EXPLANATORY
About two o’clock Geoffrey rose, and with some slight assistance from
his reverend host, struggled into his clothes. Then he lunched, and
while he did so Mr. Granger poured his troubles into his sympathetic
ear.
“My father was a Herefordshire farmer, Mr. Bingham,” he said, “and I
was bred up to that line of life myself. He did well, my father did, as
in those days a careful man might. What is more, he made some money by
cattle-dealing, and I think that turned his head a little; anyway, he
was minded to make ‘a gentleman of me,’ as he called it. So when I was
eighteen I was packed off to be made a parson of, whether I liked it or
no. Well, I became a parson, and for four years I had a curacy at a
town called Kingston, in Herefordshire, not a bad sort of little
town—perhaps you happen to know it. While I was there, my father, who
was getting beyond himself, took to speculating. He built a row of
villas at Leominster, or at least he lent a lawyer the money to build
them, and when they were built nobody would hire them. It broke my
father; he was ruined over those villas. I have always hated the sight
of a villa ever since, Mr. Bingham. And shortly afterwards he died, as
near bankruptcy as a man’s nose is to his mouth.
“After that I was offered this living, £150 a year it was at the best,
and like a fool I took it. The old parson who was here before me left
an only daughter behind him. The living had ruined him, as it ruins me,
and, as I say, he left his daughter, my wife that was, behind him, and
a pretty good bill for dilapidations I had against the estate. But
there wasn’t any estate, so I made the best of a bad business and
married the daughter, and a sweet pretty woman she was, poor dear, very
like my Beatrice, only without the brains. I can’t make out where
Beatrice’s brains come from indeed, for I am sure I don’t set up for
having any. She was well born, too, my wife was, of an old Cornish
family, but she had nowhere to go to, and I think she married me
because she didn’t know what else to do, and was fond of the old place.
She took me on with it, as it were. Well, it turned out pretty well,
till some eleven years ago, when our boy was born, though I don’t think
we ever quite understood each other. She never got her health back
after that, and seven years ago she died. I remember it was on a night
wonderfully like last night—mist first, then storm. The boy died a few
years afterwards. I thought it would have broken Beatrice’s heart; she
has never been the same girl since, but always full of queer ideas I
don’t pretend to follow.
“And as for the life I’ve had of it here, Mr. Bingham, you wouldn’t
believe it if I was to tell you. The living is small enough, but the
place is as full of dissent as a mackerel-boat of fish, and as for
getting the tithes—well, I cannot, that’s all. If it wasn’t for a bit
of farming that I do, not but what the prices are down to nothing, and
for what the visitors give in the season, and for the help of
Beatrice’s salary as certificated mistress, I should have been in the
poor-house long ago, and shall be yet, I often think. I have had to
take in a boarder before now to make both ends meet, and shall again, I
expect.
“And now I must be off up to my bit of a farm; the old sow is due to
litter, and I want to see how she is getting on. Please God she’ll have
thirteen again and do well. I’ll order the fly to be here at five,
though I shall be back before then—that is, I told Elizabeth to do so.
She has gone out to do some visiting for me, and to see if she can’t
get in two pounds five of tithe that has been due for three months. If
anybody can get it it’s Elizabeth. Well, good-bye; if you are dull and
want to talk to Beatrice, she is up and in there. I daresay you will
suit one another. She’s a very queer girl, Beatrice, quite beyond me
with her ideas, and it was a funny thing her holding you so tight, but
I suppose Providence arranged that. Good-bye for the present, Mr.
Bingham,” and this curious specimen of a clergyman vanished, leaving
Geoffrey quite breathless.
It was half-past two o’clock, and the doctor had told him that he could
see Miss Granger at three. He wished that it was three, for he was
tired of his own thoughts and company, and naturally anxious to renew
his acquaintance with the strange girl who had begun by impressing him
so deeply and ended by saving his life. There was complete quiet in the
house; Betty, the maid-of-all-work, was employed in the kitchen, both
the doctors had gone, and Elizabeth and her father were out. To-day
there was no wind, it had blown itself away during the night, and the
sight of the sunbeams streaming through the windows made Geoffrey long
to be in the open air. He had no book at hand to read, and whenever he
tried to think his mind flew back to that hateful matrimonial quarrel.
It was hard on him, Geoffrey thought, that he should be called upon to
endure such scenes. He could no longer disguise the truth from
himself—he had buried his happiness on his wedding-day. Looking back
across the years, he well remembered how different a life he had
imagined for himself. In those days he was tired of knocking about and
of youthful escapades; even that kind of social success which must
attend a young man who was handsome, clever, a good fellow, and blessed
with large expectations, had, at the age of six-and-twenty, entirely
lost its attractiveness. Therefore he had turned no deaf ear to his
uncle, Sir Robert Bingham, who was then going on for seventy, when he
suggested that it might be well if Geoffrey be settled down, and
introduced him to Lady Honoria.
Lady Honoria was eighteen then, and a beauty of the rather thin but
statuesque type, which attracts men up to five or six and twenty and
then frequently bores, if it does not repel them. Moreover, she was
clever and well read, and pretended to be intellectually and poetically
inclined, as ladies not specially favoured by Apollo sometimes
do—before they marry. Cold she always was; nobody ever heard of Lady
Honoria stretching the bounds of propriety; but Geoffrey put this down
to a sweet and becoming modesty, which would vanish or be transmuted in
its season. Also she affected a charming innocence of all vulgar
business matters, which both deceived and enchanted him. Never but once
did she allude to ways and means before marriage, and then it was to
say that she was glad that they should be so poor till dear Sir Robert
died (he had promised to allow them fifteen hundred a year, and they
had seven more between them), as this would enable them to see so much
more of each other.
At last came the happy day, and this white virgin soul passed into
Geoffrey’s keeping. For a week or so things went fairly well, and then
disenchantment began. He learned by slow but sure degrees that his wife
was vain, selfish and extravagant, and, worst of all, that she cared
very little about him. The first shock was when he accidentally
discovered, four or five days after marriage, that Honoria was
intimately acquainted with every detail of Sir Robert Bingham’s
property, and, young as she was, had already formed a scheme to make it
more productive after the old man’s death.
They went to live in London, and there he found that Lady Honoria,
although by far too cold and prudent a woman to do anything that could
bring a breath of scandal upon her name, was as fond of admiration as
she was heartless. It seemed to Geoffrey that he could never be free
from the collection of young men who hung about her skirts. Some of
them were very good fellows whom he liked exceedingly; still, on the
whole he would have preferred to remain unmarried and associate with
them at the club. Also the continual round of society and going out
brought heavier expenses on him than he could well support. And thus,
little by little, poor Geoffrey’s dream of matrimonial bliss faded into
thin air. But, fortunately for himself, he possessed a certain share of
logic and sweet reasonableness. In time he learnt to see that the fault
was not altogether with his wife, who was by no means a bad sort of
woman in her degree. But her degree differed from his degree. She had
married for freedom and wealth and to gain a larger scope wherein to
exercise those tastes which inherited disposition and education had
given to her, as she believed that he had married her because she was
the daughter of a peer.
Lady Honoria, like many another woman of her stamp, was the overbred,
or sometimes the underbred, product of a too civilized age and class.
Those primitive passions and virtues on which her husband had relied to
make the happiness of their married life simply did not exist for her.
The passions had been bred and educated out of her; for many
generations they have been found inconvenient and disquieting
attributes in woman. As for the old virtues, such as love of children
and the ordinary round of domestic duty, they simply bored her. On the
whole, though sharp of tongue, she rarely lost her temper, for her
vices, like her virtues, were of a somewhat negative order; but the
fury which seized her when she learned for certain that she was to
become a mother was a thing that her unfortunate husband never forgot
and never wished to see again. At length the child was born, a fact for
which Geoffrey, at least, was very thankful.
“Take it away. I do not want to see it!” said Lady Honoria to the
scandalised nurse when the little creature was brought to her, wrapped
in its long robes.
“Give it to me, nurse—I do,” said her husband.
From that moment Geoffrey gave all the pent-up affection of his bruised
soul to this little daughter, and as the years went on they grew very
dear to each other. But an active-minded, strong-hearted, able-bodied
man cannot take a babe as the sole companion of his existence. Probably
Geoffrey would have found this out in time, and might have drifted into
some mode of life more or less undesirable, had not an accident
occurred to prevent it. In his dotage, Geoffrey’s old uncle Sir Robert
Bingham fell a victim to the wiles of an adventuress and married her.
Then he promptly died, and eight months afterwards a posthumous son was
born.
To Geoffrey this meant ruin. His allowance stopped and his expectations
vanished at one fell swoop. He pulled himself together, however, as a
brave-hearted man does under such a shock, and going to his wife he
explained to her that he must now work for his living, begging her to
break down the barrier that was between them and give him her sympathy
and help. She met him with tears and reproaches. The one thing that
touched her keenly, the one thing which she feared and hated was
poverty, and all that poverty means to women of her rank and nature.
But there was no help for it; the charming house in Bolton Steet had to
be given up, and purgatory must be faced, in a flat, near the Edgware
Road. Lady Honoria was miserable, indeed had it not been that
fortunately for herself she possessed plenty of relations more or less
grand, whom she might continually visit for weeks and even for months
at a stretch, she could scarcely have endured her altered life.
But strangely enough Geoffrey soon found that he was happier than he
had been since his marriage. To begin with, he set to work like a man,
and work is a great source of happiness to all vigorous-minded folk. It
is not, in truth, a particularly cheerful occupation to pass endless
days in hanging about law-courts amongst a crowd of unbriefed Juniors,
and many nights in reading up the law one has forgotten and threading
the many intricacies of the Judicature Act. But it happened that his
father, a younger brother of Sir Robert’s, had been a solicitor, and
though he was dead, and all direct interest with the firm was severed,
yet another uncle remained in it, and the partners did not forget
Geoffrey in his difficulties.
They sent him what work they could without offending their standing
counsel, and he did it well. Then by degrees he built up quite a large
general practice of the kind known as deviling. Now there are few
things more unsatisfactory than doing another man’s work for nothing,
but every case fought means knowledge gained, and what is more it is
advertisement. So it came to pass that within less than two years from
the date of his money misfortunes, Geoffrey Bingham’s dark handsome
face and square strong form became very well known in the Courts.
“What is that man’s name?” said one well-known Q.C. to another still
more well known, as they sat waiting for their chops in the Bar Grill
Room, and saw Geoffrey, his wig pushed back from his forehead, striding
through the doorway on the last day of the sitting which preceded the
commencement of this history.
“Bingham,” answered the other. “He’s only begun to practise lately, but
he’ll be at the top of the tree before he has done. He married very
well, you know, old Garsington’s daughter, a charming woman, and
handsome too.”
“He looks like it,” grunted the first, and as a matter of fact such was
the general opinion.
For, as Beatrice had said, Geoffrey Bingham was a man who had success
written on his forehead. It would have been almost impossible for him
to fail in whatever he undertook.