I missed no opportunity of finding out every detail of young Henry
Gascoyne’s college career. From all accounts he must have been
surprisingly lazy, for no one ever spoke of him without giving him
credit for great abilities. He was at Magdalen, had just scraped
through his Mods at the end of his second year, and had then
apparently given up any idea of serious work, for in a few months his
devotion to pleasure and his defiance of college rules became so acute
that he was ignominiously sent down. A few days after this auspicious
ending to his career as a student, I met him riding in the
neighbourhood of his New Forest home with a most cheerful countenance,
and humming a tune. I was on my bicycle, and later I came across him
again in a by-lane down which I had turned with the object of smoking
a pipe. My appearance was quite unexpected and a little awkward. His
horse was tethered to a gate, and folded in his arms was a remarkably
pretty girl of the cottager class. I wondered if all the human
obstacles between myself and the Gascoyne earldom were engaged in
surreptitious love affairs.
The girl drew back hastily and hid her face, but not before I detected
that she had been crying. I was walking my bicycle, and was a little
annoyed that Henry Gascoyne had had such a good opportunity of seeing
me. He was evidently thoroughly wasting his time from the worldly
point of view, though I should probably have agreed—had he put the
matter to me—that he was making the best of his youth.
He was not exactly handsome, but he had a colouring which, despite his
dissipated life, gave assurance of clean blood. He was well made, and
had hair the colour of ripe corn. Notwithstanding, however, his
eminently healthy appearance his self-indulgence had absolutely no
limitations except such as were prescribed by good form, and he was
prepared to leap even this boundary if he could do so without danger
of being seen.
He had the misfortune to be cursed until seventy times seven with the
forgiveness of his friends; Harry Gascoyne was not a person they could
be angry with for long. He had been known to steal a man’s mistress
and yet retain his friendship, and as I saw him that summer morning,
booted and spurred, playing with the little cottage maiden as a cat
might have done with a mouse, the indulgence he managed to secure for
himself from his fellow-men was not difficult to understand.
I knew that his next move would be London. A young man with means and
no one to control his actions is as sure to gravitate towards London
as the lizard is to seek the sun. His sister, who should have been the
man, urged a profession, suggesting the army, but Harry Gascoyne
kicked at the mere idea of a life of routine and discipline. This much
I had gathered at the tiny little inn half a mile from the Gascoynes’
house, which was much frequented by the old man who combined for them
the office of indoor and outdoor factotum. The keeper of the
public-house itself had been placed in his present position by Harry
Gascoyne’s father, so that the establishment quite partook of the
character of a feudal outpost. In addition, the landlady had been cook
at the Grange.
“’E’ll never do no work, won’t Mr. ’Arry,” said the old factotum, as
he smoked his pipe on the wooden seat by the doorway and surveyed the
pines etched black against the crimson flush of the setting sun.
“Not ’e, not ’e,” agreed the landlord, taking in the prospect with as
little poetical refreshment as his companion.
They were very proud of being able to converse with intimate knowledge
of the gentlefolk living hard by, and conducted their conversation
like inferior actors, casting side glances at their audience to watch
the effect of the performance. Their audience was myself, seated on
the wooden bench on the other side of the doorway and regaling myself
with cold beef and pickles. Vanity has always kept me from drinking
alcohol in any form, otherwise I verily believe I might have been a
drunkard. I think, perhaps, that being unaccustomed to spirits, a
glass of strong brandy on a certain grim morning that draws nearer and
nearer will not be amiss.
But for this great matter of vanity, how many more drunkards would
there not be! Not many with a weakness for the bottle are restrained
by the immorality of voluntarily surrendering the gift of reason, or
the prospect of declining in the scale of prosperity. The first
objection appeals to them not at all, and the second is not
sufficiently apparent in its immediate effects for it to act as a
deterrent. An immediate coarsening of the features and a general
degradation of appearance are different matters. Few people care about
being repulsive, and to the real drunkard this fact soon becomes
apparent.
The two old men found the Gascoyne topic most absorbing, and talked
incessantly, till the crimson light behind the pines changed to a
faint opal, and the stars were alight in the heavens.
“’Is feyther, ’e never done no work,” said the landlord.
“That be true,” said the other, as if he were bearing witness to some
virtue of the late Mr. Gascoyne.
“’E spent a deal of money too,” said the landlord.
“’E wur generous with ’is money,” answered the other.
“And none ’ave cause to know that better’n we.”
“That’s true enough.”
“Miss Edith be more like ’er mother. A nice lady but a bit close.”
“It was as well one of ’em wur close or there wouldn’t ’ave been much
left.”
“True.”
There was a whole family history in these few remarks. A man born
rich, but a rake, and possibly a profligate—a long-suffering wife
enduring the slur of meanness in her efforts to save something from
the wreck. Indeed, it appeared a wonder that she should have saved so
much.
Evidently young Gascoyne took after his father. I gathered afterwards
that the reason there was anything in the nature of estate left was
because the money and house had been largely the property of Mr.
Gascoyne’s wife, and it was through her forethought that the boy and
girl had been left equally well off.
“A girl’s natural protector is her brother,” her husband had said when
he and his wife were discussing the matter. “It is natural the boy
should be better off than his sister. If it is otherwise it puts the
lad in a humiliating position.” Mrs. Gascoyne, however, did not think
so. She had absolute confidence in the girl’s affection for her
brother, whilst from early boyhood she had detected a singular
likeness between the lad and his father. Yet although she trusted the
girl, it was possible that she loved the boy more. Indeed, it was her
very love that caused her to make provision for him in his sister’s
affection and rectitude.
All this I learned by degrees.
I learned also that the girl I had seen in his arms was something
better than a cottager. She was the daughter of a blacksmith who was
fairly well-to-do, and it was a tribute to young Gascoyne’s courage
that she possessed not only a father, but half a dozen stalwart
brothers, who would most probably have killed him at sight could they
have witnessed the embrace that summer morning in the lane. As I sat
smoking my pipe in the perfect summer night, with the fragrant perfume
of pine and tobacco mingling, I heard someone coming along the narrow
strip of white road bordered with grass, whistling.
It was young Gascoyne on his way home.
It was evident that so far satiety had not begun to knock at the doors
of conscience, for a more careless, happy creature it would have been
impossible to imagine.
He paused outside the inn in the middle of the road, hesitating. I
think I gathered what was in his mind. He was trying to decide whether
he should go straight home to his sister, who was probably waiting for
him, or stay and drink more beer than he would have cared for her to
know of. Already the rose of his youth was coarsening slightly through
the habit he had inherited from his father.
He came to the opposite seat and sat down. He was the incarnation of
the born lounger. There was a careless ease in his carriage, and a
just perceptible touch of exaggerated fashion in his clothes, which
betrayed a pleasure in personal appearance, something beyond that
merely incidental to youth.
At first he barely noticed my presence on the other seat, mistaking me
in the gloom—for I was sitting in the shadow of the house—for some
village yokel having his fill before going on his way home to a
scolding wife. Gradually, however, it dawned upon him that the
occupant of the other bench was not one of the stray labourers who
patronised the place. As for myself, I was wondering whether I should
retire before he entered into conversation with me, or run the risk,
and see if matters turned out to my advantage.
“Quiet place, this,” he said, tentatively.
“I’m glad to say it is,” I answered, lazily.
Always answer lazily when a well-bred Englishman addresses you for the
first time. It impresses him.
Young Gascoyne gathered from my voice that he was presumably talking
to an equal. He became friendly.
“I suppose you mean,” he said, laughing, “that you came here for
quiet, and that you mean to get it.”
“No, I don’t quite mean that. So long as I can sleep where it is
quiet, I don’t care very much about absolute silence.”
“Then I may talk to you? The evenings are so beastly dull down here.”
I made a very shrewd guess at the way he had been spending the earlier
part of that evening. The possibility of six brothers to fight must
have been exciting enough, but then Harry Gascoyne belonged to the
class that wants amusing all the time.
“The stillness of the nights here is awful—especially depressing if
you’ve been used to keep it up till the small hours of the morning.”
“I should have thought that it would have been a welcome relief.”
“I don’t find it so.”
“I suppose you’re too young to feel the need of rest.”
He laughed. Evidently he thought it a good joke.
“Oh, I say, you’re not much older than I am, if at all. Of course I
can’t quite make out in this light, but——”
“I’ve seen a good deal,” I interrupted.
“You’ve come from town, haven’t you?”
“How did you guess?”
“Oh, one can always tell.”
“Sorry I look such a cockney.”
“Everybody who comes from town isn’t a cockney. It would be rather
awful if it were so.”
“Then how could you tell?”
“Oh, the best of people get a bit careless in the country. It’s
something in the way town men put on their clothes. Fellows who live
in the country will tell you that it isn’t quite good form to wear
your clothes too well, but that’s all rot. They’re jealous because
they know they’re slovenly.”
I liked the way he talked, and, finding me companionable, he showed
not the least desire to move. A new friend always interested me, so I
put away any unpleasant reflections as to our future relations, and
abandoned myself to the pleasure of a novel and pleasant
companionship. My cousin chattered on, and gradually, as will almost
invariably happen when two young men are talking together—the more
especially over the bowl—the eternal feminine dominated. He was
obviously neurotic, for all his healthy skin and philistine view of
life in general.
He talked of women incessantly, but without any reference to their
share in the higher things of life.
He hinted vaguely of the existence of the cottage maiden, but declined
to be drawn when I encouraged him to take me into his confidence.
“It’s a ripping thing to be in love; in fact, it’s the only thing that
reconciles me to stopping in this beastly hole.”
“Romance is life,” I murmured, lilting agreeably to the rhythm he
desired. “I don’t understand how people get on without it.”
“I suppose there comes a time when everyone wants to settle down,” he
said, echoing the usual concessions of profligate youth to the demands
of a period so very far ahead that there appears to be little
inconvenience in confiding all promises of reformation to its keeping.
“When we are tired,” I assented. “Perhaps that is the truest
definition of virtue, not to run any race with excesses we are not
equal to.”
“I say, that means a pretty long rope for young people, doesn’t it?”
“Yes, the rope will give out with youth, and then they can
conveniently hang themselves.”
“I say, for goodness sake don’t talk like that. I shan’t dare to walk
home.”
“Are you afraid of the dark?”
“Yes, I believe everybody is more or less.”
“You are frank, at any rate. What a time primeval man must have had of
it! I should say that when night fell these woods were alive with
ghosts. I suppose the man with muscle was the only possible
romanticist in those days. It was romance under its most healthy
aspect.”
“You mean that men had to fight for their women?”
“Exactly; so much muscle, so many women.”
“The women must have feasted on the sight they love best—men at each
other’s throats.”
“On the other hand, the woman must now and then have lost the weakling
on whom she had set her heart.”
From primeval woman we wandered by easy stages to woman, beflounced,
befrilled and perfumed—woman on the path to supremacy.
“I don’t know,” said young Gascoyne—the glamour of his cottage romance
upon him, “but I don’t think I care about the sophisticated sort. You
never know when they are telling the truth. There was a girl at
Oxford——”
Then followed a long story of a rather stupid romance of his college
days, ending with, “And that put the finishing touch, and I got sent
down.”
“Sent down?” I murmured casually, as if it were news.
“Yes, frightfully unfair. The other chap got off scot free on the
ground that he was a hard worker and that there was nothing against
him. Said he loved the girl and intended to marry her. Silly ass!”
Young Gascoyne asked me to lunch the next day. I refused, but he
announced his intention of walking over in the morning to fetch me.
“It’ll be quite a relief to have someone to talk to. I’ve got one or
two fellows coming down next week, but at present it’s deadly.”
He bade me good-night again and again but each time sat down and
commenced a new conversation.
“I’m coming up to town in the autumn to read for the Bar. Then I shall
have as good time as is possible for a man with no money.”
“What do you call no money?” I asked.
I knew the amount of his income to a penny.
“Eight hundred a year. A fellow can’t do much on that.”
I laughed outright. “Eight hundred a year is a fortune to a man with
no encumbrances, especially in town.”
“Well, I can’t exactly say I haven’t got any encumbrances. There is
this place to be looked after. Not that I do much towards it, I’m
bound to say. I should like to sell it, but my sister likes it and as
she lives here she does most of the keeping-up.”
I strolled down the road with him. He was rather the worse for the
amount he had drunk, and hiccoughed slightly as he affectionately bade
me good-night and assured me that he would be round the first thing in
the morning.
Leaning out of the little inn bedroom I considered the question of
accepting his invitation to lunch.
So far I had withheld my identity. If I went to the house on the
morrow I could no longer conceal the fact that I was a relation.
When they knew who I was, it might or it might not make my task more
difficult, and by this my action must be guided entirely.
I finally came to the decision that I could not expect to gain any
access to young Gascoyne unless I followed up the acquaintance.
It was quite possible that when he discovered who I was he might drop
me at once. I was a relation, certainly, but my comparatively humble
origin on my father’s side would not, I imagined, make me very
acceptable. Besides, I had gathered that Miss Gascoyne was very proud.
She was of good family on both sides, and the villagers spoke of her
as being cold and haughty. She hardly sounded like the kind of woman
who would forgive a Gascoyne a mésalliance. It was obvious that I must
make her brother thoroughly understand who I was before I accepted his
invitation. There was another point to be considered. Mr. Gascoyne was
their uncle, and I knew that his brother had not been on good terms
with him because he had married a tradesman’s daughter, although from
what I had seen of Mrs. Gascoyne, she had seemed to be quite fit to
take her place in any family. Mr. Gascoyne might be offended if I
became acquainted with his nephew and niece. I knew from one or two
chance remarks which he had let fall that he bitterly resented the
fact that they had never made any sign of wishing to become
reconciled. I was a little astonished at this, because, after all, Mr.
Gascoyne had money to leave, and I should not have thought that Harry
Gascoyne was the sort of youth to allow scruples born of family pride
to stand in the way of a possible access of riches. Perhaps I should
discover more in the morning, that is, if my very distant cousin did
not forget all about his invitation, given at a moment when he was not
quite sober.
By twelve o’clock he had not put in an appearance, and I concluded
that he had forgotten me. I waited till one, and was just about to ask
for my bill and ride away when he appeared.
He gave me a swift glance as if to satisfy himself that the favourable
opinion he had formed of me the evening before was correct. Apparently
the verdict was favourable, for he insisted on my going with him.
I pleaded my attire; but he would hear of no excuse.
“Well, perhaps you ought to know who I am.”
“You’re not a criminal, I suppose?”
“Not exactly, but I’m a cousin of yours.”
He looked at me blankly.
“A cousin?”
“Yes, we had a mutual great-great-grandfather—George Gascoyne. My name
is Israel Gascoyne Rank. My mother was a Gascoyne. My father was a
commercial traveller.”
“Oh, I say, that doesn’t matter.”
“I didn’t suppose it would, but all the same it’s just as well you
should know.”
He talked gaily enough as we went along. I watched him keenly, and
every now and then I noticed a shadow cross his face. I could make a
fair guess at the cause of it. He was wondering how he should tell his
sister that the offspring of a mésalliance in the family was her
guest. He would no doubt have liked to ask me to say nothing about it,
but was too well bred to do so. His chance came, however, when I
informed him that I was in his uncle’s office.
He turned and looked at me in amazement.
“I say, there’s plenty of time—let’s go down this path. It’s a longer
way round, but I want to talk to you. It’s all a bit sudden and
interesting, isn’t it?”
We turned down a side path where the white loose sand was strewn with
pine needles.
“You know,” said young Gascoyne, “my father and my uncle Gascoyne were
not on speaking terms.”
“I gathered as much,” I remarked.
“When my cousin committed suicide I wanted to write and say how sorry
I was, but my sister said she thought that it would look as if we were
after his money, so I didn’t.”
I began to wonder if perhaps the desire to throw a very poor relation
in the teeth of this independent young couple might not have had
something to do with the action of Mr. Gascoyne in taking me into his
business.
“My sister has curious ideas. She thinks that if a Gascoyne went into
business he should have changed his name.”
“There are heaps of stockbrokers of first-rate family.”
“Oh, I don’t agree with her in the least. I think it’s all rot, and I
should rather have liked to be taken up by Uncle Gascoyne, but once my
sister gets an idea into her head you can’t move her.”
“Perhaps she may not care about entertaining me.”
“Oh, she’ll be civil.”
“I’ll go back if you like,” I said. “I shan’t be offended. You could
not know who I was.”
He stood still and thought deeply.
“No,” he said, shortly, “come on, you’ll oblige me by doing so. It’s
beastly rude of me to have hesitated. I like you, cousin Israel. You
are quite different from anyone I have ever met.”
I laughed. “You forget. There is my point of view. Mr. Gascoyne may
not at all like my having struck up an acquaintance with you.”
“Well, you can always say you didn’t know.”
“What, and drop you?”
“Not that, old chap.” He linked his arm affectionately in mine. “We’ll
be great friends when I come to town, and damn it all, I’ll be friends
with Uncle Gascoyne whether my sister likes it or not.”
I was not particularly pleased at the idea of this attractive and
well-bred nephew getting into his uncle’s good books; at any rate, not
until Mr. Gascoyne had made me a definite promise as to my future.
I was very curious to see Miss Gascoyne. It was obvious that she was a
strong character. After all, if she were distant it could not do me
much harm, and I could leave soon after lunch.
We came upon the house suddenly. It was an old-fashioned place which
had evidently been added to by degrees. Unexpected gables arose at
every turn, and the red brick and ivy, clinging creeper, and gorgeous
trails of passion flower and purple clematis were exquisitely mellow.
The place looked fairly well kept considering the limited means of the
owners, and that very little of Harry Gascoyne’s eight hundred a year
went towards its upkeep.
“We haven’t any horses since the guv’nor died—at least, that is, I’ve
got a hack.”
“You were riding the first day I saw you.”
“When was that?”
I laughed. “I hope you won’t think my excellent memory bad taste, but
I think I saw your horse tethered to a gate one morning while you were
otherwise engaged.”
“By Jove! Was that you? I thought I had seen your face somewhere
before.”
“I wonder you did not recognise me.”
“I say, don’t breathe a word. It might get about. I can’t keep away
from her, she’s so awfully pretty.”
“Who is she?”
“Her father’s a blacksmith. You’d never think it to hear her speak,
though. I’ve often thought of taking her to town, but I should never
be able to show my face down here again.”
“It would be very awkward for your sister.”
“It would be awkward altogether.”
A figure in white appeared on the veranda. It was Edith Gascoyne,
tall, fair, quite beautiful.
She greeted me courteously, her brother looking on nervously the
while. He then hurried me off to get a brush down, and left me in his
bedroom murmuring that he would be back in a minute. I was perfectly
aware that he had gone to tell his sister who I was. In a few minutes
he returned and I saw at a glance that his short interview had not
been altogether pleasant. There was a determined look round his jaw
that was somewhat unusual, and I guessed that he had been putting his
foot down. If, however, he had been compelled to insist on his sister
welcoming me, she certainly showed none of the chagrin of defeat in
the perfect courtesy and queenliness with which she advanced to me
when I came down into the drawing-room.
“My brother says we are cousins, Mr. Rank.”
“Yes, it is strange my coming across him in this way, isn’t it?”
“Very. I do not know my Uncle Gascoyne, but we were extremely sorry to
hear of his son’s tragic death. You knew him?”
“Barely. I had spoken to him once.”
She waited as if expecting me to talk about young Gascoyne, but I held
my tongue.
“Was my uncle very much affected?”
“Terribly. I don’t think he or his wife will ever get over it.”
“I am afraid he must have thought me very heartless.” She evidently
felt somewhat guilty at their neglect.
We went in to lunch. Everything was wonderfully well done, and I could
see that she was determined to make the Grange as attractive as
possible to her brother, and to give him no reason for keeping away
from it. I recall that quiet Sunday lunch most vividly. The long, low
dining-room with its panelled walls hung with pictures of dead and
departed ancestors, the stretch of green lawn with the blue depth of
the pine-wood beyond. From somewhere came the scream of a peacock,
that perfect discord which only nature could have attempted. On my
left at the head of the table sat Miss Gascoyne, beautiful and white,
in a condition of stately and armed truce.
She managed most perfectly to import into her expression every now and
then something which might remotely have laid claim to being called a
smile. For the rest, she listened to me during the greater part of the
meal with every appearance of attention, answering me with no vulgar
or obvious intention of a desire to snub me, although her disapproval
of my presence was patent.
I made her laugh, however, as soon as I had discovered the vulnerable
point in her armour of gravity. Finally, I ventured an appeal to her
snobbery; for I could see that she was a snob, although in her it was
a vice trained and cultivated by breeding into what might have passed
before the world as a virtue.
I thought that I might venture to mention Hammerton, and did so, a
little fearful that she might give me to understand that it was high
presumption in me to consider myself in any way interested in the
feudal home of the Gascoynes.
She was, on the contrary, frankly interested.
“I have never been there,” she said. “I have only met the present Lord
Gascoyne once, when I was a child. My brother and I were invited to
his coming-of-age, but my mother had died only very shortly before,
and we did not care to go.”
I shrewdly guessed that had the decision been left to her brother he
might not have found his sincere grief at his mother’s loss an
insuperable bar to his enjoying himself at Hammerton.
I continued, watching her carefully, prepared to beat a hasty retreat
should she show the least sign of disapproval at the channel into
which I had directed the conversation.
“Directly I saw you to-day I noticed how very like you are to some of
the portraits at Hammerton. I was only there once, but I remember one
distinctly.”
“I should like to see the family pictures. Do you know Lord Gascoyne?”
“Oh, dear no, not at all. I went there quite as an excursionist. It
was rather quaint going round as a tripper. The remarks of the people
I was with were most amusing.”
The suspicion of a shadow crossed her face. She was not pleased to
think of the mob tramping through those ancestral halls for which she
had an almost Chinese reverence. I detected her disapproval, and
hastened to add:
“They were in no way irreverent; far from it, I think they were most
impressed.”
“I suppose,” she said, “it is good for that sort of people to be put
in mind of those who have been chiefly responsible for making England
what she is.”
I had considerable trouble to forbear smiling as I recalled the career
of some of the Gascoynes.
“That sort of people had something to do with the making of England.
It was not the aristocracy who used the bow and arrow at Crecy.”
We both turned with some surprise to young Gascoyne. It was a deeper
remark than he usually gave vent to.
“The people are nothing without their natural leaders,” Miss Gascoyne
replied.
“You think the aristocracy are the natural leaders of the people?”
“Surely.”
“It seems to me,” I answered, for I saw that it did not flatter her to
agree too readily, “that the people got very little done for them till
they chose leaders of their own.”
“Perhaps I ought to have said that the aristocracy are the natural
leaders of the nation, and not of the people. There is a difference,
is there not?”
I appreciated the concession in civility implied in the appeal. I was
evidently gaining ground.
“I quite see the distinction, and it is a true paradox.”
Young Gascoyne, who had seemed anxious and fearful during the first
part of the meal, feeling that I had conquered and entered the outer
works of at least acquaintanceship, grew happier, and said:
“Rank is afraid that Uncle Gascoyne will hardly be pleased to find
that he has made friends with us.”
“I am not afraid,” I interposed hastily, for I saw that Miss Gascoyne
had stiffened perceptibly.
“You said he was sure to be annoyed.”
“That is quite a different thing. He has been very kind to me, but he
can hardly expect to veto my acquaintances.” I was about to say
“friends,” but checked myself in time and added: “Besides, I don’t
think he would wish to do so.”
“He seems rather a jolly old chap from what you say.”
“He is everything that is generous.”
I made a point of always speaking enthusiastically of Mr. Gascoyne.
Someone was sure sooner or later to repeat what I said.
“We should be sorry to do anything to injure your prospects, Mr.
Rank.” Miss Gascoyne spoke with just the faintest suspicion of
stiffness.
“I don’t think that is likely,” I laughed.
After lunch she left us alone to smoke. Young Gascoyne wheeled two
armchairs to the window, which was delightfully shaded, and, giving me
an excellent cigar, seated himself opposite with a pipe, and began to
talk of his love affair. Since he had discovered that I knew of the
secret meetings he had been only too anxious to make a confidant of
me.
“She absolutely prevents my thinking of anything else. I ought to be
working, you know, but I can’t. Every time I settle down to do
anything I think of her—she’s in my head and she stops there. The
whole day long I wonder what she’s doing. She’s an absolute servant to
those great big lubberly brothers of hers. Of course, they are kind to
her in a way, but they want her to marry some lout out of the village.
I don’t know how it will end, I am sure.”
“Oh, these things have a way of deciding themselves.”
“Yes, but not always satisfactorily.”
“Why, you don’t think——?”
“No, I don’t mean that, at least I hope to goodness not.”
“You had better make up your mind to forget her and come to town.”
“I couldn’t do it. It isn’t in me. It would take a will of iron. If my
sister were a man she would do it, but then Edith couldn’t have fallen
in love with anybody beneath her.”
This was so obviously true that it required no comment.
I was busy thinking while young Gascoyne babbled on, quite happy that
he had a listener. I reflected what a very useless person he was in
the world. He was quite right when he accused himself of a lack of
will. The probability was that at forty he would be a confirmed toper.
He was a pleasant companion enough, but had evidently as little
capacity for true friendship as for anything else.
His sudden affection for me was purely fictitious. I was the nearest
thing to hand, and an ordinarily amusing companion was a godsend amid
his present dullness. In town he would have seen nothing of me at all,
unless I could contribute to the gaiety of his life; in which case he
would no doubt give me a proportionate amount of his attention. The
poor girl whom he had honoured with his affection was likely to have a
very bad time of it should any mischief accrue. He was lovable enough
in his way, but he was of no particular value to mankind in general.
He was living in danger of at least a very sound thrashing from the
girl’s brothers if not from her village suitor, and it was most
probable that should matters become acute he would—although not
deficient in courage—leave the situation to settle itself without him,
and the girl to take care of herself. Perhaps the brothers might not
find out; young Gascoyne might ride away; the girl might dry her eyes
and in time wed her village admirer, who would remain in ignorance of
the guilty little episode in her life. If the brothers found out, were
they the sort of men likely to take a violent revenge, and if they
were not was the lover such a man? It was worth ascertaining. I
decided to spend the next week-end at the village where the girl and
her relations lived.
Later, young Gascoyne showed me over the Grange. There was not very
much to see. It was a fairly roomy house, commenced in the Tudor
style, and completed, or rather building operations had ceased, in the
early Victorian. The latter age was marked by a hideous oblong, stucco
wing devoted to servants and kitchen premises. Every other age had
given the building something fairly picturesque, but the early
Victorian era had given something worthy of itself. The semicircular
porch with its white columns, unmistakably Carolian in character; the
Elizabethan red brick and mullioned panes, the Georgian drawing-room,
and low-ceilinged hall, all made a delightful jumble, and hardly
deserved young Gascoyne’s contemptuous remark that it was a
‘ramshackle old place,’ true in actual fact as such description was.
The room which had been his father’s sanctum was now his; a delightful
room with a south aspect and the only view which was not to a certain
extent impeded by trees. Through the half open door of Miss Gascoyne’s
bedroom I caught a glimpse of a prie Dieu and a large crucifix above
it. Evidently Miss Gascoyne was High Church and devotional.
We joined her in the garden for tea. The sun was yellowing through the
pines, with here and there a faint suggestion of evening crimson, ere
I rose and said good-bye. She evidently liked me, for she asked me to
come again, and seconded her brother when he pressed me to run down
from Saturday till Monday whenever I liked. For a Hebrew youth to have
travelled so far in Miss Gascoyne’s estimation in so short a time was
an achievement.
Young Gascoyne walked back as far as the inn with me, talking volubly
of when we should meet again and of what a lot we were to see of each
other in town. I rode back thinking a good deal of Miss Gascoyne. I
hold—what to the female mind is a heresy—that a man may be in love
with half a dozen women at once.
Miss Gascoyne occupied my thoughts a great deal after I returned to
town, and for the first few days I even thought that Sibella had been
superseded. This I found not to be the case after a visit paid to the
Hallwards, in the course of which Lionel Holland succeeded in rousing
my jealousy to a high pitch by his ostentatious airs of
proprietorship. I was in love with two women: with Sibella
ecstatically as always, and with Miss Gascoyne. I was vain enough to
think that the rapid change in the latter’s demeanour towards me had
been in spite of herself. There was between us a decided sympathy. She
stood for all that, socially, I most admired.
My taste was always catholic, and her coldness and reserve attracted
me immeasurably, although I was also a slave to Sibella’s triviality
and butterfly gaiety. The picture in each case was complete, the
composition harmonious; and from the point of view of charm that is
everything. Dull people may derive credit from their very dullness if
they be consistent and hold their tongues; consistency achieves
character and interest, but an ignoble desire to imitate some
garrulous acquaintance will inevitably lead to disaster. In fact,
social prominence can only be achieved by the expression of the self
in its own peculiar way.
Miss Gascoyne’s stately, lily-like personality had also a peculiar
attraction for my Jewish blood. Her curiously vivid auburn hair, the
almost marble pallor of her skin, the enormous dark blue eyes, full of
a peaceful queenliness, were so alien to my own type as to subjugate
the opposite in me. In my polygamous scheme I could see her nowhere
except on the throne itself. Sibella might have the jewels, Edith
Gascoyne would inevitably demand a share of real power. Miss Gascoyne
made me proud to have a half right to the name she bore. She inspired
me with the same feeling of pride in relationship as the turrets and
battlements of Hammerton had done. For some days I indulged in dreams
in which she and I walked hand in hand through the social pageant,
eminently the right people in the right place.
I said nothing that week to Mr. Gascoyne of my having made the
acquaintance of his nephew and niece. I waited to see how matters
progressed. As I thought things over I came to the conclusion that he
would dislike it more than I had at first imagined. After all, it was
not he who had been insulted, it was his wife, and that was the
difficult thing to forgive. The young Gascoynes’ opportunity had been
their cousin’s death. It was undoubtedly an aggravation of the
estrangement that they seemed to have completely ignored the event.
I went down to Copsley, the village where Henry Gascoyne’s romance
dwelt, to reconnoitre. It was a fair-sized place, a village in the
proper sense of the word, and not a mere hamlet.
Janet Gray’s father was the blacksmith of the place, and he and two of
his sons drove a thriving trade. Three more of his sons were well
placed in the neighbourhood, and the sixth was a soldier, a lance
corporal. Janet and her mother kept house, and from all that I could
hear a happier or better managed establishment it would have been
impossible to find. There was something patriarchal in the way the old
blacksmith ruled his household. I have seen him, when his younger son
proved rebellious, enforce his decree with a strong, effective clout.
He was what would be described as an honest, God-fearing man; that is
to say, he lived strictly within the conventions of his class, and
would have scouted the idea that the rights and wrongs of almost every
subject on earth were not to be easily grasped by a well-intentioned
mind.
His daughter was his joy and delight. He was proud of her looks, which
like those of all of his children were out of the common. When he
stood on Sunday evening in church surrounded by his family, a more
moving spectacle of physical health and primal beauty it would have
been difficult to imagine.
He was also proud of his daughter’s housekeeping capabilities, and not
only he, but his wife and sons, looked forward with dismay to the time
when some stalwart lover would claim her. Mrs. Gray almost hoped that
her sons would marry and settle down first in order to avoid the
desecration of her household arrangements by the unheard-of innovation
of a servant.
Mrs. Gray had a sister, a spinster some years older than herself, who,
having entered the service of the Gascoynes many years before, had
never left it, but had become an institution in the family. The two
sisters were devoted, and it had long been their habit to see each
other at least once a week. Sometimes Janet accompanied her mother,
and when Mrs. Gray was unable to go, for she suffered somewhat from
rheumatism, her daughter went alone.
It was on one of these expeditions that she had met young Gascoyne. He
had related the circumstances to me a dozen times.
“She was coming back to the station through the pine-trees, and I was
struck all of a heap, bowled over first time. I don’t know how it all
came about, but we talked about her aunt. It was something to go on
with. It took me a long time to persuade her to meet me, though.”
Judging by the character and determination in the faces of old Gray
and his sons, it did not appear that the man who trifled with their
womankind would have a very pleasant time of it. It was the identity
of her rustic suitor, however, that I was anxious to discover. I was
not long in doing so, for he haunted the Gray threshold. Personally,
had I been in Janet’s place, I should not have hesitated a moment
between the magnificent specimen of manhood who was anxious to make
her his wife, and the spoilt and vicious youth, who, if her ruin could
have been accomplished with safety, would have regarded it as a mere
pleasurable and excusable incident in his life.
Nat Holway was in every way a splendid fellow. His occasional violence
of temper was a part of the general strenuousness of his character. He
was slowly conquering this failing, however, and was likely to make
the same sort of man as Janet’s father. He had never known any other
sweetheart. It had, at least as he thought, been an understood thing
between them since they were children. He delayed speaking just a
little too long, and it was after young Gascoyne had appeared on the
scene that he asked her to be his wife. To his amazement and the no
little surprise of her friends she refused him. Ignorant of the
existence of Harry Gascoyne in his relation to Janet, they looked
around vainly for a cause.
Was there anybody else in the village? True, young Tom Applin had come
round with an obviously serious intent, but Janet had very soon shown
him that she did not care for him. There were others, but, as she had
never encouraged them in any way whatever, they did not suggest
themselves as a reason for her refusal of Nat Holway. The only excuse
she would give was that she did not care sufficiently about Nat to
marry him.
“But, Janet, you’ve always given us to understand——” commenced Mrs.
Gray.
“Oh, but that was when we were children.”
“No, Janet, that is not quite true. It’s not so long ago that I was
talking of you both settling down, and it didn’t seem but what you
favoured the idea.”
Janet did not answer, but shut herself in her room and, unlocking a
drawer, took out of it a little jewelled trinket which young Gascoyne
had given her, and kissing it passionately, burst into a flood of
tears. The poor girl vaguely realised, if she refused to confess as
much to herself, that her romance was doomed to a dismal ending.
Though she loved Harry Gascoyne she had some dim perception that the
glitter of his charm was largely pinchbeck. She also realised with
true feminine instinct that she had thrown away the only weapon with
which she might have won her battle, and induced him to raise her to
his position by marriage. She was already terrified of what might
happen, and lay awake at nights possessed by the fear of an
approaching presence. She was haunted by the singing of the wind in
the pine-wood where they had first kissed, and stronger and stronger
through the sad, sweet music came the wailing of an infant.
Young Gascoyne was almost as frightened as she at what he had done,
and his true character asserted itself. He positively throbbed with
selfishness. He poured out his woes to me at length. He would begin
with some stereotyped recognition of the girl’s position, thrown in
for the sake of mere decency, but after that it was all about the
awkwardness of the affair as it would affect himself.
“I’m not a coward, old chap, and I don’t mind a good stand-up fight. I
can take a licking as well as any other man, and bear no grudge.”
This I doubted, and set it down as merely the boastful jargon learnt
at a public school.
“But I don’t quite see having to fight the whole lot of them.”
“They look awkward customers.”
“Why, have you seen them?”
I had made a slip. I had not informed him of my visit to Copsley.
“I was passing through on my bicycle, and I just thought I would have
a look in at the blacksmith’s shop.”
“My sister will never forgive me. You see, Janet is old nurse’s niece.
By Jove, it is a muddle.”
He spoke as if the whole affair were not of his doing and as if he
were the victim of a conspiracy.
It was the occasion of my spending a week-end at the Grange.
He discussed many ways of solving the difficulty.
“I shall take her away. There’s nothing else to be done.”
“You will be followed.”
“Not if we go abroad. That’ll be the thing. Edith will come round in
time. I shouldn’t wonder, once Janet were away from that common lot,
if she didn’t improve till one wouldn’t mind taking her anywhere.”
I was surprised to find that he was in earnest about eloping, but his
was not a nature to look very far ahead, and he talked of being able
to get along at some quiet foreign town as if he were not the sort of
person in whom such an existence would bring out all the worst
qualities. At any rate, I was determined to run no risks. I had made
too many inquiries about Nat Holway not to be able to predict with
some certainty what he would do if he discovered the truth.
I posted an anonymous letter from the next village to Copsley written
in an illiterate scrawl. It informed him of Janet’s stolen meetings,
and hinted the worst.