever come to us, pray?”
“I think you didn’t ask me!”
“You weren’t to be asked.” She sprawled forward with a wagging finger.
But her eyes had the honesty of her brother’s. “Don’t you remember the
day you left us? Father said, ‘Now, Mr. Elliot—’ Or did he call you
‘Elliot’? How one does forget. Anyhow, father said you weren’t to wait
for an invitation, and you said, ‘No, I won’t.’ Ours is a fair-sized
house,”—she turned somewhat haughtily to Agnes,—“and the second spare
room, on account of a harp that hangs on the wall, is always reserved
for Stewart’s friends.”
“How is Mr. Ansell, your brother?” Maud’s face fell. “Hadn’t you
heard?” she said in awe-struck tones.
“No.”
“He hasn’t got his fellowship. It’s the second time he’s failed. That
means he will never get one. He will never be a don, nor live in
Cambridge and that, as we had hoped.”
“Oh, poor, poor fellow!” said Mrs. Elliot with a remorse that was
sincere, though her congratulations would not have been. “I am so very
sorry.”
But Maud turned to Rickie. “Mr. Elliot, you might know. Tell me. What
is wrong with Stewart’s philosophy? What ought he to put in, or to
alter, so as to succeed?”
Agnes, who knew better than this, smiled.
“I don’t know,” said Rickie sadly. They were none of them so clever,
after all.
“Hegel,” she continued vindictively. “They say he’s read too much
Hegel. But they never tell him what to read instead. Their own stuffy
books, I suppose. Look here—no, that’s the ‘Windsor.’” After a little
groping she produced a copy of “Mind,” and handed it round as if it
was a geological specimen. “Inside that there’s a paragraph written
about something Stewart’s written about before, and there it says he’s
read too much Hegel, and it seems now that that’s been the trouble
all along.” Her voice trembled. “I call it most unfair, and the
fellowship’s gone to a man who has counted the petals on an anemone.”
Rickie had no inclination to smile.
“I wish Stewart had tried Oxford instead.”
“I don’t wish it!”
“You say that,” she continued hotly, “and then you never come to see
him, though you knew you were not to wait for an invitation.”
“If it comes to that, Miss Ansell,” retorted Rickie, in the laughing
tones that one adopts on such occasions, “Stewart won’t come to me,
though he _has_ had an invitation.”
“Yes,” chimed in Agnes, “we ask Mr. Ansell again and again, and he will
have none of us.”
Maud looked at her with a flashing eye. “My brother is a very peculiar
person, and we ladies can’t understand him. But I know one thing, and
that’s that he has a reason all round for what he does. Look here, I
must be getting on. Waiter! Wai-ai-aiter! Bill, please. Separately, of
course. Call the Army and Navy cheap! I know better!”
“How does the drapery department compare?” said Agnes sweetly.
The girl gave a sharp choking sound, gathered up her parcels, and left
them. Rickie was too much disgusted with his wife to speak.
“Appalling person!” she gasped. “It was naughty of me, but I couldn’t
help it. What a dreadful fate for a clever man! To fail in life
completely, and then to be thrown back on a family like that!”
“Maud is a snob and a Philistine. But, in her case, something emerges.”
She glanced at him, but proceeded in her suavest tones, “Do let us make
one great united attempt to get Mr. Ansell to Sawston.”
“No.”
“What a changeable friend you are! When we were engaged you were always
talking about him.”
“Would you finish your tea, and then we will buy the linoleum for the
cubicles.”
But she returned to the subject again, not only on that day but
throughout the term. Could nothing be done for poor Mr. Ansell? It
seemed that she could not rest until all that he had once held dear
was humiliated. In this she strayed outside her nature: she was
unpractical. And those who stray outside their nature invite disaster.
Rickie, goaded by her, wrote to his friend again. The letter was in all
ways unlike his old self. Ansell did not answer it. But he did write to
Mr. Jackson, with whom he was not acquainted.
“Dear Mr. Jackson,—
“I understand from Widdrington that you have a large house. I would
like to tell you how convenient it would be for me to come and stop in
it. June suits me best.—
“Yours truly,
“Stewart Ansell”
To which Mr. Jackson replied that not only in June but during the whole
year his house was at the disposal of Mr. Ansell and of any one who
resembled him.
But Agnes continued her life, cheerfully beating time. She, too, knew
that her marriage was a failure, and in her spare moments regretted
it. She wished that her husband was handsomer, more successful, more
dictatorial. But she would think, “No, no; one mustn’t grumble. It
can’t be helped.” Ansell was wrong in supposing she might ever leave
Rickie. Spiritual apathy prevented her. Nor would she ever be tempted
by a jollier man. Here criticism would willingly alter its tone. For
Agnes also has her tragedy. She belonged to the type—not necessarily
an elevated one—that loves once and once only. Her love for Gerald had
not been a noble passion: no imagination transfigured it. But such as
it was, it sprang to embrace him, and he carried it away with him when
he died. _Les amours qui suivrent sont moins involuntaires_: by an effort
of the will she had warmed herself for Rickie.
She is not conscious of her tragedy, and therefore only the gods need
weep at it. But it is fair to remember that hitherto she moves as one
from whom the inner life has been withdrawn.
XXV
“I am afraid,” said Agnes, unfolding a letter that she had received in
the morning, “that things go far from satisfactorily at Cadover.”
The three were alone at supper. It was the June of Rickie’s second year
at Sawston.
“Indeed?” said Herbert, who took a friendly interest. “In what way?
“Do you remember us talking of Stephen—Stephen Wonham, who by an odd
coincidence—”
“Yes. Who wrote last year to that miserable failure Varden. I do.”
“It is about him.”
“I did not like the tone of his letter.”
Agnes had made her first move. She waited for her husband to reply to
it. But he, though full of a painful curiosity, would not speak. She
moved again.
“I don’t think, Herbert, that Aunt Emily, much as I like her, is the
kind of person to bring a young man up. At all events the results have
been disastrous this time.”
“What has happened?”
“A tangle of things.” She lowered her voice. “Drink.”
“Dear! Really! Was Mrs. Failing fond of him?”
“She used to be. She let him live at Cadover ever since he was a little
boy. Naturally that cannot continue.”
Rickie never spoke.
“And now he has taken to be violent and rude,” she went on.
“In short, a beggar on horseback. Who is he? Has he got relatives?”
“She has always been both father and mother to him. Now it must all
come to an end. I blame her—and she blames herself—for not being
severe enough. He has grown up without fixed principles. He has always
followed his inclinations, and one knows the result of that.”
Herbert assented. “To me Mrs. Failing’s course is perfectly plain. She
has a certain responsibility. She must pay the youth’s passage to one
of the colonies, start him handsomely in some business, and then break
off all communications.”
“How funny! It is exactly what she is going to do.”
“I shall then consider that she has behaved in a thoroughly honourable
manner.” He held out his plate for gooseberries. “His letter to Varden
was neither helpful nor sympathetic, and, if written at all, it ought
to have been both. I am not in the least surprised to learn that he has
turned out badly. When you write next, would you tell her how sorry I
am?”
“Indeed I will. Two years ago, when she was already a little anxious,
she did so wish you could undertake him.”
“I could not alter a grown man.” But in his heart he thought he could,
and smiled at his sister amiably. “Terrible, isn’t it?” he remarked to
Rickie. Rickie, who was trying not to mind anything, assented. And an
onlooker would have supposed them a dispassionate trio, who were sorry
both for Mrs. Failing and for the beggar who would bestride her horses’
backs no longer. A new topic was introduced by the arrival of the
evening post.
Herbert took up all the letters, as he often did.
“Jackson?” he exclaimed. “What does the fellow want?” He read, and
his tone was mollified, “‘Dear Mr. Pembroke,—Could you, Mrs. Elliot,
and Mr. Elliot come to supper with us on Saturday next? I should not
merely be pleased, I should be grateful. My wife is writing formally to
Mrs. Elliot’—(Here, Agnes, take your letter),—‘but I venture to write
as well, and to add my more uncouth entreaties.’—An olive-branch.
It is time! But (ridiculous person!) does he think that we can leave
the House deserted and all go out pleasuring in term time?—Rickie, a
letter for you.”
“Mine’s the formal invitation,” said Agnes. “How very odd! Mr. Ansell
will be there. Surely we asked him here! Did you know he knew the
Jacksons?”
“This makes refusal very difficult,” said Herbert, who was anxious to
accept. “At all events, Rickie ought to go.”
“I do not want to go,” said Rickie, slowly opening his own letter. “As
Agnes says, Ansell has refused to come to us. I cannot put myself out
for him.”
“Who’s yours from?” she demanded.
“Mrs. Silt,” replied Herbert, who had seen the handwriting. “I trust
she does not want to pay us a visit this term, with the examinations
impending and all the machinery at full pressure. Though, Rickie, you
will have to accept the Jacksons’ invitation.”
“I cannot possibly go. I have been too rude; with Widdrington we always
meet here. I’ll stop with the boys—” His voice caught suddenly. He had
opened Mrs. Silt’s letter.
“The Silts are not ill, I hope?”
“No. But, I say,”—he looked at his wife,—“I do think this is going
too far. Really, Agnes.”
“What has happened?”
“It is going too far,” he repeated. He was nerving himself for another
battle. “I cannot stand this sort of thing. There are limits.”
He laid the letter down. It was Herbert who picked it up, and read:
“Aunt Emily has just written to us. We are so glad that her troubles
are over, in spite of the expense. It never does to live apart from
one’s own relatives so much as she has done up to now. He goes next
Saturday to Canada. What you told her about him just turned the scale.
She has asked us—”
“No, it’s too much,” he interrupted. “What I told her—told her about
him—no, I will have it out at last. Agnes!”
“Yes?” said his wife, raising her eyes from Mrs. Jackson’s formal
invitation.
“It’s you—it’s you. I never mentioned him to her. Why, I’ve never seen
her or written to her since. I accuse you.”
Then Herbert overbore him, and he collapsed. He was asked what he
meant. Why was he so excited? Of what did he accuse his wife. Each
time he spoke more feebly, and before long the brother and sister were
laughing at him. He felt bewildered, like a boy who knows that he is
right but cannot put his case correctly. He repeated, “I’ve never
mentioned him to her. It’s a libel. Never in my life.” And they cried,
“My dear Rickie, what an absurd fuss!” Then his brain cleared. His eye
fell on the letter that his wife had received from his aunt, and he
reopened the battle.
“Agnes, give me that letter, if you please.”
“Mrs. Jackson’s?”
“My aunt’s.”
She put her hand on it, and looked at him doubtfully. She saw that she
had failed to bully him.
“My aunt’s letter,” he repeated, rising to his feet and bending over
the table towards her.
“Why, dear?”
“Yes, why indeed?” echoed Herbert. He too had bullied Rickie, but from
a purer motive: he had tried to stamp out a dissension between husband
and wife. It was not the first time he had intervened.
“The letter. For this reason: it will show me what you have done. I
believe you have ruined Stephen. You have worked at it for two years.
You have put words into my mouth to ‘turn the scale’ against him. He
goes to Canada—and all the world thinks it is owing to me. As I said
before—I advise you to stop smiling—you have gone a little too far.”
They were all on their feet now, standing round the little table. Agnes
said nothing, but the fingers of her delicate hand tightened upon the
letter. When her husband snatched at it she resisted, and with the
effect of a harlequinade everything went on the floor—lamb, mint
sauce, gooseberries, lemonade, whisky. At once they were swamped in
domesticities. She rang the bell for the servant, cries arose, dusters
were brought, broken crockery (a wedding present) picked up from the
carpet; while he stood wrathfully at the window, regarding the obscured
sun’s decline.
“I _must_ see her letter,” he repeated, when the agitation was over. He
was too angry to be diverted from his purpose. Only slight emotions are
thwarted by an interlude of farce.
“I’ve had enough of this quarrelling,” she retorted. “You know that the
Silts are inaccurate. I think you might have given me the benefit of
the doubt. If you will know—have you forgotten that ride you took with
him?”
“I—” he was again bewildered. “The ride where I dreamt—”
“The ride where you turned back because you could not listen to a
disgraceful poem?”
“I don’t understand.”
“The poem was Aunt Emily. He read it to you and a stray soldier.
Afterwards you told me. You said, ‘Really it is shocking, his
ingratitude. She ought to know about it’ She does know, and I should be
glad of an apology.”
He had said something of the sort in a fit of irritation. Mrs. Silt was
right—he had helped to turn the scale.
“Whatever I said, you knew what I meant. You knew I’d sooner cut my
tongue out than have it used against him. Even then.” He sighed. Had he
ruined his brother? A curious tenderness came over him, and passed when
he remembered his own dead child. “_We_ have ruined him, then. Have you
any objection to ‘we’? _We_ have disinherited him.”
“I decide against you,” interposed Herbert. “I have now heard both
sides of this deplorable affair. You are talking most criminal
nonsense. ‘Disinherit!’ Sentimental twaddle. It’s been clear to me from
the first that Mrs. Failing has been imposed upon by the Wonham man, a
person with no legal claim on her, and any one who exposes him performs
a public duty—”
“—And gets money.”
“Money?” He was always uneasy at the word. “Who mentioned money?”
“Just understand me, Herbert, and of what it is that I accuse my wife.”
Tears came into his eyes. “It is not that I like the Wonham man, or
think that he isn’t a drunkard and worse. He’s too awful in every way.
But he ought to have my aunt’s money, because he’s lived all his life
with her, and is her nephew as much as I am. You see, my father went
wrong.” He stopped, amazed at himself. How easy it had been to say! He
was withering up: the power to care about this stupid secret had died.
When Herbert understood, his first thought was for Dunwood House.
“Why have I never been told?” was his first remark.
“We settled to tell no one,” said Agnes. “Rickie, in his anxiety to
prove me a liar, has broken his promise.”
“I ought to have been told,” said Herbert, his anger increasing. “Had I
known, I could have averted this deplorable scene.”
“Let me conclude it,” said Rickie, again collapsing and leaving the
dining-room. His impulse was to go straight to Cadover and make a
business-like statement of the position to Stephen. Then the man would
be armed, and perhaps fight the two women successfully, But he resisted
the impulse. Why should he help one power of evil against another? Let
them go intertwined to destruction. To enrich his brother would be as
bad as enriching himself. If their aunt’s money ever did come to him,
he would refuse to accept it. That was the easiest and most dignified
course. He troubled himself no longer with justice or pity, and the
next day he asked his wife’s pardon for his behaviour.
In the dining-room the conversation continued. Agnes, without much
difficulty, gained her brother as an ally. She acknowledged that she
had been wrong in not telling him, and he then declared that she had
been right on every other point. She slurred a little over the incident
of her treachery, for Herbert was sometimes clearsighted over details,
though easily muddled in a general survey. Mrs. Failing had had plenty
of direct causes of complaint, and she dwelt on these. She dealt,
too, on the very handsome way in which the young man, “though he knew
nothing, had never asked to know,” was being treated by his aunt.
“‘Handsome’ is the word,” said Herbert. “I hope not indulgently. He
does not deserve indulgence.”
And she knew that he, like herself, could remember money, and that it
lent an acknowledged halo to her cause.
“It is not a savoury subject,” he continued, with sudden stiffness. “I
understand why Rickie is so hysterical. My impulse”—he laid his hand
on her shoulder—“is to abandon it at once. But if I am to be of any
use to you, I must hear it all. There are moments when we must look
facts in the face.”
She did not shrink from the subject as much as he thought, as much as
she herself could have wished. Two years before, it had filled her with
a physical loathing. But by now she had accustomed herself to it.
“I am afraid, Bertie boy, there is nothing else to hear, I have tried
to find out again and again, but Aunt Emily will not tell me. I suppose
it is natural. She wants to shield the Elliot name. She only told us
in a fit of temper; then we all agreed to keep it to ourselves; then
Rickie again mismanaged her, and ever since she has refused to let us
know any details.”
“A most unsatisfactory position.” “So I feel.” She sat down again with
a sigh. Mrs. Failing had been a great trial to her orderly mind. “She
is an odd woman. She is always laughing. She actually finds it amusing
that we know no more.”
“They are an odd family.”
“They are indeed.”
Herbert, with unusual sweetness, bent down and kissed her.
She thanked him.
Their tenderness soon passed. They exchanged it with averted eyes.
It embarrassed them. There are moments for all of us when we seem
obliged to speak in a new unprofitable tongue. One might fancy a
seraph, vexed with our normal language, who touches the pious to
blasphemy, the blasphemous to piety. The seraph passes, and we proceed
unaltered—conscious, however, that we have not been ourselves, and
that we may fail in this function yet again. So Agnes and Herbert, as
they proceeded to discuss the Jackson’s supper-party, had an uneasy
memory of spiritual deserts, spiritual streams.
XXVI
Poor Mr. Ansell was actually sitting in the garden of Dunwood House.
It was Sunday morning. The air was full of roasting beef. The sound of
a manly hymn, taken very fast, floated over the road from the school
chapel. He frowned, for he was reading a book, the Essays of Anthony
Eustace Failing.
He was here on account of this book—at least so he told himself. It
had just been published, and the Jacksons were sure that Mr. Elliot
would have a copy. For a book one may go anywhere. It would not have
been logical to enter Dunwood House for the purpose of seeing Rickie,
when Rickie had not come to supper yesterday to see him. He was at
Sawston to assure himself of his friend’s grave. With quiet eyes he had
intended to view the sods, with unfaltering fingers to inscribe the
epitaph. Love remained. But in high matters he was practical. He knew
that it would be useless to reveal it.
“Morning!” said a voice behind him.
He saw no reason to reply to this superfluous statement, and went on
with his reading.
“Morning!” said the voice again.
As for the Essays, the thought was somewhat old-fashioned, and he
picked many holes in it; nor was he anything but bored by the prospect
of the brotherhood of man. However, Mr. Failing stuck to his guns, such
as they were, and fired from them several good remarks. Very notable
was his distinction between coarseness and vulgarity (coarseness,
revealing something; vulgarity, concealing something), and his avowed
preference for coarseness. Vulgarity, to him, had been the primal
curse, the shoddy reticence that prevents man opening his heart to man,
the power that makes against equality. From it sprang all the things
that he hated—class shibboleths, ladies, lidies, the game laws, the
Conservative party—all the things that accent the divergencies rather
than the similarities in human nature. Whereas coarseness—But at this
point Herbert Pembroke had scrawled with a blue pencil: “Childish. One
reads no further.”
“Morning!” repeated the voice.
Ansell read further, for here was the book of a man who had tried,
however unsuccessfully, to practice what he preached. Mrs. Failing, in
her Introduction, described with delicate irony his difficulties as a
landlord; but she did not record the love in which his name was held.
Nor could her irony touch him when he cried: “Attain the practical
through the unpractical. There is no other road.” Ansell was inclined
to think that the unpractical is its own reward, but he respected those
who attempted to journey beyond it. We must all of us go over the
mountains. There is certainly no other road.
“Nice morning!” said the voice.
It was not a nice morning, so Ansell felt bound to speak. He answered:
“No. Why?” A clod of earth immediately struck him on the back. He
turned round indignantly, for he hated physical rudeness. A square
man of ruddy aspect was pacing the gravel path, his hands deep in
his pockets. He was very angry. Then he saw that the clod of earth
nourished a blue lobelia, and that a wound of corresponding size
appeared on the pie-shaped bed. He was not so angry. “I expect they
will mind it,” he reflected. Last night, at the Jacksons’, Agnes had
displayed a brisk pity that made him wish to wring her neck. Maude had
not exaggerated. Mr. Pembroke had patronized through a sorrowful voice
and large round eyes. Till he met these people he had never been told
that his career was a failure. Apparently it was. They would never
have been civil to him if it had been a success, if they or theirs had
anything to fear from him.
In many ways Ansell was a conceited man; but he was never proud of
being right. He had foreseen Rickie’s catastrophe from the first, but
derived from this no consolation. In many ways he was pedantic; but
his pedantry lay close to the vineyards of life—far closer than that
fetich Experience of the innumerable tea-cups. He had a great many
facts to learn, and before he died he learnt a suitable quantity. But
he never forgot that the holiness of the heart’s imagination can alone
classify these facts—can alone decide which is an exception, which an
example. “How unpractical it all is!” That was his comment on Dunwood
House. “How unbusiness-like! They live together without love. They work
without conviction. They seek money without requiring it. They die, and
nothing will have happened, either for themselves or for others.” It is
a comment that the academic mind will often make when first confronted
with the world.
But he was becoming illogical. The clod of earth had disturbed him.
Brushing the dirt off his back, he returned to the book. What a curious
affair was the essay on “Gaps”! Solitude, star-crowned, pacing the
fields of England, has a dialogue with Seclusion. He, poor little
man, lives in the choicest scenery—among rocks, forests, emerald
lawns, azure lakes. To keep people out he has built round his domain
a high wall, on which is graven his motto—“Procul este profani.”
But he cannot enjoy himself. His only pleasure is in mocking the
absent Profane. They are in his mind night and day. Their blemishes
and stupidities form the subject of his great poem, “In the Heart of
Nature.” Then Solitude tells him that so it always will be until he
makes a gap in the wall, and permits his seclusion to be the sport of
circumstance. He obeys. The Profane invade him; but for short intervals
they wander elsewhere, and during those intervals the heart of Nature
is revealed to him.
This dialogue had really been suggested to Mr. Failing by a talk with
his brother-in-law. It also touched Ansell. He looked at the man
who had thrown the clod, and was now pacing with obvious youth and
impudence upon the lawn. “Shall I improve my soul at his expense?” he
thought. “I suppose I had better.” In friendly tones he remarked, “Were
you waiting for Mr. Pembroke?”
“No,” said the young man. “Why?”
Ansell, after a moment’s admiration, flung the Essays at him. They hit
him in the back. The next moment he lay on his own back in the lobelia
pie.
“But it hurts!” he gasped, in the tones of a puzzled civilization.
“What you do hurts!” For the young man was nicking him over the shins
with the rim of the book cover. “Little brute—_ee—ow_!”
“Then say Pax!”
Something revolted in Ansell. Why should he say Pax? Freeing his hand,
he caught the little brute under the chin, and was again knocked into
the lobelias by a blow on the mouth.
“Say Pax!” he repeated, pressing the philosopher’s skull into the
mould; and he added, with an anxiety that was somehow not offensive, “I
do advise you. You’d really better.”
Ansell swallowed a little blood. He tried to move, and he could not.
He looked carefully into the young man’s eyes and into the palm of his
right hand, which at present swung unclenched, and he said “Pax!”
“Shake hands!” said the other, helping him up. There was nothing Ansell
loathed so much as the hearty Britisher; but he shook hands, and they
stared at each other awkwardly. With civil murmurs they picked the
little blue flowers off each other’s clothes. Ansell was trying to
remember why they had quarrelled, and the young man was wondering why
he had not guarded his chin properly. In the distance a hymn swung off—
“Fight the good. Fight with. All thy. Might.”
They would be across from the chapel soon.
“Your book, sir?”
“Thank you, sir—yes.”
“Why!” cried the young man—“why, it’s ‘What We Want’! At least the
binding’s exactly the same.”
“It’s called ‘Essays,’” said Ansell.
“Then that’s it. Mrs. Failing, you see, she wouldn’t call it that,
because three W’s, you see, in a row, she said, are vulgar, and sound
like Tolstoy, if you’ve heard of him.”
Ansell confessed to an acquaintance, and then said, “Do you think ‘What
We Want’ vulgar?” He was not at all interested, but he desired to
escape from the atmosphere of pugilistic courtesy, more painful to him
than blows themselves.
“It _is_ the same book,” said the other—“same title, same binding.” He
weighed it like a brick in his muddy hands.
“Open it to see if the inside corresponds,” said Ansell, swallowing a
laugh and a little more blood with it.
With a liberal allowance of thumb-marks, he turned the pages over and
read, “‘—the rural silence that is not a poet’s luxury but a practical
need for all men.’ Yes, it _is_ the same book.” Smiling pleasantly over
the discovery, he handed it back to the owner.
“And is it true?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Is it true that rural silence is a practical need?”
“Don’t ask me!”
“Have you ever tried it?”
“What?”
“Rural silence.”
“A field with no noise in it, I suppose you mean. I don’t understand.”
Ansell smiled, but a slight fire in the man’s eye checked him. After
all, this was a person who could knock one down. Moreover, there was no
reason why he should be teased. He had it in him to retort “No. Why?”
He was not stupid in essentials. He was irritable—in Ansell’s eyes a
frequent sign of grace. Sitting down on the upturned seat, he remarked,
“I like the book in many ways. I don’t think ‘What We Want’ would have
been a vulgar title. But I don’t intend to spoil myself on the chance
of mending the world, which is what the creed amounts to. Nor am I keen
on rural silences.”
“Curse!” he said thoughtfully, sucking at an empty pipe.
“Tobacco?”
“Please.”
“Rickie’s is invariably filthy.”
“Who says I know Rickie?”
“Well, you know his aunt. It’s a possible link. Be gentle with Rickie.
Don’t knock him down if he doesn’t think it’s a nice morning.”
The other was silent.
“Do you know him well?”
“Kind of.” He was not inclined to talk. The wish to smoke was very
violent in him, and Ansell noticed how he gazed at the wreaths that
ascended from bowl and stem, and how, when the stem was in his mouth,
he bit it. He gave the idea of an animal with just enough soul to
contemplate its own bliss. United with refinement, such a type was
common in Greece. It is not common today, and Ansell was surprised to
find it in a friend of Rickie’s. Rickie, if he could even “kind of
know” such a creature, must be stirring in his grave.
“Do you know his wife too?”
“Oh yes. In a way I know Agnes. But thank you for this tobacco. Last
night I nearly died. I have no money.”
“Take the whole pouch—do.”
After a moment’s hesitation he did. “Fight the good” had scarcely
ended, so quickly had their intimacy grown.
“I suppose you’re a friend of Rickie’s?”
Ansell was tempted to reply, “I don’t know him at all.” But it seemed
no moment for the severer truths, so he said, “I knew him well at
Cambridge, but I have seen very little of him since.”
“Is it true that his baby was lame?”
“I believe so.”
His teeth closed on his pipe. Chapel was over. The organist was
prancing through the voluntary, and the first ripple of boys had
already reached Dunwood House. In a few minutes the masters would
be here too, and Ansell, who was becoming interested, hurried the
conversation forward.
“Have you come far?”
“From Wiltshire. Do you know Wiltshire?” And for the first time there
came into his face the shadow of a sentiment, the passing tribute to
some mystery. “It’s a good country. I live in one of the finest valleys
out of Salisbury Plain. I mean, I lived.”
“Have you been dismissed from Cadover, without a penny in your pocket?”
He was alarmed at this. Such knowledge seemed simply diabolical. Ansell
explained that if his boots were chalky, if his clothes had obviously
been slept in, if he knew Mrs. Failing, if he knew Wiltshire, and if
he could buy no tobacco—then the deduction was possible. “You do just
attend,” he murmured.
The house was filling with boys, and Ansell saw, to his regret, the
head of Agnes over the thuyia hedge that separated the small front
garden from the side lawn where he was sitting. After a few minutes it
was followed by the heads of Rickie and Mr. Pembroke. All the heads
were turned the other way. But they would find his card in the hall,
and if the man had left any message they would find that too. “What are
you?” he demanded. “Who are you—your name—I don’t care about that.
But it interests me to class people, and up to now I have failed with
you.”
“I—” He stopped. Ansell reflected that there are worse answers. “I
really don’t know what I am. Used to think I was something special, but
strikes me now I feel much like other chaps. Used to look down on the
labourers. Used to take for granted I was a gentleman, but really I
don’t know where I do belong.”
“One belongs to the place one sleeps in and to the people one eats
with.”
“As often as not I sleep out of doors and eat by myself, so that
doesn’t get you any further.”
A silence, akin to poetry, invaded Ansell. Was it only a pose to like
this man, or was he really wonderful? He was not romantic, for Romance
is a figure with outstretched hands, yearning for the unattainable.
Certain figures of the Greeks, to whom we continually return, suggested
him a little. One expected nothing of him—no purity of phrase nor
swift edged thought. Yet the conviction grew that he had been back
somewhere—back to some table of the gods, spread in a field where
there is no noise, and that he belonged for ever to the guests with
whom he had eaten. Meanwhile he was simple and frank, and what he could
tell he would tell to any one. He had not the suburban reticence.
Ansell asked him, “Why did Mrs. Failing turn you out of Cadover? I
should like to hear that too.”
“Because she was tired of me. Because, again, I couldn’t keep quiet
over the farm hands. I ask you, is it right?” He became incoherent.
Ansell caught, “And they grow old—they don’t play games—it ends they
can’t play.” An illustration emerged. “Take a kitten—if you fool about
with her, she goes on playing well into a cat.”
“But Mrs. Failing minded no mice being caught.”
“Mice?” said the young man blankly. “What I was going to say is, that
some one was jealous of my being at Cadover. I’ll mention no names, but
I fancy it was Mrs. Silt. I’m sorry for her if it was. Anyhow, she set
Mrs. Failing against me. It came on the top of other things—and out I
went.”
“What did Mrs. Silt, whose name I don’t mention, say?”
He looked guilty. “I don’t know. Easy enough to find something to say.
The point is that she said something. You know, Mr.—I don’t know your
name, mine’s Wonham, but I’m more grateful than I can put it over
this tobacco. I mean, you ought to know there is another side to this
quarrel. It’s wrong, but it’s there.”
Ansell told him not to be uneasy: he had already guessed that there
might be another side. But he could not make out why Mr. Wonham should
have come straight from the aunt to the nephew. They were now sitting
on the upturned seat. “What We Want,” a good deal shattered, lay
between them.
“On account of above-mentioned reasons, there was a row. I don’t
know—you can guess the style of thing. She wanted to treat me to
the colonies, and had up the parson to talk soft-sawder and make out
that a boundless continent was the place for a lad like me. I said,
‘I can’t run up to the Rings without getting tired, nor gallop a
horse out of this view without tiring it, so what is the point of a
boundless continent?’ Then I saw that she was frightened of me, and
bluffed a bit more, and in the end I was nipped. She caught me—just
like her—when I had nothing on but flannels, and was coming into the
house, having licked the Cadchurch team. She stood up in the doorway
between those stone pilasters and said, ‘No! Never again!’ and behind
her was Wilbraham, whom I tried to turn out, and the gardener, and
poor old Leighton, who hates being hurt. She said, ‘There’s a hundred
pounds for you at the London bank, and as much more in December. Go!’
I said, ‘Keep your—money, and tell me whose son I am.’ I didn’t care
really. I only said it on the off-chance of hurting her. Sure enough,
she caught on to the doorhandle (being lame) and said, ‘I can’t—I
promised—I don’t really want to,’ and Wilbraham did stare. Then—she’s
very queer—she burst out laughing, and went for the packet after all,
and we heard her laugh through the window as she got it. She rolled it
at me down the steps, and she says, ‘A leaf out of the eternal comedy
for you, Stephen,’ or something of that sort. I opened it as I walked
down the drive, she laughing always and catching on to the handle of
the front door. Of course it wasn’t comic at all. But down in the
village there were both cricket teams, already a little tight, and
the mad plumber shouting ‘Rights of Man!’ They knew I was turned out.
We did have a row, and kept it up too. They daren’t touch Wilbraham’s
windows, but there isn’t much glass left up at Cadover. When you start,
it’s worth going on, but in the end I had to cut. They subscribed a
bob here and a bob there, and these are Flea Thompson’s Sundays. I
sent a line to Leighton not to forward my own things: I don’t fancy
them. They aren’t really mine.” He did not mention his great symbolic
act, performed, it is to be feared, when he was rather drunk and the
friendly policeman was looking the other way. He had cast all his
flannels into the little millpond, and then waded himself through the
dark cold water to the new clothes on the other side. Some one had
flung his pipe and his packet after him. The packet had fallen short.
For this reason it was wet when he handed it to Ansell, and ink that
had been dry for twenty-three years had begun to run again.
“I wondered if you’re right about the hundred pounds,” said Ansell
gravely. “It is pleasant to be proud, but it is unpleasant to die in
the night through not having any tobacco.”
“But I’m not proud. Look how I’ve taken your pouch! The hundred pounds
was—well, can’t you see yourself, it was quite different? It was, so to
speak, _inconvenient_ for me to take the hundred pounds. Or look again
how I took a shilling from a boy who earns nine bob a-week! Proves
pretty conclusively I’m not proud.”
Ansell saw it was useless to argue. He perceived, beneath the
slatternly use of words, the man, buttoned up in them, just as his body
was buttoned up in a shoddy suit,—and he wondered more than ever that
such a man should know the Elliots. He looked at the face, which was
frank, proud, and beautiful, if truth is beauty. Of mercy or tact such
a face knew little. It might be coarse, but it had in it nothing vulgar
or wantonly cruel. “May I read these papers?” he said.
“Of course. Oh yes; didn’t I say? I’m Rickie’s half-brother, come here
to tell him the news. He doesn’t know. There it is, put shortly for
you. I was saying, though, that I bolted in the dark, slept in the
rifle-butts above Salisbury, the sheds where they keep the cardboard
men, you know, never locked up as they ought to be. I turned the whole
place upside down to teach them.”
“Here is your packet again,” said Ansell. “Thank you. How interesting!”
He rose from the seat and turned towards Dunwood House. He looked at
the bow-windows, the cheap picturesque gables, the terracotta dragons
clawing a dirty sky. He listened to the clink of plates and to the
voice of Mr. Pembroke taking one of his innumerable roll-calls. He
looked at the bed of lobelias. How interesting! What else was there to
say?
“One must be the son of some one,” remarked Stephen. And that was all
he had to say. To him those names on the moistened paper were mere
antiquities. He was neither proud of them nor ashamed. A man must have
parents, or he cannot enter the delightful world. A man, if he has
a brother, may reasonably visit him, for they may have interests in
common. He continued his narrative, —how in the night he had heard the
clocks, how at daybreak, instead of entering the city, he had struck
eastward to save money,—while Ansell still looked at the house and
found that all his imagination and knowledge could lead him no farther
than this: how interesting!
“—And what do you think of that for a holy horror?”
“For a what?” said Ansell, his thoughts far away.
“This man I am telling you about, who gave me a lift towards Andover,
who said I was a blot on God’s earth.”
One o’clock struck. It was strange that neither of them had had any
summons from the house.
“He said I ought to be ashamed of myself. He said, ‘_I_’ll not be the
means of bringing shame to an honest gentleman and lady.’ I told him
not to be a fool. I said I knew what I was about. Rickie and Agnes are
properly educated, which leads people to look at things straight, and
not go screaming about blots. A man like me, with just a little reading
at odd hours—I’ve got so far, and Rickie has been through Cambridge.”
“And Mrs. Elliot?”
“Oh, she won’t mind, and I told the man so; but he kept on saying,
‘_I_’ll not be the means of bringing shame to an honest gentleman and
lady,’ until I got out of his rotten cart.” His eye watched the man, a
Nonconformist, driving away over God’s earth. “I caught the train by
running. I got to Waterloo at—”
Here the parlour-maid fluttered towards them. Would Mr. Wonham come in?
Mrs. Elliot would be glad to see him now.
“Mrs. Elliot?” cried Ansell. “Not Mr. Elliot?”
“It’s all the same,” said Stephen, and moved towards the house.
“You see, I only left my name. They don’t know why I’ve come.”
“Perhaps Mr. Elliot sees me meanwhile?”
The parlour-maid looked blank. Mr. Elliot had not said so. He had been
with Mrs. Elliot and Mr. Pembroke in the study. Now the gentlemen had
gone upstairs.
“All right, I can wait.” After all, Rickie was treating him as he had
treated Rickie, as one in the grave, to whom it is futile to make any
loving motion. Gone upstairs—to brush his hair for dinner! The irony
of the situation appealed to him strongly. It reminded him of the Greek
Drama, where the actors know so little and the spectators so much.
“But, by the bye,” he called after Stephen, “I think I ought to tell
you—don’t—”
“What is it?”
“Don’t—” Then he was silent. He had been tempted to explain
everything, to tell the fellow how things stood, that he must avoid
this if he wanted to attain that; that he must break the news to Rickie
gently; that he must have at least one battle royal with Agnes. But it
was contrary to his own spirit to coach people: he held the human soul
to be a very delicate thing, which can receive eternal damage from a
little patronage. Stephen must go into the house simply as himself, for
thus alone would he remain there.
“I ought to knock my pipe out? Was that it?” “By no means. Go in, your
pipe and you.”
He hesitated, torn between propriety and desire. Then he followed the
parlour-maid into the house smoking. As he entered the dinner-bell
rang, and there was the sound of rushing feet, which died away into
shuffling and silence. Through the window of the boys’ dining-hall came
the colourless voice of Rickie—
“‘Benedictus benedicat.’”
Ansell prepared himself to witness the second act of the drama;
forgetting that all this world, and not part of it, is a stage.
XXVII
The parlour-maid took Mr. Wonham to the study. He had been in the
drawing-room before, but had got bored, and so had strolled out into
the garden. Now he was in better spirits, as a man ought to be who has
knocked down a man. As he passed through the hall he sparred at the
teak monkey, and hung his cap on the bust of Hermes. And he greeted
Mrs. Elliot with a pleasant clap of laughter. “Oh, I’ve come with the
most tremendous news!” he cried.
She bowed, but did not shake hands, which rather surprised him. But
he never troubled over “details.” He seldom watched people, and never
thought that they were watching him. Nor could he guess how much it
meant to her that he should enter her presence smoking. Had she not
said once at Cadover, “Oh, _please_ smoke; I love the smell of a pipe”?
“Would you sit down? Exactly there, please.” She placed him at a large
table, opposite an inkpot and a pad of blotting-paper.
“Will you tell your ‘tremendous news’ to me? My brother and my husband
are giving the boys their dinner.”
“Ah!” said Stephen, who had had neither time nor money for breakfast in
London.
“I told them not to wait for me.”
So he came to the point at once. He trusted this handsome woman. His
strength and his youth called to hers, expecting no prudish response.
“It’s very odd. It is that I’m Rickie’s brother. I’ve just found out.
I’ve come to tell you all.”
“Yes?”
He felt in his pocket for the papers. “Half-brother I ought to have
said.”
“Yes?”
“I’m illegitimate. Legally speaking, that is, I’ve been turned out of
Cadover. I haven’t a penny. I—”
“There is no occasion to inflict the details.” Her face, which had been
an even brown, began to flush slowly in the centre of the cheeks. The
colour spread till all that he saw of her was suffused, and she turned
away. He thought he had shocked her, and so did she. Neither knew that
the body can be insincere and express not the emotions we feel but
those that we should like to feel. In reality she was quite calm, and
her dislike of him had nothing emotional in it as yet.
“You see—” he began. He was determined to tell the fidgety story, for
the sooner it was over the sooner they would have something to eat.
Delicacy he lacked, and his sympathies were limited. But such as they
were, they rang true: he put no decorous phantom between him and his
desires.
“I do see. I have seen for two years.” She sat down at the head of
the table, where there was another ink-pot. Into this she dipped a
pen. “I have seen everything, Mr. Wonham—who you are, how you have
behaved at Cadover, how you must have treated Mrs. Failing yesterday;
and now”—her voice became very grave—“I see why you have come here,
penniless. Before you speak, we know what you will say.”
His mouth fell open, and he laughed so merrily that it might have given
her a warning. But she was thinking how to follow up her first success.
“And I thought I was bringing tremendous news!” he cried. “I only
twisted it out of Mrs. Failing last night. And Rickie knows too?”
“We have known for two years.”
“But come, by the bye,—if you’ve known for two years, how is it you
didn’t—” The laugh died out of his eyes. “You aren’t ashamed?” he
asked, half rising from his chair. “You aren’t like the man towards
Andover?”
“Please, please sit down,” said Agnes, in the even tones she used when
speaking to the servants; “let us not discuss side issues. I am a
horribly direct person, Mr. Wonham. I go always straight to the point.”
She opened a chequebook. “I am afraid I shall shock you. For how much?”
He was not attending.
“There is the paper we suggest you shall sign.” She pushed towards him
a pseudo-legal document, just composed by Herbert.
“In consideration of the sum of........., I agree to perpetual
silence—to restrain from libellous ... never to molest the said
Frederick Elliot by intruding—’”
His brain was not quick. He read the document over twice, and he could
still say, “But what’s that cheque for?”
“It is my husband’s. He signed for you as soon as we heard you were
here. We guessed you had come to be silenced. Here is his signature.
But he has left the filling in for me. For how much? I will cross it,
shall I? You will just have started a banking account, if I understand
Mrs. Failing rightly. It is not quite accurate to say you are
penniless: I heard from her just before you returned from your cricket.
She allows you two hundred a-year, I think. But this additional
sum—shall I date the cheque Saturday or for tomorrow?”
At last he found words. Knocking his pipe out on the table, he said
slowly, “Here’s a very bad mistake.”
“It is quite possible,” retorted Agnes. She was glad she had taken the
offensive, instead of waiting till he began his blackmailing, as had
been the advice of Rickie. Aunt Emily had said that very spring, “One’s
only hope with Stephen is to start bullying first.” Here he was, quite
bewildered, smearing the pipe-ashes with his thumb. He asked to read
the document again. “A stamp and all!” he remarked.
They had anticipated that his claim would exceed two pounds.
“I see. All right. It takes a fool a minute. Never mind. I’ve made a
bad mistake.”
“You refuse?” she exclaimed, for he was standing at the door. “Then do
your worst! We defy you!”
“That’s all right, Mrs. Elliot,” he said roughly. “I don’t want a scene
with you, nor yet with your husband. We’ll say no more about it. It’s
all right. I mean no harm.”
“But your signature then! You must sign—you—”
He pushed past her, and said as he reached for his cap, “There, that’s
all right. It’s my mistake. I’m sorry.” He spoke like a farmer who has
failed to sell a sheep. His manner was utterly prosaic, and up to the
last she thought he had not understood her. “But it’s money we offer
you,” she informed him, and then darted back to the study, believing
for one terrible moment that he had picked up the blank cheque. When
she returned to the hall he had gone. He was walking down the road
rather quickly. At the corner he cleared his throat, spat into the
gutter, and disappeared.
“There’s an odd finish,” she thought. She was puzzled, and determined
to recast the interview a little when she related it to Rickie. She
had not succeeded, for the paper was still unsigned. But she had so
cowed Stephen that he would probably rest content with his two hundred
a-year, and never come troubling them again. Clever management, for
one knew him to be rapacious: she had heard tales of him lending to
the poor and exacting repayment to the uttermost farthing. He had
also stolen at school. Moderately triumphant, she hurried into the
side-garden: she had just remembered Ansell: she, not Rickie, had
received his card.
“Oh, Mr. Ansell!” she exclaimed, awaking him from some day-dream.
“Haven’t either Rickie or Herbert been out to you? Now, do come into
dinner, to show you aren’t offended. You will find all of us assembled
in the boys’ dining-hall.”
To her annoyance he accepted.
“That is, if the Jacksons are not expecting you.”
The Jacksons did not matter. If he might brush his clothes and bathe
his lip, he would like to come.
“Oh, what has happened to you? And oh, my pretty lobelias!”
He replied, “A momentary contact with reality,” and she, who did not
look for sense in his remarks, hurried away to the dining-hall to
announce him.
The dining-hall was not unlike the preparation room. There was the
same parquet floor, and dado of shiny pitchpine. On its walls also
were imperial portraits, and over the harmonium to which they sang
the evening hymns was spread the Union Jack. Sunday dinner, the most
pompous meal of the week, was in progress. Her brother sat at the head
of the high table, her husband at the head of the second. To each she
gave a reassuring nod and went to her own seat, which was among the
junior boys. The beef was being carried out; she stopped it. “Mr.
Ansell is coming,” she called. “Herbert there is more room by you; sit
up straight, boys.” The boys sat up straight, and a respectful hush
spread over the room.
“Here he is!” called Rickie cheerfully, taking his cue from his wife.
“Oh, this is splendid!” Ansell came in. “I’m so glad you managed
this. I couldn’t leave these wretches last night!” The boys tittered
suitably. The atmosphere seemed normal. Even Herbert, though longing to
hear what had happened to the blackmailer, gave adequate greeting to
their guest: “Come in, Mr. Ansell; come here. Take us as you find us!”
“I understood,” said Stewart, “that I should find you all. Mrs. Elliot
told me I should. On that understanding I came.”
It was at once evident that something had gone wrong.
Ansell looked round the room carefully. Then clearing his throat and
ruffling his hair, he began—“I cannot see the man with whom I have
talked, intimately, for an hour, in your garden.”
The worst of it was they were all so far from him and from each other,
each at the end of a tableful of inquisitive boys. The two masters
looked at Agnes for information, for her reassuring nod had not told
them much. She looked hopelessly back.
“I cannot see this man,” repeated Ansell, who remained by the harmonium
in the midst of astonished waitresses. “Is he to be given no lunch?”
Herbert broke the silence by fresh greetings. Rickie knew that the
contest was lost, and that his friend had sided with the enemy. It was
the kind of thing he would do. One must face the catastrophe quietly
and with dignity. Perhaps Ansell would have turned on his heel, and
left behind him only vague suspicions, if Mrs. Elliot had not tried to
talk him down. “Man,” she cried—“what man? Oh, I know—terrible bore!
Did he get hold of you?”—thus committing their first blunder, and
causing Ansell to say to Rickie, “Have you seen your brother?”
“I have not.”
“Have you been told he was here?”
Rickie’s answer was inaudible.
“Have you been told you have a brother?”
“Let us continue this conversation later.”
“Continue it? My dear man, how can we until you know what I’m talking
about? You must think me mad; but I tell you solemnly that you have
a brother of whom you’ve never heard, and that he was in this house
ten minutes ago.” He paused impressively. “Your wife has happened to
see him first. Being neither serious nor truthful, she is keeping you
apart, telling him some lie and not telling you a word.”
There was a murmur of alarm. One of the prefects rose, and Ansell
set his back to the wall, quite ready for a battle. For two years he
had waited for his opportunity. He would hit out at Mrs. Elliot like
any ploughboy now that it had come. Rickie said: “There is a slight
misunderstanding. I, like my wife, have known what there is to know for
two years”—a dignified rebuff, but their second blunder.
“Exactly,” said Agnes. “Now I think Mr. Ansell had better go.”
“Go?” exploded Ansell. “I’ve everything to say yet. I beg your pardon,
Mrs. Elliot, I am concerned with you no longer. This man”—he turned
to the avenue of faces—“this man who teaches you has a brother. He
has known of him two years and been ashamed. He has—oh—oh—how it fits
together! Rickie, it’s you, not Mrs. Silt, who must have sent tales of
him to your aunt. It’s you who’ve turned him out of Cadover. It’s you
who’ve ordered him to be ruined today. Mrs. Elliot, I beg your pardon.”
Now Herbert arose. “Out of my sight, sir! But have it from me first
that Rickie and his aunt have both behaved most generously. No, no,
Agnes, I’ll not be interrupted. Garbled versions must not get about. If
the Wonham man is not satisfied now, he must be insatiable. He cannot
levy blackmail on us for ever. Sir, I give you two minutes; then you
will be expelled by force.”
“Two minutes!” sang Ansell. “I can say a great deal in that.” He put
one foot on a chair and held his arms over the quivering room. He
seemed transfigured into a Hebrew prophet passionate for satire and the
truth. “Oh, keep quiet for two minutes,” he cried, “and I’ll tell you
something you’ll be glad to hear. You’re a little afraid Stephen may
come back. Don’t be afraid. I bring good news. You’ll never see him
nor any one like him again. I must speak very plainly, for you are all
three fools. I don’t want you to say afterwards, ‘Poor Mr. Ansell tried
to be clever.’ Generally I don’t mind, but I should mind today. Please
listen. Stephen is a bully; he drinks; he knocks one down; but he would
sooner die than take money from people he did not love. Perhaps he will
die, for he has nothing but a few pence that the poor gave him and some
tobacco which, to my eternal glory, he accepted from me. Please listen
again. Why did he come here? Because he thought you would love him, and
was ready to love you. But I tell you, don’t be afraid. He would sooner
die now than say you were his brother. Please listen again—”
“Now, Stewart, don’t go on like that,” said Rickie bitterly. “It’s
easy enough to preach when you are an outsider. You would be more
charitable if such a thing had happened to yourself. Easy enough to be
unconventional when you haven’t suffered and know nothing of the facts.
You love anything out of the way, anything queer, that doesn’t often
happen, and so you get excited over this. It’s useless, my dear man;
you have hurt me, but you will never upset me. As soon as you stop this
ridiculous scene we will finish our dinner. Spread this scandal; add
to it. I’m too old to mind such nonsense. I cannot help my father’s
disgrace, on the one hand; nor, on the other, will I have anything to
do with his blackguard of a son.”
So the secret was given to the world. Agnes might colour at his speech;
Herbert might calculate the effect of it on the entries for Dunwood
House; but he cared for none of these things. Thank God! he was
withered up at last.
“Please listen again,” resumed Ansell. “Please correct two slight
mistakes: firstly, Stephen is one of the greatest people I have ever
met; secondly, he’s not your father’s son. He’s the son of your mother.”
It was Rickie, not Ansell, who was carried from the hall, and it was
Herbert who pronounced the blessing—
“Benedicto benedicatur.”
A profound stillness succeeded the storm, and the boys, slipping away
from their meal, told the news to the rest of the school, or put it in
the letters they were writing home.
XXVIII
The soul has her own currency. She mints her spiritual coinage and
stamps it with the image of some beloved face. With it she pays her
debts, with it she reckons, saying, “This man has worth, this man is
worthless.” And in time she forgets its origin; it seems to her to be a
thing unalterable, divine. But the soul can also have her bankruptcies.
Perhaps she will be the richer in the end. In her agony she learns to
reckon clearly. Fair as the coin may have been, it was not accurate;
and though she knew it not, there were treasures that it could not
buy. The face, however beloved, was mortal, and as liable as the soul
herself to err. We do but shift responsibility by making a standard of
the dead.
There is, indeed, another coinage that bears on it not man’s image
but God’s. It is incorruptible, and the soul may trust it safely;
it will serve her beyond the stars. But it cannot give us friends,
or the embrace of a lover, or the touch of children, for with our
fellow mortals it has no concern. It cannot even give the joys we call
trivial—fine weather, the pleasures of meat and drink, bathing and the
hot sand afterwards, running, dreamless sleep. Have we learnt the true
discipline of a bankruptcy if we turn to such coinage as this? Will it
really profit us so much if we save our souls and lose the whole world?