It was early in the month of June, 1914. Henry Maple was in
Switzerland, not the tourist Switzerland which he hated, but the
pleasant southern slopes of the Jura overlooking the plain, with the
great mountains to the south.
He was happier than he had been for many years—happier even than at
Rackham. The recent fret of embarrassment, the almost daily shifts and
worries, were ugly memories already faded. In the early part of the
year he had gone back to England alone, and found Rackham already so
nicely set in order by his wealthy brother that he knew not whether to
be pleased at its renewal or pained at the change. But on the whole he
was more pleased; for after all, it was more like the Rackham of his
childhood.
The provision made during the months of his absence had been ample for
his very few needs. The boy was getting good teaching at Solothurn, and
learning French and German thoroughly; in the autumn he would go on to
the Public School his father and his grandfather had gone to; he might
spend part of the holidays with his uncle, but most (he hoped) here in
the Jura with himself. For they had grown very close together during
this little not unpleasant exile, and the lad was coming to have
something of a hero-worship for a father who was always tender to him,
always understanding, and seemed to know so very much and to be able to
show him all that was to be discovered in that new world of travel from
which they had just settled down. He was spending perhaps a quarter
of what he had spent in Sussex—he had even saved! And if William had
punctually paid himself his dues, he had as punctually remitted the
balance of the rental and dividends to the Bank in Berne.
There came the threat of war and the ultimatum to Servia, but Henry
Maple had read too much and knew too much of the past to believe that
war would come.
War came; and the crash had upon this refined, scholarly
far-too-detached character a strange effect of not unwelcome isolation.
His vague hopefulness was still permanent; he had never liked the
Germans; therefore he was sure that they would soon be beaten. He was
secure where he was, and victory would only be a matter of a few weeks.
The Marne confirmed his judgment. Victory went on being a matter of a
few weeks. But in the autumn came a letter from William, explaining why
the next remittance would be considerably smaller than the last. The
German dividend, of course, had failed. He must not mind if there was
a certain irregularity in the payments. Everything was at sixes and
sevens, and it was not at all easy to transfer money; but he could
manage it. He hoped Henry had saved a little, and that the occasional
inevitable delays and the necessary diminution of the total would be
bearable until peace should come—for William agreed it could not be
long delayed. As for the boy, he had better stay safe where he was—he
was getting excellent tuition, and it would not be too late to go on to
his school in England when peace came. He had seen the headmaster and
it would be all right—a few months wouldn’t matter. And after all, John
was barely fourteen.
Yes; Henry had saved a little, for the first time in his life (and how
proud of it he was!). The lessening of income was a nuisance, but it
hardly meant more than that the saving stopped, and that he had to take
a little more care of his very modest expenditure. He secretly rejoiced
at the suggestion that his son would not have to leave him permanently
just yet, or have to attempt to rejoin him during the holidays under
the very difficult conditions of war-time. Of course, John would go to
school a little late, but he comforted himself by remembering that,
after all, he would have the boy with him so much longer, and that was
a great delight. The delay postponed for the lad one great advantage,
but it gained him others. It was a very good thing for a young
Englishman to have known other countries and other languages well as a
boy, and things would right themselves somehow.
So it went on through the better part of ’fifteen. Remittances came
sufficiently often and of sufficient amount to keep things just barely
going; but no more. Victory was due almost any day—though, it’s true,
it was getting late. Towards the end of the year Henry Maple began
to feel he knew not what difference in his gentle vigour and in his
hopefulness. It was as though the world were losing its taste.
He put it down to the war—but it was not the war. 1916 went by, and
that internal enemy, whatever it was, took more and more of the man’s
life. Yet he put it down to nothing but the restrictions and fatigues
and anxieties of the time. The progress of the disease was slow, his
son hardly noticed it. To boys of his age a man of over fifty seems
very old, and that his father should now no longer be able to take the
long walks he had, or to read quite so long at a time, seemed to him
nothing but the natural process of age.
So it went on for two years more. Twice Henry had made the resolution
to get back home to see if—late as it was—the boy couldn’t be got to
his school. Twice he had abandoned that resolution. The increasing
difficulties of travel appalled him, and it must be admitted that a
stronger motive was his clinging to John’s companionship. His brother’s
urgent appeals to him not to move, the assurance that he was better
where he was, and sundry hints in the letters, hints which escaped
the censorship, that England might not be quite secure confirmed his
lethargy. His increasing weakness did the rest. He would wait till the
war was over—still confident that it would be over “almost any time
now,” and over in the right way.
* * * * *
On the 2nd May, 1918, not for the first time, but hardly for more than
the second time in Henry Maple’s life, he was pulled up sharply against
reality. A telegram came from Hilda, saying that William had died
suddenly—a letter would follow.
The shock fell on a man much nearer death than either he or his child
had imagined. He went down a further step in the descent out of this
life. He had been really fond of his brother; too grateful for a
generosity that had been very much more like an investment; and he was
bound—as such natures are—by the common memories of childhood.
But there was a good side even to that, and it put some light into the
mind of the dying man—for dying he now was, though slowly. After all,
John was the heir. William had died childless. John was the heir: not
only to dear Rackham and its impoverished fields, but to that solid
fortune which William had created—always subject, of course, to Hilda’s
life-rights: that was only just.
Henry honestly admitted to himself that he had never liked Hilda; she
was too loud for him. He used to say to himself, that she was not quite
a lady. But he would be just; of course she ought to have the usufruct
of the greater part as long as she lived. It was only right. Never
mind: John was the heir. Henry knew of himself, by this time, that he
was dying: but John was the heir, and all was well. The boy was nearly
eighteen, they must be thinking of the University soon: the war could
not go on for ever; and in a way it was a sort of providence, was it
not, that poor William should have gone when he did? And yet, no, that
was a thought he must put away. William would have looked after the
boy, anyhow.... It had better be Oriel. He did not know how Oriel stood
now, but he had been at Oriel himself, and that was reason enough.
Oriel it should be. He had everything arranged.
He made no doubt at all as to what William’s will would be, though he
had been too delicate to discuss it with him those five years before,
when they had last met; it would be the normal will of an enriched,
childless younger son standing thus in a landed family; there would be
the life interest for Hilda—perhaps large—but the rest of the income
would accumulate for the boy until he was of age; and meanwhile there
would be an allowance for his education. Perhaps Hilda would be made
guardian; he would regret it, but he did not mind. He could not think
long on these things: he could not concentrate. He awaited the papers.
Instead of the papers, only a couple of rare letters came through
from his sister-in-law, but all that late summer of 1918 went by,
with the war now at last manifestly closing, the turn of the tide,
the Armistice. At the end of the year Hilda herself, too soon after a
message announcing her coming, was in the sick man’s room.
She stayed exactly two days in the little house on the slope of the
Jura, just gracious to her nephew, just sufficiently affectionate to
her brother-in-law, and no more. Mrs. William Maple was a business
woman, and she had come to talk business.
And the business was this. William Maple had left everything to her
absolutely. That was the first point. Yes? (putting up her hand) surely
he did not suspect her? She would do her duty, and she knew what her
duty was. But so far as the legal terms of the will went, there it was.
That was how it stood. It was not her doing. She had known nothing
about it till it was read. Henry must remember it was her husband’s
money, and, for her part, she thought he had done rightly.
So much for that. Now about Rackham.
She changed her tone somewhat when she came to this. She was not
exactly ashamed, but she was just a trifle embarrassed. She owed it
to herself to do what she had to do, but she did not like doing it.
However, these things have to be done, and she was as brief as she was
clear.
Rackham was gone; hopelessly gone; William had spared his brother the
worry of too much detail. He had very generously provided much more,
really, than the difference between the rents and the interest could
possibly have covered; she had all the papers in due order, and she
had brought with her the accountancy document with a mass of other
papers, which her sick brother-in-law had neither the energy nor the
clearness of mind to follow. He listened patiently as she spoke—yet not
despairingly. He still had something of that hopefulness in him which
had been at once the curse and the alleviation of his not unhappy but
most unfortunate life: for such men trouble rather their descendants
than themselves.
Hilda made the position plain enough. If she had been—what she thanked
God she was not—a cold, calculating sort of person, there would have
been nothing for it but to sell Rackham; it was not entailed, and even
so, she would have lost thousands on the deal. But she was not like
that. She assured him she was not like that. She was willing to lose
and to take Rackham over as it stood in cancellation of all debts. She
was glad to make the sacrifice. She would not dream of disturbing his
illness with pressure of any kind. A will of his in her favour was one
way. If he disliked that, she wished to be generous; she would make it
a purchase. She would accept it against the debt.
Henry heard her, and he saw no way out.
“You will do the right thing by the boy,” he said. “He’s the only
child. Hilda, you will do the right thing, of course?”
She assured him of that; but what the right thing meant was left vague,
as everything had been left vague in Henry Maple’s life. It mattered
little anyhow, she thought; Rackham was hers to dispose of, and there
was still long life before her. The right thing by the boy meant, let
it be hoped, some regard for his proper upbringing: then, of course, he
would stand somehow vaguely at Rackham, so long as Rackham was their
home, as the heir. So let it stand at that.
* * * * *
When the end came (it was the foul winter of ’19 that killed him) it
came rapidly enough. But just before that end Henry Maple rallied
singularly in intelligence and decision. It was like that little return
of the flood in certain heavens before the final ebb. It was as though
he had a task to perform.
Such men postpone: but now there could be no postponement. He spoke to
the boy.
“John,” he said, “you know that I have been very ill, and you have
seen me getting worse.” He looked at the tall boy—the tall young man,
he seemed, for the first time, in his father’s eyes; strong in
his eighteen years—and understood how true it is that children are a
mitigation of the memory of death. Something far stronger than his own
youth was there: as tender, but more sturdy, and (he secretly hoped)
more obstinate.
[Illustration: _Aunt Hilda settling everything_]
“Yes, Papa,” said John. He took his father’s hand where it lay upon the
rug of the invalid chair, as a woman might have done. “But you will get
better.”
Henry Maple slightly shook his head.
“I have not told you—I have not allowed any of these good people here
to tell you—the doctor was quite right; he knew all about it from the
beginning, and he tells me that it is coming to the end.”
For the first time in his young life John Maple felt that shock of
emotion which suddenly whitens the face, and he knew that his heart
had stopped beating for the moment. He could not prevent a convulsive
clutch at his father’s hand. The old man looked at him with all the
affection of the past in his eyes.
“Sometimes, John dear,” he said, “I think I have not given you a fair
chance. Then I say to myself that, after all, it was the war, and we
were wiser to stay where we were. It has been very happy here.”
“It has, Papa,” said John.
“You have not been lonely, boy?”
“Never,” answered John, truthfully enough. “I like our friends here,
and the two Englishmen as much as any. Charles is going to Oxford next
term....” Then he stopped abruptly. It was amazing to him that he had
forgotten in those few words the blow that had fallen, and suddenly, in
spite of himself, he began to cry. His father stroked his hand.
“It does no harm to cry, boy. It’s all the better. You will feel it
less later. It had to come. But I have a great deal to tell you. You
know we have become much poorer?”
“Well, yes, of course, Papa. I don’t know much about these things, but
we have lacked nothing.”
“No, dear boy, but it is not Rackham. Do you remember Rackham well? You
must—you were over thirteen, and big for your age, when you left it.”
“Yes, Papa,” said John, still sobbing. “I remember Rackham!”
“Well, John, it is very difficult to say, but I will try and say it.
Technically—legally—I suppose that is the right word—Rackham is not
mine any more.”
The boy looked bewildered. That Rackham had been theirs, his father’s,
and his father’s father’s, and so on, and would be his in his turn,
this was a thing he had taken for granted as part of the universe. That
idea had no connotation of wealth in his mind. It was the very stuff
of his thoughts. The Maples and Rackham were one thing.
“It could not be helped. I did my best. You know, land went to
pieces.... Your uncle was very generous; he was, really. We should not
have been here, even, but for him. Honestly, John, your Aunt Hilda has
been generous too. I can’t deny that.”
“What do you mean by generous, Papa?” said the young man, a little
hardly.
“Why, my dear,” the other answered, sighing, “I owed her husband, and
therefore I owed her, after her husband died, more than I could pay;
more than there was anywhere. There was a German investment of your
grandfather’s—did you know that?”
“No, Papa.”
“Well, it’s gone, of course. I lost it by your uncle’s advice; he said
it was as safe as gold; but after all, he could not tell. No one could
tell.”
“Papa,” said John Maple, asking a question of this sort for the first
time in his life, prompted by he knew not what odd premonition of the
future, “what was the sum owed? How much was the money claimed? How
much would be needed to...?”
His father looked at him with a long look.
“You’re thinking of getting Rackham back?”
“Oh, no, Papa,” he said, startled. He had no conception of such
powers. He could not even imagine himself earning. “I only wondered.”
“Well, well,” said Henry Maple, falling back into his vagueness, “your
aunt will do the right thing. When I am gone, John, go straight back to
her.... You want to know ... what the sum was?”
“Oh, it doesn’t matter,” said John. But something fierce in his voice
belied the words.
“My dear boy, it is easily told. The first sum, you know, the actual
sum, I don’t mean the interest—was £10,000. One bit after another ...
it began during those bad years ... I saw corn sold at Lewes market
for 10s. a sack.... Anyhow, your uncle was really generous. He was,
indeed. He never pressed and the interest ran, without his ever saying
a word about it.... And then, at the end, when what with that, and some
expenses or other ...” he hesitated, as though his memory was working
ill ... “oh, yes, on the church, you know. Well, it wasn’t £20,000....
But your uncle was generous, boy, do believe it. He gave me the balance
making it up to £20,000. That is what we have had over and above some
of the rentals since we have been here.... There will be £300 or £400
for you to take in the bank when....” He would not say the words.
“It was £20,000 altogether?” said John.
“Yes,” said his father. “But, you know, when your aunt came she had all
the papers in order, and there’s no denying she had a right to a lot
more than that.”
The son was silent: he was growing older with every moment of this.
“_She_ was just, too, John, believe me. They kept the place very well.
It looked twice what it had been, though a little strange ... when I
went back there.... Anyhow, it’s hers now.”
“Hers?” said John. “Oh, don’t bother, Papa. Don’t trouble. I ought not
to have asked you.”
“Yes, dear boy, it had to be. Strictly, she could have made me sell.
But in her odd way she’s generous too, I think. Though I can’t pretend
that I ever....” He would not complete the sentence. But from that
moment the boy had an unpleasing image of the woman in his heart.
“It was her right, John, and she’ll do the right thing by you. She has
no children, and it’s bound to come to you. And, you know, you are to
go to Oriel? She’ll see to that. I make no doubt she’ll see to that.
Settle it with her. And your allowance, my dear boy ... and....”
He ceased, under a sudden spasm of extreme fatigue.
“I must stop now, boy.”
His son kissed him upon the forehead, and thought it oddly cold.
“It’s late,” the father added, almost in a whisper. “Tell Marie to come
up. I’ll get to bed.”
And next morning young John Maple, waking late, alarmed that his father
had not rung, went to his door, and knocked, and heard no answer. That
father was dead.
* * * * *
The English friends in the place told the lonely boy what he should
do, but he was already almost competent to act. Cut off though he
had been from the life of his kind, he had a singularly mature power
of decision, and it was nerved now by a strange, tenacious feeling
in which, as in a composite picture, were inextricably entwined the
beloved memory of the face which he would never see again for ever
(every detail of the funeral remained vivid all his life)—a profound
sense of wrong done him, and a vague, quite formless, but astonishingly
strong intention of _action_—what action he knew not, nor how it should
be performed, nor where. Even in one so young, sudden and overwhelming
grief adds to the vividness of life intolerably. By so much as he
dwelt—more than in real experience itself—upon his father’s voice,
gesture, everything—by so much was he acutely, violently sensitive to
harsh alien things.
His aunt had not come out for the funeral. She seemed to show an
intolerable indifference. Bad as the immediate post-war conditions
were, it was inexcusable. The letter he had received from her struck
him like ice; though that woman had never written unkindly in her life,
yet also she had never written kindly. The journey home in those
strange, interrupted days of the spring of ’19, with the delays and
the broken glass in the carriages and the sleepless nights, felt like
an approach to some doom. What would it be like? What would Rackham
be like? What would it have become? He had a fairly clear memory
of the place, though he had not seen it since he was a child—for
five-and-a-half years. His father had told him very vaguely and in a
few sentences that it “looked twice what it had been”; but he evidently
did not like to dwell on any description. He had pictured to himself
one or two consolations—meeting again with Corton, the old butler, and
the rest of them—he supposed they were all still there—the familiar odd
disjointed front of the house, half brick, half timber; the rank grass,
the neglected field beyond the rusty iron palings, the ill-kept lawn
which were for him not decay, but Home.
His first shock was at the station.
It was not the old brougham that met him, the old horse that he
remembered; it was a car, too smart for such a place; and the driver,
of all things in the world, a Frenchman, demobilised and (by some
strange snobbery of his aunt’s) smuggled in: imported by the favour of
some Parliamentarian friend of hers.
The drive was too short. The old ramshackle lodge was gone, and there
was, in its place, a Queen Anne cottage of the worst type. The drive
was twice as broad as in the old days. The gravel of it clean and new.
Then, at a turn, in a moment—the evening still light—he saw Rackham.
But was it Rackham? The front was all timber now. And no one could say
whether it was all new or all old. It seemed new, made falsely old. The
windows were old-new, anyhow, for they were criss-cross lattice. It
made him think of the few times he had seen stage scenery, when he had
gone with his father into Berne to the play.
Corton was there when the door opened. And for the first time in
so many days he rejoiced a moment in the warmth of the old man’s
greeting—but in what surroundings!
The old hall had gone; the next room had been knocked into it. He could
have believed it the lounge of an hotel for its garishness. There were
strange beams, artificially rough and artificially darkened. There were
pictures on the wall which he had never known. All looked new, most
abominably aping age.
He was in an ill mood by the time his aunt received him. But that first
evening things went quietly enough. She did her best—it was a poor
best, but she could do no better. She was precise, she was worldly, she
could not bear things to be casual and unfixed; and she was (wrongly)
convinced that the boy before her was but a repetition of his father—of
whose goodness she had felt nothing, for whose vagueness and slackness
she had had all the contempt of her kind.
I say, it was a poor best; and for a week—she thought it well to allow
a little time before any business should be talked—the tension grew.
The breaking-point came one evening after dinner in the
drawing-room—furnished after some antique fashion which John could not
understand and hated—when Hilda Maple, in a tone which seemed to him
rather like the commands of an official than converse with one’s kind,
began to give him her plans for his future. He was to have so much—not
an insufficient allowance—paid thus and thus; he must account for it.
She had seen the authorities at Oriel and the rooms he would have. She
approved of the rooms. Perhaps she would have preferred Christ Church,
but it was his poor, dear father’s wish (she said that as though his
father’s wish was necessarily less worthy than her own—after all, poor
Henry had been at Oriel, hadn’t he?).
John made no answer. He listened with increasing anger in his heart.
“They wanted you to read history,” she said, “but I said you would
rather read law. You would, I know. Your uncle would have said that. He
always said that he wished he had read law himself at the University.
He said that it would have saved him three years. And you know, John,
you will have to have a profession.”
John sat up in his chair and leaned forward slowly towards the April
fire.
“I shall not go to Oxford. I shall find some trade,” he said, in a
slow, determined voice.
“What do you mean?” answered his aunt sharply.
“What I say,” answered her nephew.
It was not a courteous beginning in her ears, for she felt she was
being enormously kind. After all, she owed him nothing; it was the
other way round; she had lost by him and his.
“What you say?” she cried, almost angrily. “What you say? I don’t
understand you!”
“I have got £352 left, Aunt Hilda,” he said, still refusing to meet her
eyes and looking straight into the fire.
“Well?” said she.
“It’s enough to turn round on,” he continued.
“Good heavens, boy! Do you understand that you’re not yet nineteen?
D’you think you are of age? What can one do with three ... really, I
don’t understand what you mean!”
But in that young mind a very firm determination was growing up. He
knew nothing whatever of the world. But he was prepared to learn it,
and to learn it alone, as soon as might be. He said no more. She
questioned, she spoke so strongly that with a woman less careful of
herself there would have been a storm. But she got no more out of him.
There followed two days in which neither said much. Hilda Maple did not
reproach herself, but she was a little anxious. She thought herself
capable of any situation: but this was new. On the third day John told
her of his determination.
He was going to London. He would give her his address the moment he had
one; he begged her to let him be. He was sure of himself.
There passed rapidly through his aunt’s mind the alternatives before
her, and before him. She saw them clearly, as was her talent, and she
made the decision, which was perhaps the only one she could have made.
He might go. She would not oppose his going. She was still determined
to do her duty in so far as he would meet her—she had a strong sense
of that—there was nothing petulant about the woman, nor any danger
of sudden moods; she had the virtues of the worldly, and their kind
of strength. It was a simple issue—either to use the law—which would
be odious, and would mean a permanent breach in little more than two
years’ time (for she rightly guessed the obstinacy of that deep-voiced,
clear-cut, sturdy figure) or simply to let him run the length of his
tether. She prophesied no disaster; she had the judgment to think that
upon the whole there would be none; though there was a hidden sneer in
her mind as she thought of what occupations this pig-headedness might
drive him to. She told him there would always be a home there when he
needed it; at heart she felt relieved of a burden.
John, on his side, felt a weight lifted too. And young as he was, he
moderated.
“I certainly don’t want to quarrel, Aunt Hilda,” he said. “And I cannot
help telling you that I am grateful to you. You see, when I have made
up my mind——” he talked like one ten years older, and anyone with
a better sense of humour than Hilda Maple could hardly have helped
smiling—“when I have made up my mind—I can’t even think of myself as
changing.”
So it was settled. They agreed for a fortnight’s interval in which he
should meet his father’s friends of the neighbourhood, and take some
advice as to where he might get rooms in town—as to what he should look
for then.
John Maple saw and heard and learnt much in that fortnight; and all
he saw and learnt and heard further hardened him in his anger and his
resolve.
For one thing, he discovered the odious word Catchings. It seems
that Rackham had been rebaptised “Rackham Catchings.” Disgusting
black-letter buffoonery!
He had first come across it in the village shop, where the young man
with whom he had played as a boy was all obsequiousness to the heir of
such wealth, and had said, bowing and smirking, over a parcel, “Shall I
send it up to the Catchings?”
“To what?” John had said sharply.
“To the Catchings, sir—Rackham Catchings? Your house, sir; leastways,
Mrs. Maple’s house.”
“Oh,” John had answered. “Yes, Rackham, of course. Where else should
you send it?” And he had turned abruptly out of the familiar door.
After that he noticed the odious thing in the address of letters
arriving. On the first day he had occasion to write a note he found
it on the paper heading. He saw in the _County News_ that some show
or other was to be opened a fortnight hence by Mrs. Maple of Rackham
Catchings. He was beginning to get it on the brain.
And certainly there had been plenty of Catchings added to Rackham. To
his mind, in those few days during which he still lingered, the new
sham timbered front was the Catchings and the beastly sham panelling
and sham beams of the new rooms, and the odious antique furniture, and
the silly Wardour Street pictures deliberately darkened—all these were
the Catchings. He went over them one by one, listing them in his mind,
and grimly delighted in the coming luxury, distant or near, of tearing
them out by the roots like a lot of bad teeth.
It was a state of things that did not make for better relations, though
John was careful to keep off any questions on the novelties, even on
the absurd novel name. He would learn its origin in due time. Meanwhile
upon anything that mattered he was stubbornly silent, and sufficiently
talkative on things that did not.
Aunt Hilda played her part well enough, determined as he was, and
successful as he was, in preventing an open quarrel. On the day when
she bade him good-bye at the door, and made him promise to write and
to return often to visit her, she rejoiced that she had not broken her
word to the dead man. She had done her best. And if anything went wrong
with John, why she was always there to help. But there is no denying
that she was relieved.
As for John, though he had left Rackham silent, he had fallen into a
new mood as the train approached London. Her friends and his father’s
had given him introductions and he had been told of good and reasonable
lodgings; and he had those few hundreds and scores of pounds in his
pocket, which are a fortune on the threshold of one’s twentieth year.
But quite unchanged in his heart as he travelled still stood the image
of the old Rackham, the real Rackham. And those hurried facts which his
father had passed over as though they were too painful for him—sums of
money: the real sum owed—£10,000, or say £12,000, £13,000 at the very
most—yet £20,000 claimed. Well, £20,000 it legally was and £20,000 he
would adhere to.
That £20,000 he would find, make, somehow, somewhere.
At his age £20,000 is like a million, but at his age, also, a million
may be found, made, somehow—somewhere. That £20,000 hardened in his
soul and became the permanent furniture of it.