HOUSEHOLD POLITICS
For the next three months--through the course of the London season, a
fine and prosperous one--Arthur Lisle played truant. The poison of
speculation was in his veins, the lust of pleasure in his heart;
romantic imaginings and posings filled his thoughts. The Temple saw
little of him. More than once Norton Ward would have offered him some
"devilling" to do, or some case to make a note on; but Henry reported
that Mr. Lisle was not at chambers. Norton Ward shrugged his shoulders
and let the thing drop; the first duty of an earnest aspirant in the
Temple is to be there--always waiting in the queue for employment. "You
can't help a man who won't help himself," Norton Ward observed to his
wife, who pursed up her lips and nodded significantly; she knew what she
knew about the young man's case. Informed of his missed chances by a
deferentially reproachful Henry, Arthur was impenitent. He did not want
to make notes on cases and to do devilling; not so much now because of
his terrors (though he still felt that Pretyman, J., was formidable) as
because his own interests were too enthralling; he had no time to spare
for the quarrels of John Doe and Richard Roe and the rest of the
litigious tribe. There were roads to fortune shorter, less arid and less
steep. Also there were green pastures and flowery dells, very pleasant
though they led nowhere in particular, peopled by charming companions,
enlivened by every diversion--and governed by a Fairy Queen.
In London an agreeable young man who has--or behaves as if he
had--nothing to do will soon find things to do in plenty. Arthur's days
were full; lunches, dinners, theatres, dances, tennis to play, cricket
and polo matches to watch, a race-meeting now and then, motor excursions
or a day on the river--time went like lightning in amusing himself and
other people. Everybody accepted so readily the view that he was a man
of leisure and wholly at their disposal that he himself almost came to
accept it as the truth. Only in the background lay the obstinate fact
that, in a life like this, even five hundred pounds will not last for
ever. Never mind! In the autumn there would come the farce. There was a
rare flavour in the moment when he wrote his cheque for a thousand
pounds, payable to the order of Joseph Halliday, Esquire. Joe had asked
for an instalment only, but Arthur was not going to fritter away the
sensation like that.
Of course Bernadette had first call on him, and she used her privilege
freely. At her house in Hill Street he was really at home; he was
expected to come without an invitation; he was expected to come in spite
of any other invitation, when he was wanted. He fetched and carried, an
abject delighted slave. She never flirted with him or tried to win his
devotion; but she accepted it and in return made a pet of him. Yet she
had no idea how immense, how romantic, how high-flying the devotion was.
She was not very good at understanding great emotions--as Oliver Wyse
might perhaps have agreed. So, if she had no designs, she had no caution
either; she was as free from conscience as from malice; or it might be
that any conscience she had was engaged upon another matter. Sir Oliver
had not yet returned to town, but soon he was coming.
Engrossed in Bernadette herself, at first Arthur paid little heed to the
other members of the household. Indeed he never became intimate with
Judith Arden during all this time in London. He liked her, and forgave a
satirical look which he sometimes caught directed at himself in
consideration of her amusing satirical remarks directed at other people;
and after all she could not be expected to appreciate the quality of his
devotion to Bernadette. But with Godfrey Lisle things gradually reached
a different footing. The shy awkward man began to put out feelers for
friendship. Amongst all who came and went he had few friends, and he
sought to make no more. Even Judith, as became her age and sex, was much
occupied in gaieties. He spent his days in his library and in walking.
But now he began to ask Arthur to join him. "If Bernadette can spare
you," he would say; or, to his wife, "If you don't want Arthur this
afternoon--" and so suggest a walk or a smoke together. He did not
succeed in conveying the impression that he would be greatly pleased by
the acceptance of his invitations. But he did give them, and that from
him was much.
"Do go," Bernadette would say, or "Do stay," as the case might be. "He
does like a talk so much." Strangely it appeared that this was the case,
provided he could get his talk quietly with a single person--and, it
must be added, though Arthur's eyes were not yet opened to this,
provided that the person was not his wife. From private conversation
with her he shrank, ever fearing that something might seem to be
demanded of him which he could not give. But he read and thought much,
and enjoyed an exchange of ideas. And he took to Arthur with the liking
a reserved man often has for one who is expansive and easy of access.
Arthur responded to his overtures, at first through a mixture of
obligation and good-nature, then with a real interest, to which
presently there was added a sympathy rather compassionate, a pity for a
man who seemed by nature unable to take the pleasures which lay so
plentiful around.
He fretted about money too--a thing pathetic to the eyes with which at
present Arthur looked on the world. But he did; he might be found
surrounded by account-books, rent-books, pass-books, puzzling over them
with a forlorn air and a wrinkled brow. It was not long before he took
Arthur into his confidence, in some degree at least, about this worry of
his.
"We spend a terrible lot of money; I can't think where it all goes," he
lamented.
"But isn't it pretty obvious?" laughed Arthur. "You do things in
style--and you're always doing them!"
"There's this house--heavy! And Hilsey always sitting there, swallowing
a lot!" Then he broke out in sudden peevishness: "Of course with
anything like common prudence----" He stopped abruptly. "I'm not blaming
anybody," he added lamely, after a pause. And then--"Do you keep within
your income?"
"I don't just now--by a long chalk. But yours is a trifle larger than
mine, you know."
"I can't do it. Well, I must raise some money, I suppose."
Arthur did not know what to say. The matter was intimate and delicate;
for there could be no doubt who was responsible, if too much money were
being spent.
"I'm sure if you--well, if you made it known how you feel----" he began.
"Yes, and be thought a miser!" His voice sank to a mutter just audible.
"Besides all the rest!"
So he had grievances! Arthur smiled within himself. All husbands, he
opined, had grievances, mostly unsubstantial ones. He could not believe
that Godfrey was being forced into outrunning his means to any serious
extent, or that he had any other grave cause for complaint. But, in
truth, Godfrey's trouble--money apart--was an awkward one. He was
aggrieved that he had not got what he did not want--his wife's
affection. And he was aggrieved that she did not want what he had no
desire to give her--namely, his. The state of things aggrieved him, yet
he had no wish--at least no effective impulse--to alter it. He felt
himself a failure in all ways save one--the provision of the fine things
and the pleasures that Bernadette loved. Was he now to be a failure
there too? He clung to the last rag of his tattered pride.
Yet often he was, in his shy awkward way, kindly, gracious, and anxious
to make his kinsman feel sure of a constant welcome.
"Coming too often?" he said, in reply to a laughing apology of Arthur's.
"You can't come too often, my dear boy! Besides you're a cousin of the
house; it's open to you of right, both here and at Hilsey. Bernadette
likes you to come too."
"Has she told you so?" Arthur asked eagerly.
"No, no, not in words, but anybody can see she does. We're too grave for
her--Judith and I--and so's Oliver Wyse, I think. She likes him, of
course, but with him she can't--er----"
"Play about?" Arthur suggested.
"Yes, yes, exactly--can't do that sort of thing, as she does with you.
He's got too much on his shoulders; and he's an older man, of course."
He was walking up and down his library as he talked. He stopped in
passing and laid his hand on Arthur's shoulder for a moment. "It's good
of you not to grudge me a talk either, sometimes."
"But I like talking to you. Why do you think I shouldn't?"
Godfrey was at the other end of the room by now, with his back turned,
looking into a book.
"You've never seen Hilsey, have you? Would it bore you to come down for
a bit later on? Very quiet there, of course, but not so bad. Not for
longer than you like, of course! You could cut it short if you got
bored, you know."
"Oh, you needn't be afraid of my being bored. I should love it of all
things." Indeed the invitation filled him with delight and gratitude.
"It's jolly good of you, Godfrey, jolly kind, I think."
Godfrey murmured something like, "See how you like it when you get
there," sat down with his back still turned, and obliterated himself
with a large book.
He was certainly difficult to know, to get to close quarters with. If he
approached you at one moment, he shrank back the next; he seemed to live
in equal fear of advances and of rebuffs. It was difficult to know how
to take him, what idea to form of him. Plenty of negations suggested
themselves readily in connection with him, but positive qualities were
much harder to assign; it was easier to say what he was not than what he
was, what he did not like than what he did, what he could not do than
what he could. At all events what positive qualities he had did not help
him much in his life, and were irrelevant to the problems it presented.
By nature he was best made for a student, immured in books, free from
the cares of position and property, and from the necessity of
understanding and working with other people. Fate had misplaced him as a
wealthy man, burdened with obligations, cumbered with responsibilities.
He had misplaced himself as the husband of a brilliant and
pleasure-loving wife. He ought to have been a bachelor--the liabilities
of bachelors are limited--or the mate of an unpretending housewife who
would have seen to his dinner and sewn on his buttons. In an unlucky
hour of impulse he had elected to play Prince Charming to a penniless
Beauty; Prince Charming appearing in a shower of gold. Of all the charms
only the gold was left now, and the supply even of that was not
inexhaustible, though the Beauty might behave as if it were. He had
failed to live up to the promise of his first appearance, to meet the
bill of exchange which he had accepted when he married Bernadette. He
lacked the qualifications; ardour of emotion, power to understand and
value a nature different from his own, an intelligent charity that could
recognise the need in another for things of which he felt no need--these
he had not, any more than he possessed the force of will and character
which might have moulded the other nature to his own.
He met his failure with a certain dignity of bearing which all his
awkwardness could not efface. He did not carp at his wife or quarrel
with her; he treated her with consistent politeness and with a
liberality even excessive. He showed no jealousy of her preferences;
that she would ever give him cause for serious jealousy, fears for his
honour, had never yet entered his head; such matters did not lie within
the ordinary ambit of his thoughts. But the sense of failure had bitten
deep into his heart; his pride chafed under it perpetually. His life was
soured.
Arthur saw little of all this, and of what he did see he made light. It
is always the easiest and most comfortable thing to assume that people
are doing as they like and liking what they are doing. If Godfrey lived
apart from the life of the house, doubtless it was by his own choice;
and, if he had a grievance, it must just be about money. The paymaster
always has a grievance about money; he is Ishmael, with every man's and
every woman's hand against him--stretched out for more. A legitimate
occasion for a grumble--but it would be absurd to make much of it.
Besides what serious trouble could there be when Bernadette was so
radiant and serene, so gay and merry with himself and with Judith, so
gentle and friendly with her husband? There seemed no question of two
parties in the house--as there sometimes are in houses--with the one or
the other of which it was necessary for him to range himself. His
adoration for Bernadette in no way clashed with his growing affection
for her husband; rather she encouraged and applauded every sign of
greater intimacy between the men. It was with the sense of a triumph in
which she would surely share that he carried to her the news that
Godfrey--Godfrey himself, of his own accord--had invited him to Hilsey.
Of her cordial endorsement of the invitation he had, of course, no
doubt. Perhaps, after all, she had inspired it.
"Now don't say you put him up to it! That wouldn't be half such a
score," he said, laughing.
She seemed surprised at the news; evidently she had not taken any part
in the matter. She looked a little thoughtful, possibly even doubtful.
Judith Arden, who was sitting by, smiled faintly.
"No, I had nothing to do with it," said Bernadette. "And it really is a
triumph for you, Arthur." She was smiling again now, but there was a
little pucker on her brow. "When's your best time to come?" she asked.
"In the early part of August, if I may. I shall have to run up and see
mother afterwards, and I've got to be back in town in the middle of
September--for our production, you know."
Bernadette by this time had been told all about the great farce and the
great venture which had made it possible.
She appeared to consider something for a moment longer, so that Arthur
added, "Of course if it's not convenient to have me then, if you're full
up or anything----"
"Goodness no! There are twenty rooms, and there'll be nobody but
ourselves--and Oliver Wyse perhaps."
"I thought Sir Oliver was coming earlier, directly we go down?" said
Judith.
"He's coming about the seventeenth or eighteenth; but he may stay on, of
course. On the other hand he may not come, or may come later, after
all." She smiled again, this time as it were to herself. Sir Oliver's
visit to Hilsey had been arranged before she lunched with him in Paris
and might, therefore, be subject to reconsideration--by the guest, or
the hostess, or both. She had neither seen him nor heard from him since
that occasion; things stood between them just where they had been left
when she turned away and went into the hat-shop with glowing cheeks.
There they remained even to her own mind, in a state of suspense not
unpleasurable but capable of becoming difficult. It was just that
possibility in them which made her brow pucker at the thought of Sir
Oliver and Arthur Lisle encountering one another as fellow-guests at
Hilsey.
Arthur laughed. "Well, if he doesn't mind me, I don't mind him. In fact
I like him very much--what I've seen of him; it isn't much."
It was not much. Before Oliver Wyse went to Paris, they had met at Hill
Street only three or four times, and then at large dinner parties where
they had been thrown very little in contact.
"Oh, of course you'll get on all right together," said Bernadette.
"You've a lot in common with him really, I believe," Judith remarked.
Bernadette's lips twisted in a smile and she gave Judith a glance of
merry reproof. They were both amused to see how entirely the point of
the observation was lost on Arthur.
"I daresay we shall find we have, when we come to know each other
better," he agreed in innocent sincerity.
Bernadette was stirred to one of the impulses of affectionate tenderness
which the absolute honesty and simplicity of his devotion now and then
roused in her. His faith in her was as absolute as his adoration was
unbounded. For him she was as far above frailty as she was beyond
rivalry or competition. Without realising the immensity of either the
faith or the adoration, she yet felt that, if temptation should come, it
might help her to have somebody by her who believed in her thoroughly
and as it were set her a standard to live up to. And she was unwillingly
conscious that a great temptation might come--or perhaps it was better
to say that she might be subjected to a severe pressure; for it was in
this light rather that the danger presented itself to her mind when she
was driven to think about it.
She looked at him now with no shadow on her face, with all her usual
radiant friendliness.
"At any rate I shall be delighted to have you there, Cousin Arthur," she
said. She had managed, somehow, from the first to make the formal
"Cousin" into just the opposite of a formality--to turn it into a term
of affection and appropriation. She used it now not habitually, but when
she wanted to tell him that she was liking him very much, and he quite
understood that it had that significance. He flushed in pleasure and
gratitude.
"That's enough for me. Never mind Sir Oliver!" he exclaimed with a
joyful laugh.
"If it isn't an anti-climax, may I observe that I too shall be very glad
to see you?" said Judith Arden with affected primness.
Arthur went away in triumph, surer still of Bernadette's perfection,
making lighter still of Godfrey's grievances, dismissing Oliver Wyse as
totally unimportant; blind to all the somewhat complicated politics of
the house. They rolled off his joyous spirit like water off a duck's
back.