When he got at work with the opulent youth, who was to be taken in hand
for Balliol, he found himself unable to say if this aspirant had really
such poor parts or if the appearance were only begotten of his own long
association with an intensely living little mind. From Morgan he heard
half a dozen times: the boy wrote charming young letters, a patchwork of
tongues, with indulgent postscripts in the family Volapuk and, in little
squares and rounds and crannies of the text, the drollest
illustrations—letters that he was divided between the impulse to show his
present charge as a vain, a wasted incentive, and the sense of something
in them that publicity would profane. The opulent youth went up in due
course and failed to pass; but it seemed to add to the presumption that
brilliancy was not expected of him all at once that his parents,
condoning the lapse, which they good-naturedly treated as little as
possible as if it were Pemberton’s, should have sounded the rally again,
begged the young coach to renew the siege.
The young coach was now in a position to lend Mrs. Moreen three louis,
and he sent her a post-office order even for a larger amount. In return
for this favour he received a frantic scribbled line from her: “Implore
you to come back instantly—Morgan dreadfully ill.” They were on there
rebound, once more in Paris—often as Pemberton had seen them depressed he
had never seen them crushed—and communication was therefore rapid. He
wrote to the boy to ascertain the state of his health, but awaited the
answer in vain. He accordingly, after three days, took an abrupt leave
of the opulent youth and, crossing the Channel, alighted at the small
hotel, in the quarter of the Champs Elysées, of which Mrs. Moreen had
given him the address. A deep if dumb dissatisfaction with this lady and
her companions bore him company: they couldn’t be vulgarly honest, but
they could live at hotels, in velvety entresols, amid a smell of burnt
pastilles, surrounded by the most expensive city in Europe. When he had
left them in Venice it was with an irrepressible suspicion that something
was going to happen; but the only thing that could have taken place was
again their masterly retreat. “How is he? where is he?” he asked of Mrs.
Moreen; but before she could speak these questions were answered by the
pressure round hid neck of a pair of arms, in shrunken sleeves, which
still were perfectly capable of an effusive young foreign squeeze.
“Dreadfully ill—I don’t see it!” the young man cried. And then to
Morgan: “Why on earth didn’t you relieve me? Why didn’t you answer my
letter?”
Mrs. Moreen declared that when she wrote he was very bad, and Pemberton
learned at the same time from the boy that he had answered every letter
he had received. This led to the clear inference that Pemberton’s note
had been kept from him so that the game practised should not be
interfered with. Mrs. Moreen was prepared to see the fact exposed, as
Pemberton saw the moment he faced her that she was prepared for a good
many other things. She was prepared above all to maintain that she had
acted from a sense of duty, that she was enchanted she had got him over,
whatever they might say, and that it was useless of him to pretend he
didn’t know in all his bones that his place at such a time was with
Morgan. He had taken the boy away from them and now had no right to
abandon him. He had created for himself the gravest responsibilities and
must at least abide by what he had done.
“Taken him away from you?” Pemberton exclaimed indignantly.
“Do it—do it for pity’s sake; that’s just what I want. I can’t stand
_this_—and such scenes. They’re awful frauds—poor dears!” These words
broke from Morgan, who had intermitted his embrace, in a key which made
Pemberton turn quickly to him and see that he had suddenly seated
himself, was breathing in great pain, and was very pale.
“_Now_ do you say he’s not in a state, my precious pet?” shouted his
mother, dropping on her knees before him with clasped hands, but touching
him no more than if he had been a gilded idol. “It will pass—it’s only
for an instant; but don’t say such dreadful things!”
“I’m all right—all right,” Morgan panted to Pemberton, whom he sat
looking up at with a strange smile, his hands resting on either side of
the sofa.
“Now do you pretend I’ve been dishonest, that I’ve deceived?” Mrs. Moreen
flashed at Pemberton as she got up.
“It isn’t _he_ says it, it’s I!” the boy returned, apparently easier, but
sinking back against the wall; while his restored friend, who had sat
down beside him, took his hand and bent over him.
“Darling child, one does what one can; there are so many things to
consider,” urged Mrs. Moreen. “It’s his _place_—his only place. You see
_you_ think it is now.”
“Take me away—take me away,” Morgan went on, smiling to Pemberton with
his white face.
“Where shall I take you, and how—oh _how_, my boy?” the young man
stammered, thinking of the rude way in which his friends in London held
that, for his convenience, with no assurance of prompt return, he had
thrown them over; of the just resentment with which they would already
have called in a successor, and of the scant help to finding fresh
employment that resided for him in the grossness of his having failed to
pass his pupil.
“Oh we’ll settle that. You used to talk about it,” said Morgan. “If we
can only go all the rest’s a detail.”
“Talk about it as much as you like, but don’t think you can attempt it.
Mr. Moreen would never consent—it would be so _very_ hand-to-mouth,”
Pemberton’s hostess beautifully explained to him. Then to Morgan she
made it clearer: “It would destroy our peace, it would break our hearts.
Now that he’s back it will be all the same again. You’ll have your life,
your work and your freedom, and we’ll all be happy as we used to be.
You’ll bloom and grow perfectly well, and we won’t have any more silly
experiments, will we? They’re too absurd. It’s Mr. Pemberton’s
place—every one in his place. You in yours, your papa in his, me in
mine—n’est-ce pas, chéri? We’ll all forget how foolish we’ve been and
have lovely times.”
She continued to talk and to surge vaguely about the little draped stuffy
salon while Pemberton sat with the boy, whose colour gradually came back;
and she mixed up her reasons, hinting that there were going to be
changes, that the other children might scatter (who knew?—Paula had her
ideas) and that then it might be fancied how much the poor old
parent-birds would want the little nestling. Morgan looked at Pemberton,
who wouldn’t let him move; and Pemberton knew exactly how he felt at
hearing himself called a little nestling. He admitted that he had had
one or two bad days, but he protested afresh against the wrong of his
mother’s having made them the ground of an appeal to poor Pemberton.
Poor Pemberton could laugh now, apart from the comicality of Mrs.
Moreen’s mustering so much philosophy for her defence—she seemed to shake
it out of her agitated petticoats, which knocked over the light gilt
chairs—so little did their young companion, _marked_, unmistakeably
marked at the best, strike him as qualified to repudiate any advantage.
He himself was in for it at any rate. He should have Morgan on his hands
again indefinitely; though indeed he saw the lad had a private theory to
produce which would be intended to smooth this down. He was obliged to
him for it in advance; but the suggested amendment didn’t keep his heart
rather from sinking, any more than it prevented him from accepting the
prospect on the spot, with some confidence moreover that he should do so
even better if he could have a little supper. Mrs. Moreen threw out more
hints about the changes that were to be looked for, but she was such a
mixture of smiles and shudders—she confessed she was very nervous—that he
couldn’t tell if she were in high feather or only in hysterics. If the
family was really at last going to pieces why shouldn’t she recognise the
necessity of pitching Morgan into some sort of lifeboat? This
presumption was fostered by the fact that they were established in
luxurious quarters in the capital of pleasure; that was exactly where
they naturally _would_ be established in view of going to pieces.
Moreover didn’t she mention that Mr. Moreen and the others were enjoying
themselves at the opera with Mr. Granger, and wasn’t _that_ also
precisely where one would look for them on the eve of a smash? Pemberton
gathered that Mr. Granger was a rich vacant American—a big bill with a
flourishy heading and no items; so that one of Paula’s “ideas” was
probably that this time she hadn’t missed fire—by which straight shot
indeed she would have shattered the general cohesion. And if the
cohesion was to crumble what would become of poor Pemberton? He felt
quite enough bound up with them to figure to his alarm as a dislodged
block in the edifice.
It was Morgan who eventually asked if no supper had been ordered for him;
sitting with him below, later, at the dim delayed meal, in the presence
of a great deal of corded green plush, a plate of ornamental biscuit and
an aloofness marked on the part of the waiter. Mrs. Moreen had explained
that they had been obliged to secure a room for the visitor out of the
house; and Morgan’s consolation—he offered it while Pemberton reflected
on the nastiness of lukewarm sauces—proved to be, largely, that his
circumstance would facilitate their escape. He talked of their
escape—recurring to it often afterwards—as if they were making up a
“boy’s book” together. But he likewise expressed his sense that there
was something in the air, that the Moreens couldn’t keep it up much
longer. In point of fact, as Pemberton was to see, they kept it up for
five or six months. All the while, however, Morgan’s contention was
designed to cheer him. Mr. Moreen and Ulick, whom he had met the day
after his return, accepted that return like perfect men of the world. If
Paula and Amy treated it even with less formality an allowance was to be
made for them, inasmuch as Mr. Granger hadn’t come to the opera after
all. He had only placed his box at their service, with a bouquet for
each of the party; there was even one apiece, embittering the thought of
his profusion, for Mr. Moreen and Ulick. “They’re all like that,” was
Morgan’s comment; “at the very last, just when we think we’ve landed them
they’re back in the deep sea!”
Morgan’s comments in these days were more and more free; they even
included a large recognition of the extraordinary tenderness with which
he had been treated while Pemberton was away. Oh yes, they couldn’t do
enough to be nice to him, to show him they had him on their mind and make
up for his loss. That was just what made the whole thing so sad and
caused him to rejoice after all in Pemberton’s return—he had to keep
thinking of their affection less, had less sense of obligation.
Pemberton laughed out at this last reason, and Morgan blushed and said:
“Well, dash it, you know what I mean.” Pemberton knew perfectly what he
meant; but there were a good many things that—dash it too!—it didn’t make
any clearer. This episode of his second sojourn in Paris stretched
itself out wearily, with their resumed readings and wanderings and
maunderings, their potterings on the quays, their hauntings of the
museums, their occasional lingerings in the Palais Royal when the first
sharp weather came on and there was a comfort in warm emanations, before
Chevet’s wonderful succulent window. Morgan wanted to hear all about the
opulent youth—he took an immense interest in him. Some of the details of
his opulence—Pemberton could spare him none of them—evidently fed the
boy’s appreciation of all his friend had given up to come back to him;
but in addition to the greater reciprocity established by that heroism he
had always his little brooding theory, in which there was a frivolous
gaiety too, that their long probation was drawing to a close. Morgan’s
conviction that the Moreens couldn’t go on much longer kept pace with the
unexpended impetus with which, from month to month, they did go on.
Three weeks after Pemberton had rejoined them they went on to another
hotel, a dingier one than the first; but Morgan rejoiced that his tutor
had at least still not sacrificed the advantage of a room outside. He
clung to the romantic utility of this when the day, or rather the night,
should arrive for their escape.
For the first time, in this complicated connexion, our friend felt his
collar gall him. It was, as he had said to Mrs. Moreen in Venice, trop
fort—everything was trop fort. He could neither really throw off his
blighting burden nor find in it the benefit of a pacified conscience or
of a rewarded affection. He had spent all the money accruing to him in
England, and he saw his youth going and that he was getting nothing back
for it. It was all very well of Morgan to count it for reparation that
he should now settle on him permanently—there was an irritating flaw in
such a view. He saw what the boy had in his mind; the conception that as
his friend had had the generosity to come back he must show his gratitude
by giving him his life. But the poor friend didn’t desire the gift—what
could he do with Morgan’s dreadful little life? Of course at the same
time that Pemberton was irritated he remembered the reason, which was
very honourable to Morgan and which dwelt simply in his making one so
forget that he was no more than a patched urchin. If one dealt with him
on a different basis one’s misadventures were one’s own fault. So
Pemberton waited in a queer confusion of yearning and alarm for the
catastrophe which was held to hang over the house of Moreen, of which he
certainly at moments felt the symptoms brush his cheek and as to which he
wondered much in what form it would find its liveliest effect.
Perhaps it would take the form of sudden dispersal—a frightened sauve qui
peut, a scuttling into selfish corners. Certainly they were less elastic
than of yore; they were evidently looking for something they didn’t find.
The Dorringtons hadn’t re-appeared, the princes had scattered; wasn’t
that the beginning of the end? Mrs. Moreen had lost her reckoning of the
famous “days”; her social calendar was blurred—it had turned its face to
the wall. Pemberton suspected that the great, the cruel discomfiture had
been the unspeakable behaviour of Mr. Granger, who seemed not to know
what he wanted, or, what was much worse, what they wanted. He kept
sending flowers, as if to bestrew the path of his retreat, which was
never the path of a return. Flowers were all very well, but—Pemberton
could complete the proposition. It was now positively conspicuous that
in the long run the Moreens were a social failure; so that the young man
was almost grateful the run had not been short. Mr. Moreen indeed was
still occasionally able to get away on business and, what was more
surprising, was likewise able to get back. Ulick had no club but you
couldn’t have discovered it from his appearance, which was as much as
ever that of a person looking at life from the window of such an
institution; therefore Pemberton was doubly surprised at an answer he
once heard him make his mother in the desperate tone of a man familiar
with the worst privations. Her question Pemberton had not quite caught;
it appeared to be an appeal for a suggestion as to whom they might get to
take Amy. “Let the Devil take her!” Ulick snapped; so that Pemberton
could see that they had not only lost their amiability but had ceased to
believe in themselves. He could also see that if Mrs. Moreen was trying
to get people to take her children she might be regarded as closing the
hatches for the storm. But Morgan would be the last she would part with.
One winter afternoon—it was a Sunday—he and the boy walked far together
in the Bois de Boulogne. The evening was so splendid, the cold
lemon-coloured sunset so clear, the stream of carriages and pedestrians
so amusing and the fascination of Paris so great, that they stayed out
later than usual and became aware that they should have to hurry home to
arrive in time for dinner. They hurried accordingly, arm-in-arm,
good-humoured and hungry, agreeing that there was nothing like Paris
after all and that after everything too that had come and gone they were
not yet sated with innocent pleasures. When they reached the hotel they
found that, though scandalously late, they were in time for all the
dinner they were likely to sit down to. Confusion reigned in the
apartments of the Moreens—very shabby ones this time, but the best in the
house—and before the interrupted service of the table, with objects
displaced almost as if there had been a scuffle and a great wine-stain
from an overturned bottle, Pemberton couldn’t blink the fact that there
had been a scene of the last proprietary firmness. The storm had
come—they were all seeking refuge. The hatches were down, Paula and Amy
were invisible—they had never tried the most casual art upon Pemberton,
but he felt they had enough of an eye to him not to wish to meet him as
young ladies whose frocks had been confiscated—and Ulick appeared to have
jumped overboard. The host and his staff, in a word, had ceased to “go
on” at the pace of their guests, and the air of embarrassed detention,
thanks to a pile of gaping trunks in the passage, was strangely
commingled with the air of indignant withdrawal. When Morgan took all
this in—and he took it in very quickly—he coloured to the roots of his
hair. He had walked from his infancy among difficulties and dangers, but
he had never seen a public exposure. Pemberton noticed in a second
glance at him that the tears had rushed into his eyes and that they were
tears of a new and untasted bitterness. He wondered an instant, for the
boy’s sake, whether he might successfully pretend not to understand. Not
successfully, he felt, as Mr. and Mrs. Moreen, dinnerless by their
extinguished hearth, rose before him in their little dishonoured salon,
casting about with glassy eyes for the nearest port in such a storm.
They were not prostrate but were horribly white, and Mrs. Moreen had
evidently been crying. Pemberton quickly learned however that her grief
was not for the loss of her dinner, much as she usually enjoyed it, but
the fruit of a blow that struck even deeper, as she made all haste to
explain. He would see for himself, so far as that went, how the great
change had come, the dreadful bolt had fallen, and how they would now all
have to turn themselves about. Therefore cruel as it was to them to part
with their darling she must look to him to carry a little further the
influence he had so fortunately acquired with the boy—to induce his young
charge to follow him into some modest retreat. They depended on him—that
was the fact—to take their delightful child temporarily under his
protection; it would leave Mr. Moreen and herself so much more free to
give the proper attention (too little, alas! had been given) to the
readjustment of their affairs.
“We trust you—we feel we _can_,” said Mrs. Moreen, slowly rubbing her
plump white hands and looking with compunction hard at Morgan, whose
chin, not to take liberties, her husband stroked with a paternal
forefinger.
“Oh yes—we feel that we _can_. We trust Mr. Pemberton fully, Morgan,”
Mr. Moreen pursued.
Pemberton wondered again if he might pretend not to understand; but
everything good gave way to the intensity of Morgan’s understanding. “Do
you mean he may take me to live with him for ever and ever?” cried the
boy. “May take me away, away, anywhere he likes?”
“For ever and ever? Comme vous-y-allez!” Mr. Moreen laughed indulgently.
“For as long as Mr. Pemberton may be so good.”
“We’ve struggled, we’ve suffered,” his wife went on; “but you’ve made him
so your own that we’ve already been through the worst of the sacrifice.”
Morgan had turned away from his father—he stood looking at Pemberton with
a light in his face. His sense of shame for their common humiliated
state had dropped; the case had another side—the thing was to clutch at
_that_. He had a moment of boyish joy, scarcely mitigated by the
reflexion that with this unexpected consecration of his hope—too sudden
and too violent; the turn taken was away from a _good_ boy’s book—the
“escape” was left on their hands. The boyish joy was there an instant,
and Pemberton was almost scared at the rush of gratitude and affection
that broke through his first abasement. When he stammered “My dear
fellow, what do you say to _that_?” how could one not say something
enthusiastic? But there was more need for courage at something else that
immediately followed and that made the lad sit down quietly on the
nearest chair. He had turned quite livid and had raised his hand to his
left side. They were all three looking at him, but Mrs. Moreen suddenly
bounded forward. “Ah his darling little heart!” she broke out; and this
time, on her knees before him and without respect for the idol, she
caught him ardently in her arms. “You walked him too far, you hurried
him too fast!” she hurled over her shoulder at Pemberton. Her son made
no protest, and the next instant, still holding him, she sprang up with
her face convulsed and with the terrified cry “Help, help! he’s going,
he’s gone!” Pemberton saw with equal horror, by Morgan’s own stricken
face, that he was beyond their wildest recall. He pulled him half out of
his mother’s hands, and for a moment, while they held him together, they
looked all their dismay into each other’s eyes, “He couldn’t stand it
with his weak organ,” said Pemberton—“the shock, the whole scene, the
violent emotion.”
“But I thought he _wanted_ to go to you!”, wailed Mrs. Moreen.
“I _told_ you he didn’t, my dear,” her husband made answer. Mr. Moreen
was trembling all over and was in his way as deeply affected as his wife.
But after the very first he took his bereavement as a man of the world.