years old. She reminded me of a cow; her eyes were so placid and her
movements were so slow. But she had been affiliated to the Trades’
Union from her earliest days. I believe she was a life member with her
policy or whatever they call it--I have no first-hand knowledge--fully
paid up. She was buried in consecrated ground in Kensal Green cemetery
with wreaths on her coffin in consequence. Non-members of the Union are
mostly buried in a prison or in the Thames. And now about your mother,
the clergyman’s widow? She, I presume, would be a vice-president of the
Union, or on its committee, or one of its trustees, or she might even
aspire to be one of its honorary secretaries? Her social rank would
render it necessary.”
“Yes, dear old woman,” said Northcote softly. “She is on the committee
right enough. As you say, her social rank has rendered it necessary.”
XXXVI
THE HONORABLE SECRETARY
On the following morning Northcote was late for breakfast. When the
old charwoman shook his curtains at a quarter to eight, a sleepy voice
murmured: “I may be a bit late. I will cook the bacon myself and make
the tea. Lay a knife and fork for two and don’t stay.”
It was between ten and eleven o’clock by the time he had completed his
toilet. And it befell that at that hour the kettle was singing on the
fire, and he himself was kneeling before it, toasting pieces of bacon
upon a fork, when there came a knock on the door of his room.
“Come in,” he called cheerfully.
He expected to see an attorney’s clerk with further business for his
attention.
Instead, two persons entered whose appearance caused him to drop the
fork and the bacon among the ashes.
A moment ensued in which he had to fight with all his resolution to
regain his self-possession. The first to enter the room was his mother,
and immediately behind her was the young girl whom he was under a
pledge to marry.
Mrs. Northcote was a tall, strong woman, past fifty, with assured
movements and a resolute-looking face. It was large and rather square.
Her cheeks were red with country life; her hair had streaks of white
in it; her eyes were bluish gray. Her clothes, severe in outline,
fitted close to her broad and powerful frame. They helped to sustain a
somewhat rural appearance, which was not altogether unprepossessing and
had a sort of education in it. Her speech was decisive, while the voice
was somewhat harsh, and left an impression that it would be easy for it
to domineer.
The young girl who accompanied her was not moulded in these Amazonian
lines. She was straight and slender, only a little above the medium
height, neat of hand, delicate of foot. Her complexion could only
have been produced by generations of country air. It was perfectly
clear, and of an exquisite tawny pinkish whiteness. Her eyes were
large, soft, and long-lashed, and although as clear and bright as a
pair of crystals, as meaningless as those of a dumb animal. Her simple
straw hat and thick gray coat and skirt were in themselves innocent
of coquetry, but their inhabitant was in her kind a sweetly beautiful
thing--half-child and half-woman--therefore these articles, rough and
primitive as they were, had significance in every crease and fold.
The moment Northcote had managed to strangle the first pangs of his
stupefaction, he rose from his knees and ran forward to greet them. He
kissed his mother on both cheeks, and seized both of the young girl’s
hands in his own.
“I could not believe my own eyes,” were the first words he spoke to
his mother. “You should have given me warning that you were coming up
to London, my dearest. It is the merest chance you have caught me at
home.”
“It was not until last evening that we decided to come,” said Mrs.
Northcote. “Margaret had happened to see the advertisement of an
excursion, only eight shillings here and back.”
“Why not telegraph, my dear?” Northcote expostulated gently. “I would
then have met you at St. Pancras.”
“It would have cost sixpence,” said his mother. “Besides it was too
late last night.”
“Always the woman of action,” said her son, with a hollow laugh.
“Always an arbitrary and drastic old woman in the execution of her
ideas.”
Northcote kissed his mother again with the pride and affection which
for the moment overlay this wound.
“I wonder,” said she, with an air of one who has come upon something
profound, “why men have such a dislike to being taken by surprise. Your
father was the same, Henry. He could not bear to be taken by surprise
in anything. And I think you are wonderfully like your father in some
things.”
“What is your opinion of this room of mine?” said her son abruptly.
“I don’t think I like it,” she said decisively, after making a
catalogue of everything with an immensely critical glance. “It has a
dismal look. And a hole in the roof, I declare! You must have it mended
at once; it might help you to catch a cold. And you are right up at the
top just under the tiles; I should think you must get frozen in winter.
And it must be extremely draughty with those cracks in the door. And,
my dear boy, I must say it looks very bare and untidy with not even a
piece of carpet to the floor. I have meant for years to come and see
you; and when I received that money you so kindly sent me, I thought
now or never is the time. How I wish I could have come before, to have
made you a little more comfortable!”
“How I wish you could, old woman!” said Northcote gently, taking both
her hands.
“I think this room is rather sweet myself,” said the girl, who also had
been examining it very critically. “Somehow every room looks sweet with
a nice fire and a lot of books.”
“That unnecessarily large grate takes all the heat up the chimney,”
said Mrs. Northcote, “and moreover is very wasteful of the coal. And
what have you got behind the curtain, Henry?”
“That is where I sleep.”
“Well, that is sensible, my boy; a saving of money.”
“What a large room this must be altogether!” said the girl, with a
sudden growth of her curiosity.
“I can see neither of you will rest until you have penetrated into the
heart of all my mysteries,” said Northcote, laughing loudly, as he
interposed himself between the entrance to his chamber and his mother,
who, full of inquiry, was plucking at the curtain.
“Why, Henry,” cried the girl, with a thrill of consternation in her
voice, “you have not had your breakfast!”
“Why should I? This is not Chittingdon, you know. Eleven o’clock is the
fashionable hour in town. It wants ten minutes yet.”
“Bad habits,” said Mrs. Northcote solemnly. “My dearest, eleven o’clock
is wrong.”
“When one is in Rome you must do like the Romans, you know.”
“I have never agreed with that proverb,” said Mrs. Northcote. “I
consider it weak. When in Rome one should make the Romans do as one
does.”
“Imagine me knocking at the gates of Buckingham Palace at a quarter to
seven.”
“I am quite sure, my dear boy, the royal family is addicted to good
habits. I am quite sure you would not find the king having his
breakfast at eleven o’clock.”
“Oh, this dear dogmatic old woman of mine,” said Northcote, tapping her
cheek in tender remonstrance. “A fixed rule and a definite opinion for
everything under the sun.”
“You must have fixed rules and definite opinions if you are to succeed,
my dear boy. Those who have their doubts always end by failing
miserably.”
“So they do, old woman, so they do!” cried Northcote fervently, in
spite of being stabbed by consternation. Yet he never conversed
with his mother on the most trivial topics without feeling that her
simplicity rendered her invulnerable.
“I see your table is laid for two, Henry,” said the girl. “Are you
expecting a friend?”
“If he comes, he comes,” said Northcote, with a clever assumption of
carelessness, “and if he don’t he stops away. Do you understand, Miss
Inquisitive? I generally have an extra knife and fork, you know, in
case a friend should happen to drop in.”
“He will have a wretched breakfast this morning if he comes,” said the
girl, taking off her gloves gaily, and fishing out the fork and the
bacon from among the ashes. “I must say, Henry, whoever your friends
may be, they cannot be very nice about their cookery.”
“Consecrated by the cook, don’t you see, Miss Impertinence. That bacon
is toasted by mine own fair hands.”
“Really, my boy,” said his mother, “you have grown most Bohemian in
your ways.”
She took off a pair of shabby and much-mended gloves with that air of
resolution she imparted to her lightest action, and insisted on being
allowed to make the tea. She measured two spoonfuls of tea from the
caddy with great care.
“I allow myself three spoonfuls now I live in London,” said her son.
“Three is extravagance, Henry, three is not necessary,” said his mother
quietly. “One for each person and one for the pot is correct.”
“Suppose a friend turns up?”
“More can be made. I fear you have formed very bad habits in London.”
“We have a surprise for you, Henry,” said the girl gaily.
She left the room to fetch a basket she had left at the top of the
stairs.
“Guess what we have brought for you,” she cried as she produced it.
“Butter and eggs.”
“How awfully clever that you should have guessed them at once,” she
said, with her eagerness sinking into disappointment.
“I am afraid I never had any tact worth mentioning,” said Northcote.
“It was very stupid of me to have guessed butter and eggs.”
“But we have brought you some holly as well,” said Margaret, a little
mollified. “Christmas will soon be here.”
“I am so glad I was not clever enough to guess holly,” said Northcote.
The contents of the basket were unpacked and laid along the books on
the writing-table. He had to submit, not without a passage of arms, to
having an egg cooked for his immediate delectation. His mother also
insisted on being allowed to toast him a slice of bread.
“You are spoiling me completely,” said Northcote, being forced at last
into making a pretence of eating after his own half-hearted offers of
hospitality had been uncompromisingly repelled.
By an effort of the will that seemed superhuman to himself he forced
himself to swallow a few mouthfuls, yet as he did so he followed the
smallest movements of his guests. One eye never left the curtain that
ran across the room. Whenever one or the other of his too curious
visitors was seen to approach it incautiously he made ready to spring
to his feet.
The only alleviation to the bareness of the walls was several
photographic groups of football-players, over which velvet caps
decorated with tassels were suspended.
“See that group in the middle?” said Northcote. “Look at it well. That
is the finest pack that ever turned out for England. We walloped Wales
twenty-nine points to three. Pushed ’em all over the shop. Notice that
little chap sitting between my legs. He was a half if you like. Cunning
as a trout and quicker than a hare.”
“I think, my dear boy, this is perfectly uninteresting,” said his
mother, fixing her spectacles and examining the photograph sternly.
“This is a stupid pursuit, not only a waste of time, but also a waste
of money. It has been the ruin of many young men. One of these days it
might even prove to be the ruin of England.”
“All work and no play, my dear,” said her son, “makes Jack a dull boy,
you know. Personally I would suggest that a game like football is a
rare training for the character.”
“I think football is a fine and manly game, Henry,” said the girl, with
a little air of defiance. “I shall never forget seeing you come home
with your twisted knee.”
“The doctor’s bill was thirty pounds,” said Mrs. Northcote simply.
These words, spoken in a manner that was almost childlike, came upon
Northcote with the force of a blow. He was perfectly accustomed to his
mother’s voice and manner, that voice and manner which were so direct
and so unqualified. But for the first time they had driven a deep flush
of shame to his cheek. This dauntless unimaginative creature, who
measured spoonfuls of tea, who counted pennies, whose staff of life was
hard facts, what had she not performed at the call of her religion?
What lions had she not removed from the path of this one ewe lamb of
hers, in order that one day he should win his way to the kingdom she
had designed for him? Night and day, year after year, had she labored
with this object in view. He was her only son, and material greatness
was to be his destiny. He recalled the unflinching figure of this
woman tramping over the moors in the depth of winter, through rain and
wind, through frost and snow, to earn a pittance by her tutelage; he
recalled the resolution with which she performed the meanest household
duties in order that money might be saved; he recalled her sitting
beneath the insufficient light of a lamp through the midnight hours,
transcribing, for the sake of a few miserable sovereigns, foreign
masterpieces out of their native French, German, and Italian into
trite, colorless, and rather wearisome English prose. All in an instant
Northcote seemed to be fascinated, overcome, by the sudden revelation
of the pathetic beauty of the commonplace.
“I won’t have you think I have become idle and extravagant,” he said,
rising from the table and placing both his hands on her shoulders. “You
see I have had to fight my battle, and a long, a stern, a lonely one
it has been. What was I in the midst of six millions of fighters, most
of them as sturdy, as fierce, and, in many cases, far better equipped
than I was myself? But I must tell you, my dear, I believe I have
conquered at last. I think I have got the turn of the tide. If health
and strength remain to me, and never in my life have I been physically
more robust than I am at present, I am about to make an income at the
bar which, to frugal people like you and me, mammy, will seem fabulous
wealth. For I ought to tell you I won my first big case the day before
yesterday, and I think I am entitled to say I made an impression.”
“I know that you saved that poor woman, my dearest boy,” said his
mother, with a tenderness that was almost grim.
“Tell me, by what means did you learn that?”
“I walked over to the Hall and borrowed the _Age_ of Sir John.”
“The _Age_!” said her son, in a tone that had a thrill of horror in
it. “Why walk all that distance to the Hall to get a look at the _Age_
when Parson Nugent would have been only too pleased to lend you his
_Banner_?”
“The reason is this, my dear boy,” said his mother impressively. “All
my life I have been accustomed to look upon the _Age_ as the first
English newspaper.”
“I expect you are right, you dear old Amazon,” said her son, strangling
a groan.
“No, Henry, I am not right. I am prepared to believe there was a time
when the _Age_ was the first English newspaper, but in my opinion it is
so no longer. I shall never place my trust in the _Age_ again.”
“A heavy blow for Printing Press Square,” said Northcote, laughing to
restrain his tears.
“I consider that leading article it had about the trial, and the terms
in which it referred to you, my boy, to be a disgrace to English
journalism. In fact, I wrote to the editor to say so.”
“What did you find to say to the editor?” asked Northcote feebly.
“I said it was contemptible that a newspaper of such a widespread
influence as the _Age_ should lend itself to a faction whose aim was to
suppress young men of talent.”
“And what had the editor to say to that?”
“Very wisely he did not reply. Perhaps I was somewhat severe in my
letter, but I felt very strongly upon the point and I do not regret
that I expressed myself at length.”
“In the name of wonder, what else did you say to the editor?”
“I said this faction of which I complained had been very mischievous in
its influence in this country, but in the end it had always failed in
its object, as in the end, Henry, everything that is merely negative
and destructive and retardatory must fail. I cited the cases of
Benjamin Disraeli and the poet Keats.”
“I suppose,” said Northcote, with a dull sense of agony overspreading
his veins, “it could not occur to you, old woman, that by any
possibility the _Age_ was justified in the course it took?”
“It could not, Henry,” said his mother.
Her air of finality bewildered him. Yet involuntarily he raised his
eyes to her face, and, for the first time in his life as he looked
at it, he was able to penetrate through its heroic commonness. The
features were harsh and aggressive and scarcely lit by the mind, but
the rigidity of such a nature in the teeth of public opinion had
appeared to shed over them a little of the bloom that proceeds from
the elevation of the intellect. It was a kind of apotheosis of the
power of faith. Her eyes were deep blue, strangely unfearing and clear,
wide-lidded, steady in their gaze. It was little enough that they
had the capacity to see, but whatever they lacked in range derived
compensation from mere force of vision. They were inaccessible to the
changes which are wrought by influences from without. Whatever they had
looked on once could never be modified by external causes.
Northcote carried the toil-stained hand to his lips with a reverence
that was more profound than any he had ever felt for it before.
“Every man needs to have known one truly good woman,” he said,
strengthening his grasp of the roughened fingers, “before he can even
begin his own education.”
It darkened his eyes to see the muscles of the harsh face relax as they
yielded to the slight softness of an infrequent emotion.
“Your father was constantly making speeches like these,” she said,
with that simplicity which was so formidable. “I was never able to
understand them.”
XXXVII
INDELIBLE EVIDENCE
For some time Northcote stood holding her hand and looking down into
her eyes. A sense of deep wonder was percolating slowly to every part
of his being. What a haven was here to embrace when the frail bark of
his nature had been flung, like the cockle-shell that it was, upon the
crest of tempestuous and multitudinous seas. How blind and undeveloped
he had been not to have understood this before! From what ignominy
could this anchorage have saved him! It would not have been necessary
to founder upon the shoals had he been aware of this harbor that would
have been so willing to embrace him. He was already broken into pieces;
and those tears which appeared to suffuse his eyes with such facility
and to suffuse hers with such a painful reluctance were falling from
him.
“You must ignore that unmannerly attack in the _Age_,” she said in
a stern voice which yet was full of redress. “The enemies of the
friendless have no kingdom into which they can enter. A few years
hence, when you are a rich and honored man, you will forgive them for
having once stabbed you.”
The silence which followed her words was broken by the hard and intense
breathing of the figure that clasped her.
“There is one thing I shall ask of you,” said Northcote at last. “I
shall ask you to give me the pledge from your own lips that you will
always believe in me as completely as you do at this moment, whatever
doubts, charges, or suspicion the future hurls against me.”
“It is not necessary for me to give this assurance, but, since you
demand it, I give it.”
“It is part of my weakness to demand it,” said her son, “although none
is so well aware as am I that there is no need to give expression to
your faith.”
“As you say, there is no need. But I remember your father saying to
me shortly before that illness which was fatal to him, the greater
the gifts the greater the lenity to be meted out to their unhappy
possessors. On that account I have always treated you with more
indulgence than otherwise I should have done.”
“Had you been more Spartan you might have strangled the genie at its
birth.”
“I might.”
“And yet made of its possessor a more upright and God-fearing citizen.”
“That is impossible.”
“You never could conceive of his being other than you see him now?”
“I could not.”
“Even if the indelible evidence were laid before you?”
“Evidence is never indelible to us. So-called facts have no worth
in our eyes. We believe or we do not believe. Nothing changes our
emotions; they are what we understand by religion.”
“You speak for wise and great women.”
“I speak for the humblest of wives and mothers who cannot accept credit
for blind obedience to an instinct which alone gives her life.”
“I begin to understand why even the most imperious natures, which are
as ruthless as volcanoes in action, cannot live without your aid. It
is not that you enslave and fetter them; your function is to cleanse,
renew, rehabilitate.”
As Northcote spoke a feeling of profound joy overspread the humiliation
whose penalties had been far more grievous to him than those of
despair. Hardly had he tasted it, however, than the nightmare at
the back of his thoughts assumed a visible shape. Of a sudden there
came a sharp screech from the curtain. Margaret, who throughout the
conversation with his mother had been engaged in fixing pieces of
holly over the photographs on the wall, was still employed in this
decoration. It was not she who was responsible for the sudden shrieking
of the brass rings along the curtain pole.
With a single comprehensive movement the curtain had been flung back
and the bed revealed. Seated upon it, half-dressed, with her hair
hanging loose, and her bare arms exposed by her chemise, was his
visitor of the previous night. Half a dozen hairpins were stuck in
a row in her mouth. In the cold grayness of the December morning,
which seemed to envelop her malignity in a bald realism, her features
appeared blunt, pale, and hideous. The almost incredibly bitter and
mocking glance was not directed upon the man, but upon the elderly,
unprepossessing, and countrified figure in the shabby clothes and
antique hat whom he was holding by the hand.
Northcote let the hand fall, and recoiled from his mother with a gasp
of fear mixed with passion.
The young girl, whom life had done nothing to enlighten, stood in dumb
amazement upon the chair on which she was poised.
There was a moment in which the older woman quivered with terror.
The brutal eyes of the prostitute, fixed upon her face with a blunt
contempt, seemed to change her into stone. Observing her to be
petrified like a bird in the presence of a serpent, the woman seated
upon the bed picked the row of hairpins from between her teeth with
the circumspection of an actress who, upon the stage, is notorious for
her power, and who, having a stupendous scene to enact, prepares her
audience for it by a display of quietude. She proceeded to coil up her
hair with a deliberation that had value as drama.
“Vice-president of the Great Trades’ Union,” she said, removing the
last hairpin from her mouth.
The elder woman stood looking helplessly away. Those indomitable eyes
were cowed for the first time in their history. For the first time they
had come upon something upon which they had no opinion to deliver. She
had barely the strength to carry her gaze to her son, who stood ten
paces from her as pale and rigid as a statue.
“Better go--better take Peggy,” he whispered in a voice that she did
not know to be his.
Margaret, still holding the holly, had come down from the chair, and
like a child had come to stand at the side of her natural protectress.
She was visibly afraid; and she had clutched the holly so tightly that
blood was trickling from the wounds in her soft fingers.
The spectacle of her childishness restored to the elder woman that
capacity for action which she was never without.
“Get your coat and gloves, child,” she said in her harsh tones.
“Where’s the basket?”
She herself took up the basket, and, without venturing to look at her
son or her who sat upon the bed, neither of whom had changed their
postures nor spoken again, she led the way out with resolute steps to
the top of the stairs. The young girl followed in her wake with a timid
obedience, pulling on her cotton gloves over her bleeding fingers as
she went.
At the head of the stairs this new resolution of the elder woman’s
appeared to fail her.
“Go down, child; take the basket. I will follow you in a minute,” she
said, handing the basket to the girl.
She turned suddenly and went back into the room. Her son was still
standing in the attitude in which she had left him. There was a curious
glare in his eyes. Advancing to him she placed her hands on his
shoulders, pressed her lips against his forehead, and then, in a kind
of headlong flight, darted away like a rabbit out of the room and down
the stairs.
XXXVIII
CLEANSING FIRE
This irrational proceeding served to liberate Northcote from his
thrall. Even as he felt his mother’s lips and witnessed her ridiculous
flight, he was able to divine the nature of the impulse. It was the
expression of that unconquerable instinct by which her sex affirms
itself.