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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/77826-0.txt b/77826-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ae8b11e --- /dev/null +++ b/77826-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,12687 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77826 *** + + + + + BELCHAMBER + + + + + BELCHAMBER + + BY + HOWARD OVERING STURGIS + + AUTHOR OF + ‘TIM,’ ‘ALL THAT WAS POSSIBLE’ + + + Westminster + ARCHIBALD CONSTABLE + AND COMPANY, LTD. + + 1904 + + + + + Edinburgh: T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to His Majesty + + + + + TO + WILLIAM HAYNES SMITH + + + + +CHAPTER I + + +Belchamber is one of the most beautiful places in England. The name, if +not the house, dates from days when Norman-French was the polite +language of our kings; the reigning monarch, some early Henry or Edward, +alighting for the night, as was the habit of reigning monarchs, at the +house of his vassal, and having been especially pleased with something +about the apartment prepared for his use, is said to have remarked in +high good humour, ‘_Pardie! tu as là une belle chambre_.’ Something of +old-world scandal hung about the legend (which in its authorised form is +just a little bare and dull for the nucleus round which gathered the +fortunes of a noble family), tales of frail beauty not insensible to a +royal lover, of feudal complaisance, not to be more overtly acknowledged +than by this gracious allusion to the _belle chambre_, from which the +domain was to take its name. + +The house, as the humblest tourist may see for himself on certain days +of the week, is an exquisite Jacobean structure borrowing largely from +the Renaissance palaces of Italy, yet with a certain solid British +homeliness about it, that specially fits it for its surroundings, the +green undulations of an English park. The view from the front is +sufficiently extended, and behind it, the various Dutch and Italian +gardens are interspersed with water-works and statues like a miniature +Versailles. Great oaks and ashes and Spanish chestnuts stand in the +park, and four large avenues of elms draw their straight lines across it +to the four points of the compass. The little river, which in the woods +and meadows is a natural shallow trout-stream with loosestrife and +ragged robin fringing its banks, is pressed in the gardens into many +curious uses--fountains and cascades, and oblong rectangular fish-ponds, +where old carp and goldfish circle in and out among the stalks of +foreign water-lilies sunk in hampers. The huge lawn behind the house is +shaded by cedars of Lebanon, that are such a characteristic feature of +Restoration places, and there is one that disputes with the famous tree +at Addington, and I dare say with half a dozen others, the doubtful +glory of being the oldest cedar in England. + +Of the thousands of acres of which the property consists, the farms and +manorial rights, the livings in the gift of the owner, it is not +necessary that I should give a catalogue; it is not the business of the +novelist to value for probate, but if possible to convey a vague but +imposing impression of wealth and position. Suffice it that the Lord of +Belchamber is ground-landlord of the greater part of three large +parishes, and that in the county of his residence alone no less than +three beneficed clergymen sit in their comfortable rectories by the +grace of a sickly young man of no very definite religious beliefs, +without counting his lordship’s domestic chaplain, who ministers to the +spiritual needs of a small army of in-and out-door servants and their +families in the little tame church that is, so to speak, tethered on the +lawn. + +Belchamber has suffered but little at the hands of restorers; the family +have always taken a sort of lazy pride in the beautiful house, which +luckily seldom rose to the point of desiring to improve it. The third +marquis, to be sure, had some formidable projects for remodelling the +building, of which the plans remain in a great Italian cabinet in the +hall; but his two favourite pursuits combined to save his home, for he +lost so much money at cards that even he drew back before the large +expense involved, and while he still hesitated, a bad fall out hunting +cut short his building projects with his life. That was more than a +hundred years ago, when gambling and unpaid debts were indispensable +parts of the ideal of a gentleman. + +If Charles James, third Marquis and eighth Earl of Belchamber, lost +large sums at the club gaming-tables when he came up to the House of +Lords, and died as he had lived, in the hunting-field, his successor, +George Frederick Augustus, the fourth marquis, in no way fell short of +his respected parent’s example. He played as high, drank as deep, and +rode as hard as his father, while he imported into his excesses just +that flavour of vulgarity which the bucks of the Regency copied so +successfully from their master and pattern. He kept two packs of hounds, +and several establishments in addition to his acknowledged and +legitimate residence; and if he did not break his own neck, he at least +broke his wife’s heart, not to mention such unconsidered trifles as his +word, and a large quantity of beautiful old china, when in liquor. +Belchamber saw him but little; he preferred London and Brighton, and one +of his smaller places which was in a better hunting-country; and here +once more the very vices of its owners seemed to conduce to the +preservation of the beautiful house and its treasures. The books, the +celebrated Vandykes, and the painted ceilings suffered somewhat from +want of fires; but neglect has never been so fatal to works of art as +attention, and if the pictures cracked and faded a little, at least they +were not burnt, or repainted, or buried under a deposit of +coachbuilder’s varnish. + +To the poor lady, who was occasionally brought from the seclusion of her +lord’s hunting-quarters to be exhibited at a drawing-room in the family +emeralds and diamonds, a son and heir was born, who received in common +with so many of the children of that date the names of Arthur Wellesley. +This was the fifth marquis and tenth earl, and the grandfather of the +hero of this book. Marquis Arthur differed from his father and +grandfather only in his mode of getting rid of money. If he played less, +he made up for it by losing large sums on the turf, and by a generally +luxurious and extravagant style of living. He was a notorious beauty, +and had a straight nose, and an immense bushy pair of whiskers, which +were fatal to the peace of mind of great numbers of the fair sex; he was +inordinately vain, and a woman had only to tell him she was in love with +him, and that she had never seen a man with such small feet, to get +anything she wanted out of him. He frittered away more money over +bouquets and scent and ugly jewellery than his father and grandfather +had lost in their longest nights at Crockford’s. His triumphs over +female virtue were so numerous and notorious that many thought he would +never give a hostage to fortune in the shape of a wife of his own. But +when the nets of the fowler had been spread for many years in the sight +of this volatile bird of gay plumage, he surprised every one by bringing +home a bride from across the Channel. + +If report said true, this beautiful young woman revenged the wrongs of +her sex, and of many husbands, most thoroughly on her whiskered lord, +who was not her master. At first it was impossible to Lord Charmington +(as he then was) to believe that any woman he honoured with his +affection could fail to be madly in love with him; then as the +conviction grew upon him (and ideas came to him slowly), there were +furious scenes of recrimination, anger, and jealousy on his side, and +cold contempt and indifference on hers. More than once they were within +a short distance of the divorce court; but his vanity never could be +reconciled to the thought of appearing _coram populo_ in the character +which to him seemed always the most ludicrous and humiliating possible. +His wife soon discovered this weakness, and traded on it freely. If she +was not a very clever woman, he was a more than ordinarily stupid man, +so that he learned to dread her tongue almost as much as the ridicule +that must attach to him in case of a scandal. He also began to take a +certain pride in her position both in London and Paris. She was +certainly for many years one of the most conspicuous figures in the +society of both capitals; and if the more particular and old-fashioned +ladies held up their hands in horror at the stories told of her, she had +a large share in introducing a different standard of morals for the +younger set, in which she was always a leader. When no longer in her +first youth, she was one of the galaxy of beautiful women who adorned +the Second Empire, and though at the severer Court of St. James she was +less smiled upon, there were not wanting circles in the land of her +adoption hardly less august, and infinitely more congenial, where she +was not only received, but highly popular. + +Through long years which converted her contemporaries into invalids or +grandmothers, in which her husband grew fat and coarse, and took to +drink and low company, in which children were born to her, two of whom +died in infancy, in which her eldest son and one daughter grew up and +married, in which her grandsons were born, and her son died, she +remained always ‘the beautiful Lady Belchamber,’ always in the world, +and of the world, immutably ‘gay,’ and fast, and frivolous, following +the same dreary round of fashionable existence year in and year out, +bedizened in jewels not always virtuously come by, dressed and +head-dressed in the latest mode, and absorbed in the newest craze or +pastime with women who might have been her daughters, and men who were +sometimes the sons of her early lovers. As her natural charms faded, +they were of course replaced by art; the raven locks that had been +admired by Louis Philippe at first only took on an inkier black, then +grew a little brown, and passed through dull burnished copper to a rich +golden red, while the cream-white skin grew more and more rosy in +sympathy. Gradually, as fashion artfully disarranged the hair of its +votaries, and the wig-makers’ art developed and improved, so much of her +ladyship’s elaborate coiffure came to be false, that it could be almost +any colour she chose without inconvenience, and was even known to vary +with her gowns. + +As for her husband, the flattery of women being as the breath of his +nostrils, it was only natural that the older and less attractive he +became, the lower he went in the social scale in search of it. The poor +little feet that had stepped so nimbly on the hearts of many frail ones, +began to spread in the vain attempt to support the Silenus-like body, +and, cramped in tight boots, carried their tottering owner into very +queer byways indeed. The beautiful nose swelled and grew purple, the +Hyperean curls, much thinned at the temples, were still carefully oiled +and arranged, and with the famous whiskers became more hyacinthine in +hue with each advancing year. When I was a young man, this poor, +foolish, wicked old marquis was still strutting about Pall Mall, and +ogling the women, with a few other bucks of his own generation, padded, +laced, and dyed. I dare say there are bad old men still, but they are +bald, and have grey beards, and are somehow not so ridiculous as Lord +Belchamber and his peers were. He and his wife met but seldom, and +though he sometimes grew quite eloquent over the way she treated him, he +was not really unhappy; after all, he was leading just the same life he +always had, and if his companions were coarser and commoner, his taste +had coarsened too, and the dull, bloodshot eyes had lost their keenness +of vision and grown less critical. He outlived his son, and did not die +till after the Franco-Prussian war. Almost the only remark of a purely +sentimental nature he was ever known to make was on the subject of the +siege of Paris and the fall of the Empire. ‘Poor old Paris!’ he said. +‘I’ve had many a good time in Paris, though I did meet my wife there, +damn her! but I shouldn’t care to go there again, hanged if I should, +with everything so changed, and all that----’ + +We shall have nothing more to do with him in this work, except to bury +him, which, by and by, we will do with befitting pomp. Of direct +influence he never had the smallest on any living creature, but who +shall say what mysterious legacy of evil tendencies he may have +bequeathed to his descendants? The question of heredity is very +fashionable just now, but remains not a little obscure; and perhaps it +is safer in the interests of morality that we should not know too +exactly how little responsibility we have for our bad actions, and how +much we can shuffle off on to our grandfathers and grandmothers. Whether +it was the result of heredity or education, or a mixture of the two, the +children of such a couple did not start in life with the best chance of +being quiet, reputable people, and the two who survived the disorders of +infancy were left to bring themselves up very much as fortune willed. +Lady Eva was a very pretty girl who seldom saw her mother, left +entirely to French maids and governesses, and mainly educated on the +novels of that country, which she abstracted from her mother’s boudoir +and read on the sly, generally with the connivance of her instructress, +on condition that she passed them on to her. Lady Belchamber used +sometimes to see this official, when she thought of it, for five minutes +while her hair was being done. + +‘Lady Eva se comporte bien?’ + +‘Parfaitement, ma’m la marquise.’ + +‘Qu’est-ce qu’elle apprend? voyons.’ + +‘Lady Eva étudie, en ce moment, comme géographie, l’Asie orientale, la +Chine, le Japon; comme histoire, le dix-septième siècle, les guerres de +Louis XIV., la guerre civile en Angleterre, la restauration de Charles +II.; comme langues, Italien, _I Promessi Sposi_, Allemand, la _Maria +Stuart_ de Schiller, Français, _Le Cid_ de Corneille; comme +mathématique----’ + +‘Assez, assez! ne faites pas trop étudier cette p’tite, vous en ferez un +bas bleu. Elle va bien?’ + +‘Parfaitement, milady. Désirez-vous voir Lady Eva?’ + +‘Pas ce soir; je n’ai pas le temps.’ + +Once, some one asked the little girl to give her mother a message. ‘I +will write to her,’ the child said, ‘it will be quicker.’ They were +living in the same house. + +When in due course she was presented and made her appearance in the +world, she was very much admired. At nineteen she was engaged to two men +simultaneously, and got out of the difficulty by running away with a +third, a rather shady hanger-on of her father, called Captain Morland, +who not long afterwards had to disappear from society, owing to an +unfortunate difficulty that he experienced in confining himself to the +strict laws of the game, at cards. Thenceforth they lived mostly abroad, +and little was heard of them. Lady Belchamber, who was not an unkind +woman, used to write to her daughter sometimes, and send her old dresses +and hats; and the old lord, when on the continent, would have the +couple to live with him, and give them money. He had a sneaking kindness +for Morland, which he never quite got over, finding him a congenial +companion; and his son-in-law was very patient in listening to his +tender confidences. Lord Charmington, who was two years older than his +sister, had the better chance that comes to boys of being sent away to +school. Unfortunately for him, the one thing he did not inherit from his +parents was the naturally strong constitution that was common to them +both. Lady Belchamber, though herself a marvel of strength and vitality, +came of an extremely old family, of which the blood, enfeebled by much +marrying of cousins, had had time to run very thin indeed; and though +the Chambers stock was originally strong and healthy, the excesses of +the last three bearers of the title had not tended to the transmission +of a fine physique to their descendants. + +From his childhood poor Charmington was a rickety, feeble lad, and more +than once came within a tittle of sharing the fate of his younger +brothers, instead of surviving to be the father of our hero, in which +case this book would never have been written. If he could have stayed +out his time at Eton, it might have done much for him, for he was not +without some naturally kindly qualities, though he was as stupid as an +owl, and never could learn to spell the simplest words. In those days +there existed no ruthless law of superannuation, and he might have +remained contentedly in fourth form till he was nineteen, had it not +been for his unfortunate health: he was always ill, and always having to +be taken away and sent to the seaside, or abroad, in the care of any one +who could be got to go and look after him. This employment fell as often +as not to his future brother-in-law, Captain Morland, than whom a worse +companion for a growing lad could hardly be found, and where he could +be, Morland found him, and introduced him to his charge. By the time he +was twenty, the lad was an accomplished little rip, gambler, and +spendthrift, and had materially impaired his already feeble +constitution. He was bought a commission in the household cavalry, but +at the end of a few years, having come to the end of everything--health, +money, credit, and the limits of his father’s patience--he was +thenceforward lost to the service of his country. + +After a severe hæmorrhage of the lungs, he was ordered to winter abroad, +and by way of retrenching and building up his strength, he selected Nice +as a quiet inexpensive winter resort, with the chance of a little +congenial amusement, in the nearness of the tables at Monte Carlo. Here +he found his sister and her husband (whose little trouble at the club +had befallen the year before) hanging on to the fringe of society. But +here, too, he encountered that veteran statesman, the Earl of Firth, who +with his wife and two daughters was recruiting his strength after his +retirement from public life at a villa in the neighbourhood. The +Morlands were established at Monaco, where the Firth party never set +foot, so Charmington had no difficulty in keeping his disreputable +brother-in-law out of sight of his new acquaintances. He began to +frequent the villa of the old Scottish peer with quite surprising +assiduity. Just what there was in either Lady Sarah Pagley or her +surroundings to attract a man like Charmington will always remain a +mystery. Perhaps the jaded, invalid young man found something of the +home atmosphere he had never known among these prosy folk; perhaps the +blameless dulness of their lives was rather restful to him; or it may be +that he took refuge with them from Morland’s incessant appeals for the +money of which he himself was so sorely in need. It has been suggested +that he paid court to Lady Sarah from mercenary motives, but to a man of +his tastes and traditions her modest £15,000 would have seemed a very +trifling price to receive for the surrender of his liberty; and if a +rich marriage had been his object, there were wealthier maidens +scattered along the Mediterranean shore, who would not have despised the +suit of a marquis’s only son. He himself explained his choice to a +wondering friend by saying that she was the woman most unlike his mother +that he had ever met. + +With mere carnal charms the Ladies Pagley were somewhat scantily +equipped. They were both fairly well-grown young women, healthy and +vigorous; Lady Sarah, as she was the elder, was also slightly the taller +of the two. Both wore their smooth brown hair divided in the centre and +brushed plainly down behind their ears, a fashion from which Sarah has +never departed to this day. Both were badly dressed, and either, in +whatever part of the world she was met, would unhesitatingly be +pronounced to hail from the British Isles, by people who had never seen +an Englishwoman before. Sarah was religious, Susan political, each +following the bent of one parent, for Lord Firth had been a member of +several Cabinets, and divided his time between nursing his gout and +studying blue-books, whereas Lady Firth dosed her body with quack +medicines and her soul with evangelical theology. But the old lord had +the ingratitude to prefer the daughter who reflected her mother’s +tastes. ‘They are both dour women to tackle, my daughters,’ he would +say; ‘but Sally’s not unkindly in matters where religion is not in +question, whereas Susie has no bowels, none at all.’ Lady Susan was a +great talker, and loved argument for its own sake; but Lady Sarah was +reserved, silent, and really very shy for all the grimness of her +aspect. If it did not seem profane to think of beauty in connection with +either of them, who considered it so little, I should say that Susan was +the prettier of the two, having a better complexion than her sister, and +hair of a brighter, redder shade of brown. + +There never were two girls more predestined by nature for old maids, or +better fitted to meet the cold world single-handed; and yet they both +married, and married what is called ‘well,’ while many of their fairer +and more eager sisters were left ungathered on the stem. Susan was led +to the altar by a West Country baronet and M.P., Sir Charles Trafford, +while Sarah, to every one’s surprise, became in due time Lady +Charmington. If it will remain a puzzle what drew her husband to her, it +is still more insoluble what attraction she found in him. Old Lady +Firth, for all her piety and her sermons, was not above a little +worldly gratification that her plain elder daughter at seven-and-twenty +should marry the heir to a marquisate and a historic house; but I +honestly think Lady Sarah was little swayed by these considerations. She +may have felt a thrill at the thought of the power her position would +one day put into her hands, but for its own sake she valued that +position very lightly. Perhaps poor Char’s weakness appealed to her +strength, and his wretched state of health stirred that pity that was so +carefully concealed in her proud heart. Perhaps her missionary zeal +awoke at the thought of plucking from the fire a brand that was already +little more than an ember. No doubt both these feelings worked for him, +but I am inclined to think that his most potent advocate was the fact +that he was the first man who had ever made love to her. No woman hears +those magic accents for the first time unmoved, and if she has reached +Lady Sarah’s age without the faintest breath from the wing of Romance, +the effect of them is not thereby lessened. Be that as it may, this sick +dissipated boy, who was three years her junior, and whose past life had +been made up of everything of which she most disapproved, succeeded +where a better man might have been very likely to fail, and they were +married with great splendour during the ensuing season in London, the +occasion being one of the few on which her husband’s parents were ever +seen together in public. Lord Firth and his son, Lord Corstorphine, +looked very sulky at the wedding, but Lady Firth was all tears and +benedictions, and old Belchamber, after much champagne at the breakfast, +became quite maudlin over the consideration of his son’s respectable +connections. ‘It’ll be the making of Char,’ he hiccoughed into the ear +of the sympathetic Lady Firth. ‘Ah, if I’d had such a chance, now! if +I’d married a different kind of woman, she might have done anything with +me----’ The lady with whom he had just been celebrating his silver +wedding was radiant in sky-blue silk and white lace flounces and a Paris +bonnet all Marabout feathers and humming-birds. ‘I don’t envy Char,’ she +wrote to her daughter, who did not come over for the wedding. ‘_Dieu!_ +what people those Firths! _Heureusement_, they won’t want to see much of +_me_.’ + +Very likely Lord Belchamber was right, and Sarah might have made +something out of the unlikely material she had taken-in hand. Her +influence over Charmington was enormous, and he both loved and feared +her. She nursed him, ruled him, and generally watched over him, +protecting him alike from the scorn of her kinsfolk and the bad +influence of his own; she rigorously kept both wine and money from him, +doling them out in infinitesimal doses. If she allowed no questioning of +her authority, she accomplished the miracle of awakening some +glimmerings of self-respect in him, and she bolstered up his shattered +constitution so that he lived four years with her, during which she bore +him two sons; but his lungs were too seriously affected for the +imperfect science of the sixties to heal, and in spite of all her care +he did not live to be thirty, dying, as has already been said, while +that elderly Adonis, his father, was still figuratively wearing the +family coronet. + + + + +CHAPTER II + + +The world is like a huge theatrical company in which half the actors and +actresses have been cast for the wrong parts. There are heavy fathers +who ought to be playing the lover, and young men on whose downy chins +one seems to see the spectre of the grey beard that would be suitable to +their natures. Perhaps the hardest case is theirs who by their sex are +called upon to ‘have a swaggering and martial outside,’ ‘a gallant +curtle-axe upon their thigh,’ and yet, like Rosalind in her boy’s dress, +start and turn faint at the sight of blood. The right to be a coward is +one of the dearest prerogatives of woman. No man may be one with +impunity, and it is precisely the women who are the first to despise him +if he be. Those who are born with the gift of personal courage (and they +are happily the greater number) have no adequate idea of their blessing. +To be in harmony with one’s environment, to like the things one ought to +like--that surely is the supreme good. If that be so, then few people +have come into the arena of life less suitably equipped for the part +they had to play than the subject of this history. + +Charles Edwin William Augustus Chambers, Marquis and Earl of Belchamber, +Viscount Charmington, and Baron St. Edmunds and Chambers, for all his +imposing list of names and titles started in life without that crowning +gift--wanting which all effort is paralysed--a good conceit of himself. +And in fact, except for the gewgaw of his rank, which sat on him as +uneasily as a suit of his ancestral armour, he had not much that would +win him consideration from the people among whom his lot was cast. From +his father he inherited his feeble constitution, his irresolution and +want of moral courage, from his mother her sallow complexion and lack +of charm, her reserve and shyness, and the rigid conscience which a long +line of Covenanting ancestors had passed down to her, and which in him, +who had none of their counterbalancing force of character, tended always +to become morbid. In his babyhood he had been called Lord St. Edmunds, +as was the custom in the family for the eldest son’s eldest son; his +father in half derisive affection had abbreviated the title into +‘Sainty,’ and Sainty he always continued to be to all who were intimate +enough and to many who were not. He was only three when his father died, +and his baby brother, Arthur, was not yet two. Even in those early days +the contrast was strongly marked between the brothers. Sainty was a pale +nervous child who cried if spoken to suddenly, while Arthur was as fine +a pink and white fat baby as you could see in a picture-book, who crowed +and gurgled and clapped his hands and liked his bath and took kindly to +his food, so that the nurses adored him. When he had a stomach-ache or +was thwarted in his wishes he roared lustily for a minute or two and +then returned to his usual placidity, whereas poor Sainty if anything +‘put him out,’ as his nurse would say, whined and fretted, and kept up a +little sad bleating cry for hours. + +He could not remember his father, but with the help of the large +coloured portrait in uniform that stood on a gilt easel in the corner of +his mother’s room he had built up for himself a shadowy heroic figure, +strangely unlike poor Charmington, which in his imagination did duty for +this departed parent. He never spoke of him to any one but Arthur, but +to him he talked with such conviction of ‘Papa,’ that the child, not +very attentive and perhaps not greatly interested, gathered an +impression that the elder boy was drawing on his memory for his facts, +and indeed he almost thought so himself, until one day Lady Charmington, +hearing some such talk between the two, sharply rebuked poor Sainty for +telling falsehoods to his little brother. His earliest impression of his +mother was in her black dress with the gleaming white on head and throat +and wrists, a dress that lent a dignity to Lady Charmington’s somewhat +commonplace figure. When she left off her cap, it was of the nature of a +blow to him. Though he could not have described his sensations, she +seemed somehow discrowned with her sleek, bare head. + +Grandpapa’s funeral was a different matter from these early fleeting +impressions. That he remembered clearly, for he was seven when it +happened, and had a little black suit of knickerbockers and black +stockings and gloves, and led Arthur by the hand similarly attired. +Every incident of that frightening, gloomy, yet strangely fascinating +and exciting day, remained engraved in his recollection. He remembered +the crowd in the churchyard, the murmur that greeted his own appearance, +the staggering of the bearers under that long heavy burthen, the gloom +of the church full of people in black, and the great yawning hole in the +chancel pavement. What he did not grasp until very long afterwards, and +then only most imperfectly and by degrees, was the difference the event +of that day made in his own position; but his mother realised it fully, +and indeed it made much more difference to her than to the meek little +boy accustomed from earliest infancy to swallow distasteful puddings and +nauseous drugs at her command, and anxiously to examine his conscience, +if some remnant of the old Adam ever led him to question her decrees. +Henceforth Lady Charmington entered into her kingdom, and it must be +confessed that on the whole she ruled it well and wisely, and entirely +in the interests of her children. Almost the only sensible thing the old +lord had ever done was to appoint her and her brother the guardians of +his grandchildren, and under the careful management of his +daughter-in-law, aided by the wise advice of Lord Corstorphine, the +property was nursed through his grandson’s long minority back to a +tolerably healthy condition. + +As to Lady Belchamber, nothing would have bored her more than being +cumbered in any way with the guardianship of her grandchildren. She +carried off what her daughter-in-law declared to be a most ridiculously +disproportionate jointure, and the furniture of her private apartments, +in which some valuable china and cabinets, that she had certainly not +brought into the family, somehow found themselves included at the time +of the move. She even showed a decided inclination to keep the famous +emeralds which, as Lady Charmington said, everybody knew were heirlooms; +but these she was made to send back, by her second husband, the Duke of +Sunborough, one of the oldest and most faithful of her admirers, whom +she married just a year after her lord’s death. On the other hand, she +generously abandoned all claim to a damp and mouldy dower-house in which +she had a right to reside for life, which, considering that the duke had +a palace in London and five country seats, was very handsome of her. +Three generations of gambling and extravagance leave their mark on the +most imposing fortunes, and if the Belchamber estates did not come to +the hammer, it was due to the action of the last person who might have +been expected to save them, in marrying a hardheaded Scotswoman and +dying before his father. To get the estate into order was Lady +Charmington’s prime object in life. To this end she inaugurated a rigid +system of economy, and made a clean sweep of the heads of almost every +department under the old _régime_, toiling early and late to make +herself mistress of many details of which she was ignorant; for this, +she endured the dislike of the poor, whom she benefited in her own +autocratic manner, and much hostile comment from her equals. She was +rigidly just, and generous too in her own way; only prodigality and +waste she would not tolerate, nor look with a lenient eye on the small +peculations which those who serve the great come to regard as quite +within the pale of honesty. + +If the mother spared neither time nor labour that she might be able to +hand over his property to her son free of encumbrances when he came of +age, she was not less eager and indefatigable in her efforts to fit him +for the position she was making for him; and this task she found +incomparably the harder of the two. It was not that he was naughty or +insubordinate. A meeker, more obedient child did not live. The +difficulty was far more intangible; it is easier to drive a slightly +pulling horse in crowded thoroughfares than one with so light a mouth +that he never will go properly up to his bit; and Lady Charmington had +not the blessed gift of light hands in conducting the education of a +child, whatever she might have on horseback. As a girl she had ridden a +good deal, and even hunted; and though she gave that up after her +marriage, she still found it possible to keep a more effectual eye on +all corners of the huge estate from her square seat on the back of a +substantial cob than from any other coign of vantage. No farmer ever +rode more diligently and thoroughly about his fields; and on these +excursions it was her pleasure that the boys, and especially Sainty, +should accompany her. Arthur had a natural seat, took to horses from the +first, and wanted to gallop his pony and make him jump before the family +coachman had thought fit to abandon the leading-rein. With poor Sainty +it was far otherwise. He rode, as he ate rice pudding, because he was +told to; but he was cold for an hour beforehand, and he sat his pony, as +his mother remarked, like a sack of potatoes. The smallest thing +unseated him; he was always rolling ignominiously off. + +On this and similar shortcomings, he received many admonitions from his +mother and uncle, from which the chief impression he derived was a +rooted belief in the immense superiority of his younger brother. ‘At the +worst there will always be Arthur.’ When and under what circumstances +had he overheard that remark? He never was quite sure that he had not +formulated it for himself. Be that as it might, it early became the +burthen to which his life set itself. Far from resenting the point of +view, he drew from it a certain consolation under his abiding sense of +his many imperfections. He was still quite a small boy when he decided +that his _rôle_ in life would be to die young, and make way for the +younger brother who was so eminently fitted for the position that suited +himself so ill; and he found a certain gloomy satisfaction in settling +the details of pathetic deathbed scenes. I fear an element in these +imaginings which was not without attraction for him, was the thought of +exhorting Arthur with his latest breath on matters in which his +brother’s conduct did not always square with his own more evangelical +standard, such as a certain looseness of statement, and somewhat lax +ideas of property. If Arthur could not find his own cap, or bat, or +riding-whip (and his things were generally tossed about the great house, +wherever he happened to be when he last used them), it was always less +trouble to take Sainty’s, which were sure to be in the right place, than +to go and look for his own. He also on occasion carried the juvenile +habit of untruth rather further than mere thoughtlessness warranted; but +he told his stories with so open a countenance, and such a fearless +gaze, that he was invariably believed, as against poor Sainty, whose +knitted brow and downcast eyes, while he sought in his mind for the +exact truth, had all the appearance of an effort after invention. +‘Arthur is very thoughtless and tiresome,’ Lady Charmington would say, +‘but there’s one comfort about him, I can always depend on his telling +me the truth if I ask him. I wish I could say the same for Sainty; I am +sometimes afraid he is rather sly. I try not to be hard on him, for he +is timid, and I don’t want to frighten him into telling untruths; but I +do wish he was a little more straightforward, and would look one in the +face when he talks.’ + +Many such hints, all showing a like perspicacious insight into the +characters of her sons, were given by this conscientious lady to the +governess she had engaged to assist her in moulding their dispositions. +Alice Meakins was the daughter of the rector of Great Charmington, and +had the prime recommendation in her employer’s eyes of being her humble +slave and completely under her orders. Had she been a little less in awe +of Lady Charmington, and less impressed with the enormity of differing +from her, she might perhaps have enlightened her on many matters +concerning the little boys. Her mild rule, while it galled his more +spirited brother, sat very lightly on Sainty, who worshipped the +governess as the most talented and accomplished of mortals. ‘But I like +her, I’m fond of her; I don’t _want_ to do what she tells me not,’ he +pleaded to the indignant Arthur, as usual incensed by his brother’s want +of pluck, in refusing to join in some plot against the authority of +their instructress. ‘Ho, ho, Miss Moddlecoddle, you can’t ride, you’ve +got no seat and no hands; Bell said so. You’re jolly bad at games, and +you like to sit and suck up to an old governess, and do needlework with +her, like a beastly girl. I’m a man, and I shan’t do what she tells me. +What business has she to order me about? she is only a servant like the +others.’ + +Sainty was shocked. ‘O Arthur! you do say _horrid_ things,’ he said. It +was true that he did like sitting with the gentle Meakins, and acquiring +the modest arts of which she was the mistress. She had many little +manual dexterities such as governesses impart to children, whereby the +world is filled with innocent horrors, kettleholders in cross-stitch, +penwipers faintly resembling old women with cloth cloaks and petticoats, +and little black seeds for faces, and book-markers in the shape of +crosses with many steps, plaited of strips of gilt and coloured paper. +In all these manufactures Sainty soon became proficient. He also +illuminated texts, ‘Be thou faithful unto death,’ and ‘The greatest of +these is Charity,’ which were presented to Lady Charmington on her +birthday. On the subject of the texts and the little plaited crosses +Lady Charmington had a word to say to Miss Meakins in private, as being +rather too papistical in tendency; but she was not displeased with the +simple presents, on the whole, until her anxious maternal eye was led to +detect the danger that might lurk in cross-stitch by some petulant +remarks of Arthur’s, who wanted Sainty to come out and play Red Indians +in the long shrubbery. ‘Muvver,’ he cried, bursting into the boudoir, +where his mother was busy with some farm accounts, ‘isn’t Sainty howid? +He won’t come out, though he’s done his lessons, ‘cos he will stick in +and do beastly woolwork.’ One of Arthur’s many charms was a babyish +imperfection of speech. He never could pronounce ‘th’ or ‘r,’ even when +quite grown up. + +‘What is it he’s doing?’ asked Lady Charmington. + +‘Oh, beastly woolwork; he’s got two-fwee fings he’s makin’, and he likes +to sit like a girl, instead of coming out and playing.’ + +A shade of annoyance crossed the mother’s face. ‘I wish you wouldn’t use +such words as “beastly,” Arthur,’ she said severely, but the severity +was really addressed to the absent first-born and the effeminacy of his +tastes; and the schoolroom was presently visited by the mistress of the +house, and Sainty duly turned out to distasteful recreation. When he had +gone forth to be scalped by the fraternal savage, his mother turned to +the instructress. ‘I think, Alice,’ she said, holding up the offending +kettleholder, ‘that it is a pity, on the whole, to teach Sainty to work; +he’s quite sufficiently effeminate by nature, without having that side +of him encouraged. I will speak to him about it. I shall tell him I +don’t approve of his working; it’s not manly.’ She was surprised, when +she carried out this intention, by meeting with passionate tears and +protestations. + +‘O mother, I love my work; it’s the only thing I do enjoy, except +botany, and reading, and some lessons (not ‘rithmetic or spelling); and +I have to do so many things I _don’t_ like, cricket and riding, +and--and--all the dreadful things that men and gentlemen have to do,’ +the little boy concluded, quoting a formula frequently used for his +encouragement. + +Though not habitually distrustful of her own judgment, nothing so +confirmed Lady Charmington in a view she adopted as any opposition to +it; and the kettleholders became taboo from that day forward. Poor +Sainty’s confession of dislike for the manlier sports that, as he said, +were considered a necessary part of the education of a gentleman, was +perhaps the most unfortunate argument he could have chosen, for it +naturally convinced his mother that the mischief lay deeper than she +supposed, and suggested to her the advisability of transferring the +boys from petticoat government altogether; that is, of course, as far as +the subordinate powers were concerned. The particular petticoat that +typified her own sway remained in undisturbed possession of the throne +in all her plans for the future. + +‘I think the boys are getting too much for poor Miss Meakins,’ she said +to her brother, on his next visit. ‘She is an excellent girl, though a +little inclined to be high church; but they ought to be under a man, I +feel sure.’ + +‘Don’t tell me that Sainty is becoming insubordinate?’ said Lord +Corstorphine. + +‘No; but Arthur hasn’t the smallest respect for her. With Sainty the +danger is of a different kind; he is perhaps _too_ fond of women’s +society.’ + +‘Not a precocious passion for the governess! I can’t believe that.’ + +Lady Charmington looked resigned. ‘I don’t deny, Corstorphine,’ she +said, ‘that you have been a great help to me in the management of my +fatherless boys; that is why I am consulting you on the present +occasion. But it is no help to be flippant and funny. What I mean is +that Sainty is quite sufficiently inclined by nature to be a milksop, +without living perpetually with women, and adopting their ways. He likes +better than any game to sit indoors with Miss Meakins on fine days, and +do woolwork.’ + +‘Have him out, Sarah, by all means,’ returned her brother. ‘I can’t help +being a little pleased at his liking reading. A Chambers who +occasionally opens a book, and is tolerably well behaved, will be an +agreeable variation of the type. But it’s bad his not wanting to be out, +and playing games; it isn’t natural.’ + +Lord Corstorphine felt that he was as near normal as it was possible to +be, without becoming commonplace, and that those whose tastes differed +widely from his own must always be more or less blamably eccentric. +Still his greater commerce with the world had given him a wider +toleration than either of his sisters, who had been known to call him a +Laodicean, and Sarah once went so far as to draw a parallel between her +brother and Gallio. But though she affected to be shocked at the +looseness of his views, his known moderation made her lean the more +confidently on his judgment. The knowledge that her opinion was backed +by one whom the world praised for common-sense, gave a pleasing security +that her own noble zeal was not hurrying her into extremes. It was +invariably she who initiated every change in the education of her sons. +But, though it may be doubted how she would have borne opposition from +her fellow-guardian, his agreement was always a comfort to her. + +So Alice Meakins, with her little crosses and penwipers, returned to the +paternal rectory, with the highest testimonials from her dear Lady +Charmington, to look out for another situation. + +Poor Sainty could not be comforted. To be sure, no one tried much to +comfort him. For the first time he felt a rebellious bitterness towards +his mother. Though he could imagine nothing so dashing as active +disobedience, he cherished a dark determination to be very cold and +reserved towards the new tutor, with the natural result that Miss +Meakins’s successor, a youth fresh from Oxford, and also of the children +of the clergy, conceived a great liking for Arthur, and favoured him +prodigiously. + +This young man, who had been selected mainly for his reputation as a +cricketer, left Lady Charmington nothing to desire in the matter of +sport, and was quite ready to ride any horse in her limited stable; nor +need she feel anxiety as to his holding extreme views in religious +matters. It is true he attended family prayers with exemplary +punctuality, and accompanied his charges to service twice on Sundays; +but she could detect no sign of the interest in matters ecclesiastical +which she looked for in a son of the Church, and his waistcoats and +riding-boots had a decidedly worldly air. + +Under Mr. Kirkpatrick, Sainty early proved the cynical dictum that life +were endurable but for its pleasures, the hated pastimes, in which his +sex and position in life inexorably demanded that he should find +enjoyment. He stood like a martyr at the stake, to be bowled at with the +Englishman’s fetish, that terrible disc of solid leather which he knew +he should not hit, but which not infrequently hit him; and he would +unhesitatingly have indorsed Mr. Pinchbold’s remark that ‘the horse was +a fearful animal.’ He was so painstaking, however, and anxious to do +what was expected of him, that he might possibly have attained in time +to some sort of proficiency in these alien arts, had his efforts been +greeted with a little more encouragement, and a little less ridicule; +but the race is not yet extinct of those who hold that the best way to +teach a child to swim is to throw him into the water. + +Meanwhile a new terror arose on Sainty’s horizon. When Mr. Kirkpatrick +had been at Belchamber eighteen months, he one day intimated to Lady +Charmington that he had been offered a mastership in a public school, +and could not afford to remain much longer with his pupils. It was +therefore suggested that, as they were both presently to go to Eton, a +few years at a private school would not be undesirable as a preparation. +Even Arthur was a little daunted at the prospect, while rather +fascinated by it; but to Sainty it loomed black as the final end of all +brightness, closing in the vista of his life and blotting out the sun. +It seemed to him that each step in the _via dolorosa_ of his existence +was fated to be more awful than the last. When his beloved Miss Meakins +had been replaced by the hated Kirkpatrick, he thought to have tasted +the dregs of bitterness; but now a new prospect had come to make life in +the familiar places that he loved with a catlike fidelity appear the one +thing desirable, even shadowed by the tutor and his cricket-ball. I +suppose it seemed a hard thing to our first parents when the Serpent was +introduced into Eden; but life in Paradise, even with a snake in the +garden, was a very different thing from the flaming sword that drove +them out into an unknown world of work and briars. Sainty said little to +earthly ears, but he prayed nightly with intense fervour that he might +die before the day came to go to school, which seemed the only escape +to his poor little hunted mind. + +But there was another way, which, if he could have foreseen it, would +have taxed his courage with a far more genuine fright than that vague +abstraction, death, for which we all cry aloud so readily in our youth +when things do not go as we wish. Arthur went to school alone when the +time arrived, and this was how it came about. + +It was a beautiful day at the end of March. Mr. Kirkpatrick was to leave +at Easter, and the dreaded exodus was only a month away. It was a late +spring, and the snow still lay on the north side of the hedgerows. But +it had rained in the night, and there was that indefinable sense of +spring in the air that sometimes comes quite suddenly. The primroses +were beginning to gem the coppices, the birds to sing late in the long +twilights. Daffodils waved in the fields where the young lambs were +bleating. + +‘What are you and the boys going to do this afternoon, Mr. Kirkpatrick?’ +asked Lady Charmington at lunch. + +The tutor looked inquiringly at the boys. ‘I’ll do whatever they wish, +Lady Charmington. What should you like?’ he asked of Sainty. + +‘I should like to go to One-tree Wood, and get primroses,’ Sainty +answered, after the usual slight struggle that it always cost him to +express a wish or an opinion. + +‘Get Gwanmuvvers!’ burst in Arthur. ‘Bovver pwimwoses; you don’t care +about ’em, do you, Mr. Kirkpatrick? I want to wide; Bell says the +gwound’s in quite good order to-day, after the wain. We’ve hardly widden +at all lately, ‘cos it’s been so hard.’ + +As usual, Arthur had his way, and poor Sainty was condemned to ride. +Generally he gained confidence when he had been out a little while, but +to-day somehow everything went wrong. He began by rolling off at the +hall door, because his stirrups were too long, and the pony moved on +unexpectedly while they were being taken up. He was much chaffed for +this misadventure by his companions, and he did not like chaff. Then the +pony was fresh and inclined to shy, after the inaction of the long +frost, so that he had a bad time of it altogether; but he managed to +stick on somehow until they were on their way home. + +They had been round by Little Charmington, and their way lay through one +of the high woods. When they came to the gate that led into the park, +they found it locked. + +‘I never knew this gate locked before,’ said Kirkpatrick, pulling feebly +at it with his whip. ‘I don’t suppose either of you have got the key by +any chance?’ + +‘Jaggins must have locked it. He’s got some young pheasants further up +the wood,’ said Arthur; ‘he told me so.’ + +‘I suppose we must go back,’ said Kirkpatrick, ‘but it’s an awful long +way round. We shall be late for tea, which your mother doesn’t like, and +you’ve got some more work to do afterwards. There’s a gap in the hedge a +little way along here,’ he added more hopefully. ‘I suppose you couldn’t +jump the ditch? It would save us a good two miles, and it’s really +nothing of a jump.’ + +‘Of course we can jump the ditch. Hurray! what fun!’ cried Arthur, and +without more words he wheeled his pony, put him at the gap, and the next +moment was careering about on the turf beyond, in a great state of +excitement and jubilation. + +‘You see, it’s quite easy,’ the tutor said, turning to Sainty, whose +pony was already beginning to fidget, excited by the trampling about on +snapping twigs and the rush past of the other. Sainty was very white. + +‘You know I can’t jump, Mr. Kirkpatrick,’ he said, gulping tears. ‘I’m +sure to fall off if I try; I always do.’ + +‘Not you,’ the young man replied encouragingly. ‘You see your little +brother has done it. I should be ashamed to have him ride so much better +than me, if I were you.’ The poor man was rather in a fix, with one +pupil already across the obstacle and the other resolutely declining to +follow. + +‘See,’ he said, ‘I’ll give you a lead. It’s as easy as easy; you’ve +only to sit well back, and give him his head,’ And so saying, he put his +horse at the gap, and followed Arthur into the park. ‘Come on,’ he +called. + +‘Jump, Sainty, jump,’ piped Arthur. ‘I wouldn’t be such a funk.’ + +Whether Sainty would ever have found the courage to attempt the jump is +doubtful, if the pony at this stage of the proceedings had not decided +matters by bolting at the gap. But bothered and bewildered by the +tugging of his rider’s despairing hands, he swerved just at the jump, +and, slipping on the trodden earth where Kirkpatrick’s horse had taken +off, he came to the ground; then struggling to his feet, galloped off +through the wood by the road they had come. + +The young man was horror-stricken when he saw the accident; he was off +his horse, and by the side of the fallen boy in a second. Sainty was +unconscious, that was all he could tell. + +‘Now, Arthur,’ he cried to the younger boy, who was beginning to tremble +and cry, ‘this is the moment to show the stuff you’re made of. I must +stay here with Sainty, but you must get home across the park as hard as +you can go, so as to tell your mother what’s happened, and save her the +shock of seeing Donald come home without his rider. And then send people +here to carry Sainty in; he may be more hurt than we think.’ + +Arthur waited for no more, but galloped off in the direction of the +house, glad to have something definite to do, instead of staring at poor +Sainty. + +Lady Charmington had come home sooner than she expected, and was taking +off her hat, when she saw Arthur come galloping across the park alone. +She looked with pride at the boy, thinking how well he sat his pony; and +she gave a little sigh at the half-formed thought that just crossed her +mind, ‘What a pity he wasn’t the elder!’ The next minute her heart stood +still; she had caught sight in the far distance of a speck, which as it +drew nearer she recognised with sickening terror as Sainty’s pony, +riderless, and with his saddle turned under his belly. ‘Not _that_ way, +my God! I did not mean _that_.’ Was it possible that God was punishing +her for her rebellious thought? could He have thought that she desired +the death of her first-born? And she prayed with all the intensity of +her soul that whatever had happened her boy might not die. ‘Maimed, +crippled, or an idiot, if so it must be; only let him live.’ This was +the cry of her heart, again and again repeated, as guided by the child, +she stumbled across the park with the men who were to bring him home. +Arthur could tell her little, except that Sainty had had a fall and was +hurt. Perhaps even then her child was lying dead, while she was wishing +in her sinful heart that his brother had his heritage. + +But Sainty was not dead, and did not die. The pony had kicked him in its +struggles to rise, and he had fainted. There were long nights and days +of pain to be borne, and he bore it as nervous people often do, who can +stand anything but anticipation. + +At first he made sure that the death he had asked for had come to him, +and even, one day, when he was a little better, attempted to bring off +one of the beautiful scenes with Arthur, which he had so often +rehearsed. But somehow it was not a great success. Arthur did not do his +part at all nicely. He only said, ‘Oh! bower, dear old Sainty. You ain’t +going to die; what’s ve good of jawing?’ and went off to more congenial +pursuits. + +Though his life was not in danger, Sainty’s injury was a grave one; the +hip was broken, and the great London surgeon who was called down, did +not conceal from Lady Charmington that the boy would probably always be +more or less lame. + +On one of his visits, Sainty astonished the great man not a little. + +‘Sir John,’ he said, ‘I want you to tell me something. Shall I ever be +able to walk and run again?’ + +The famous surgeon had boys of his own, and his heart smote him at the +pathetic question. ‘Yes, my boy, yes,’ he said; ‘certainly to walk. As +to running, oh! well, you won’t be very good at running, not for some +time; we mustn’t go too fast, not too fast, you know. Walking comes +first; we must get you on your legs first.’ + +‘But I shan’t ever be able to play games, shall I? not like other boys, +I mean.’ + +‘Oh! well, never’s a long word. I can’t say, I’m sure. Not for a long +while, I fear. But we never know, we never know----’ + +‘Well, at any rate, I shan’t be able to ride, shall I?’ persisted the +patient. + +Poor Sir John hated to extinguish hope; but thus pushed into a corner, +he admitted, ‘Oh! well, ride, you know--I don’t know. I doubt if +_riding_ would be advisable. My poor little man, if you must know, I’m +afraid you mustn’t count on riding again.’ + +To his surprise, the boy heaved a sigh of unmistakable relief. ‘Ah! +well, that’s a comfort, anyhow,’ he said. + + + + +CHAPTER III + + +Probably nothing is less calculated to make a man feel at home in +another’s society than the knowledge that he owes him a debt which he +cannot pay. Custom enables a number of people to support this +awkwardness with tolerable equanimity, but I suspect that even the +habitual debtor feels a certain nameless uneasiness under his equable +shirt-front; while to a person whose boast has always been that +directness of gaze celebrated in the Village Blacksmith, to have to look +shiftily before the eye of a creditor must be peculiarly galling. + +Something of this consciousness had become the daily burthen of poor +Lady Charmington with regard to her first-born son. Certainly nothing +was further from claiming damages than Sainty’s attitude, for it never +entered his head to hold his mother in any way responsible for his +accident. But in the long weeks in which he lay so uncomplainingly +bearing pain, and the inaction which to young creatures is worse than +pain, she could not look at him without a very distinct twinge of +remorse. She was even glad to see the once forbidden needlework cheating +the weary hours of some of their dulness. Once when he thanked her for +the withdrawal of the interdict on this pastime, her breath caught in +her throat like a sob. + +‘You must find the time very heavy,’ she said, smoothing back the boy’s +hair with an unusually tender touch. + +‘Oh no!’ Sainty said, ‘I don’t. I can’t help thinking what a good thing +it was it happened to me and not to Arthur. Think how _he_ would have +hated it. I’ve never minded keeping quiet. And then it’ll always be such +a good excuse for not doing things. Before, when people said “Why can’t +he be like other boys?” there wasn’t anything to say. Now you can say +“Well, you see, poor boy, he’s lame; he met with an accident.”’ + +He delivered this piece of consolation quite seriously, and with no +ironic intention, but it may be doubted if it cheered his mother as much +as he intended. + +Poor Kirkpatrick, overwhelmed with remorse, had wished to give up his +public school mastership and devote himself to Sainty’s education, but +the sacrifice had not been accepted. Lady Charmington, who, in spite of +her hard head, was not without some very feminine weaknesses, could not +bear the sight of the young man who was incurably associated with the +most awful hour of her life. + +In her compunction, she made an attempt at regaining the services of +Miss Meakins, but the governess had without difficulty obtained a +situation in the household of one of those gorgeously dressed little +dark women who drive about the north side of Hyde Park in such +well-appointed carriages. They are of Lancaster Gate to-day, but who +knows if to-morrow they may not be giving laws to fashion from a palace +in Park Lane? Miss Meakins, with the stamp of the aristocracy upon her, +was quite an important person in this opulent Tyburnian mansion and the +beautiful villa at Roehampton, with its velvet lawns and blazing +parterres. + +‘Tell us about the little marquis and his brother, and the big park at +Belchamber, and the deer,’ her little charges would ask of her, as they +walked on Wimbledon Common. They had large eyes, and beautiful gentle +manners, and that look of ineffable world-weariness that is common to +the children of their race. Sainty would have been astonished to know +what an object of interest he was to these other children. + +It must have been her uneasy desire for compensation that made Lady +Charmington give to a suggestion of her sister-in-law that she and her +‘fatherless boy’ should pay Belchamber a visit, a very different +reception from that which she would otherwise have accorded to it. Lady +Eva had lost the embarrassing Morland, and was inclined to return to her +native land and see what she could get out of her kinsfolk. She went +first to her mother, who received her very graciously, and was really +pleased to see her. Her daughter brought the duchess a whiff of her +beloved Paris, and entertained her immensely with anecdotes of a world +quite unlike that in which she herself had formerly figured. The younger +lady, finding her noble relatives in the Faubourg rather inclined to +cold-shoulder her, had gone in for being a sort of Muse, and surrounded +herself with all the youngest and most modern of the new school of poets +and painters. She wore indecent clothes, with a rope of turquoises round +her waist, and lay on a white bearskin, smoking a narghilé, while they +recited their verses to her. They spoke of her as ‘la petite Morland’ +and ‘la belle Eve.’ Her portrait by a young American of genius had been +the great _clou_ of the salon, she told her astonished step-father. ‘It +really was _épatant_; he painted me at full length on the sofa in +straight perspective, my feet away from you, and my head hanging over +the end, so that my face looks out at you upside down. I have my +turquoises in my teeth, and the whole is lit by Chinese lanterns. It is +amazing _de vérité_, and will make his reputation.’ + +‘And what about yours?’ asked the duke, who thought he was rather a wit. + +The duchess was much amused with this talk, and all went well, until she +and her daughter happened unfortunately to fix their affections on the +same young man, who was a good deal the junior of either, when a violent +quarrel ensued, and Sunborough House having become much too hot to hold +her, Lady Eva was seized with a sentimental desire to ‘show the home of +her childhood to her boy,’ and wrote intimating this wish to her +sister-in-law. Lady Charmington knew very little of the lady, beyond the +fact that she had made an unfortunate marriage and was now a widow with +an only son. The early surroundings of this boy must have been +deplorable; but while she trembled for the effect he might have upon +her sons, she licked her lips at the thought of the influence she might +be privileged to acquire over him. Lady Eva’s cleverly insinuated hint +that she did not find the atmosphere of her mother’s house congenial, +did much to open the doors of Belchamber to her; but perhaps her best +ally was the thought that his cousin might be a companion to Sainty +during Arthur’s absence. Sainty at least was not likely to get any harm +from unfortunate lads who had been brought up in an atmosphere of +papistry or atheism--the two words meant much the same to Lady +Charmington--and then who could tell what they might be able to do for +_him_! + +Claude Morland was between two and three years older than Sainty and +extraordinarily grown up for his age. He was a handsome boy, but of +quite a different type of beauty from Arthur, who had the fair curls and +florid complexion of the Chambers family, whereas Claude had inherited +his colourless white skin, thick, straight black hair, and large dreamy +eyes from his French ancestors. He was not unlike what his grandmother +had been as a girl, but with a certain heaviness of make and feature +that came from his lamented father, and might easily become coarseness +as he grew older. He seemed to Sainty like some strongly scented +hothouse flower, white with a whiteness in which there was no purity, +and sweet with a strong sweetness that already suggested some subtle +hint of decay. As the flowers which his cousin recalled to him were +among the things he did not like, his first feeling towards him had been +one of vague repulsion; but to a naturally shy and silent person, any +one with Claude’s ready flow of talk and perfect self-possession must +prove attractive in the long-run. Then Claude had charming manners when +he chose. To Sainty, accustomed to Arthur’s scornful affection and +undisguised contempt, the little attentions and deferential politeness +of this older boy were bewildering, but strangely pleasant. Claude’s +smile was a caress, the grasp of his hand an embrace; in later years a +lady once said of him that she always felt as if he had said something +she ought to resent when he asked her how she did. But at thirteen this +latent sensuality only made him like some charming feline creature that +liked to be stroked and well fed, to lie in the sun and purr. A boy who +spoke French as easily as English, and German and Italian a little, and +read mysterious foreign books for pleasure, could not fail to be +impressive to a small home-grown cousin; while the discovery that this +gifted creature had never played cricket in his life, and, though an +excellent rider, had not the smallest wish to hunt, made him at once +sympathetic and puzzling. + +‘Uncle Cor hunts,’ Sainty said, ‘and Arthur is dying to, as soon as ever +he is allowed. _I_ can’t, of course; but then I shall never ride any +more. But all the men I know hunt--our neighbours Mr. Hawley at Hawley +Park and Sir Watkin Potkin at the Grange, and everybody, even the +farmers, when they can afford to. I thought all men who rode wanted to +hunt as a matter of course.’ + +‘Well, _I_ don’t want to,’ Claude answered. ‘I like riding, and the +_manége_, and all that; a gentleman should of course be a good horseman. +But to get up early, and gallop all day across country after a wretched +little vermin, _merci cela ne me dit rien_.’ + +‘Ah! you’re sorry for the poor fox; I’m glad of that,’ said Sainty. ‘I +can’t help feeling it’s cruel. I think of all it must feel when it hears +the dogs getting nearer, and knows it is out of breath and can’t run +much farther. And yet very good men hunt, even clergymen. None of our +own clergy, because mother doesn’t approve of it; but some of those from +the other side of the county, who, I believe, are quite good men. I +asked Uncle Cor, who is very kind to animals, about it, but he said if +it were not for hunting, the foxes would all have been exterminated long +ago, and he didn’t suppose they’d have liked that any better.’ + +‘There is certainly something in that,’ replied his cousin gravely; ‘but +I’m afraid I wasn’t considering the matter from the fox’s point of view. +I hate getting tired, and wet, and muddy, and to kill a wretched little +yellow animal doesn’t seem worth so much fuss and trouble. _Voilà tout._ +In France, if the foxes eat the poultry, they shoot them; it is much +more simple.’ + +‘Then what do you like to do in the way of exercise and games and that?’ +asked Sainty. + +‘I like the lawn tennis fairly well,’ said Claude. ‘It is not such a +good game as the real tennis, the _jeu de paume_. I have played that a +little, but not much; it was too expensive; but lawn tennis is very +well. That, and riding, and fencing have been my principal amusements. +But we have moved about so much; my mother is very restless. We have +never stayed anywhere long enough for me to settle down and really take +to anything seriously.’ + +‘And cricket?’ asked Sainty, almost under his breath; ‘have you never +played cricket?’ + +‘_Mon Dieu!_ no. A game that takes three days to play! Those stupid +stepsons of grandmamma took me to see a match at--what do you call +it?--“Lord’s,” when I was in London. It went on all day, and nothing +happened. I yawned myself hoarse. I can never do anything for more than +two hours at a time.’ + +Here was some one who was not apologetic or ashamed that he could not +play cricket, who spoke of it even with contempt, as of a pastime for +fools. Sainty was dumbfoundered. He wondered what Arthur would say to +such heresy. What Arthur did say when presently he came home, was that +his cousin was a ‘bounder,’ and ‘like a beastly foreigner.’ It was a +curious fact that though Claude acquired a considerable influence for +harm over Arthur, the latter always continued to speak slightingly of +him, and never really liked him; whereas Sainty, who was not influenced +by him in the least, and after the first discoveries of superficial +agreement, found that they differed essentially in their views on almost +every subject, cherished a sneaking regard for his cousin, which died +hard even when Claude had done his best to kill it. Arthur’s mind could +accept nothing that was not traditional; and this surprising outcome of +shady foreign watering-places and Parisian _ateliers_ lay altogether +outside of his traditions. + +Their aunt was as much of a surprise to the boys as their cousin. Lady +Eva modified herself considerably, with a view to conciliating her pious +sister-in-law; but in spite of extra tuckers, the first sight of her +when dressed for dinner was a severe shock to Sainty, accustomed to the +modest _décolletages_ of the neighbouring clergywomen who dined from +time to time with Lady Charmington, and the little square of his +mother’s neck, which barely accommodated the large oblong locket of +black enamel, like a baby’s coffin, with which she decorated herself for +these festive occasions. + +Luckily for Lady Eva, Lady Charmington was not of the intimate order of +women, and never invaded a guest’s bedroom, or she might have been a +little scandalised by the tone of some of the literature she found +there; but she would probably have been still more bewildered, as she +had kept up scarcely a bowing acquaintance with even ordinary French. ‘I +have read Madame Craven’s _Récit d’une Sœur_,’ she said, ‘but I read few +novels in any language; it does not seem to me very profitable. I was +once recommended Feuillet’s _Histoire de Sibylle_ as quite +unobjectionable, but I found it very papistical. It did _me_ no harm, +but I shouldn’t have given it to any young person to read in whom I was +interested.’ + +‘I don’t remember to have read either of the _romans_ you mention,’ said +her sister-in-law wearily. + +The two women found it increasingly difficult to talk to each other; +neither of them seemed to take the faintest interest in anything which +occupied the other. Lady Eva dwelt much on the disadvantages of her +bringing-up, finding that a subject on which her hostess was much +inclined to be sympathetic, and also on her maternal anxieties about her +boy’s future. She and Claude laughed a great deal at the good lady +behind her back, and smoked a great many cigarettes together in the long +shrubbery, when Sainty was having his daily drive, and Lady Charmington +was busy about her farms. Arthur caught them at it one day, but was +bribed to silence by being lured into participation in the crime. + +‘Tell me, Eva,’ said Lady Charmington, when the ladies were sitting +alone together, ‘you are not, I trust, a Catholic, are you?’ + +‘No; oh no!’ answered her sister-in-law, with perfect truth; though she +might have added that she had at one time been a very devout one, and +had since tried several other _cultes_, of which the last had been some +queer Parisian form of esoteric Buddhism. ‘Oh no! I have seen too much +of Romanism; I have lived abroad too much.’ + +Lady Charmington was delighted. ‘I have no doubt they tried to pervert +you,’ she said, fairly beaming on this martyr to the faith. + +‘Tried!’ repeated Lady Eva with an eloquent gesture. + +‘And your boy?’ continued Lady Charmington. ‘He must have been much +exposed in those countries. I trust you have managed to keep his faith +untouched?’ + +‘I have done my best,’ said Lady Eva meekly. ‘Poor boy! he has had to +knock about the world very young, and to see and hear much that he +should not. I have felt that he had only his poor weak mother to stand +between him and--and--well--all sorts of things. He has not had the +advantages of your dear boys, Sarah--a good home, and peaceful, virtuous +surroundings, nor such a good mother, I’m afraid.’ And Lady Eva cast +down her fine eyes, on the lids of which she had not been able to deny +herself a faint tinge of blue, on learning that Lord Corstorphine was +expected, though she had been trying not to paint at Belchamber. ‘You +know how my own youth was neglected,’ she added presently. ‘But I had +rather not talk of that. After all, the duchess is my mother, and in her +own way has meant to be kind to me, I think. Only, I have dreamt of +something very different for my Claude. Such influences as he finds here +are exactly what I have wished for him, and what I have all too seldom +been able to give him.’ + +‘Well, now we have got him here, we must try and keep him, and see what +we can do for him,’ said Lady Charmington, much gratified. ‘Have you +thought at all what you are going to do with him? You are not going back +to France?’ + +‘Oh no! I want to stay in England--_at home_’; and Lady Eva gazed +tenderly at her surroundings in a manner which hinted plainly that an +invitation to consider Belchamber in that light might not be unwelcome. +Lady Charmington, however, was in no hurry to give it, but she debated +in her own mind many plans for the benefit of her nephew. She got but +little encouragement from her brother, who by no means seemed inclined +to take a friendly view of these interlopers. + +‘That’s a horrible woman,’ he remarked, with brutal frankness of the +‘belle Morland’; ‘and just the sort I should have thought you would have +hated, Sarah.’ + +‘I can’t honestly say I exactly like her, Cor,’ his sister answered; +‘but I’m sorry for her and for the boy. Think of her deplorable +bringing-up; think what a mother she has had, and what a husband! The +poor body seems to have some glimmerings of a desire for better things, +if she had any one to take her by the hand; and I must say it’s to her +credit to have kept by her faith, exposed as she has been to the darts +of the enemy. But what touches me most about her is that she evidently +wants to do well by her boy. She’s not a bad mother, whatever else she +may be; and, after all, she’s poor Char’s sister, you know.’ + +Lady Charmington very seldom delivered herself of so long a speech, and +still more rarely made any allusion to her dead husband. Corstorphine +was surprised and touched. Perhaps some likeness to her brother in Lady +Eva, some trick of speech, or expression that recalled him, had gone to +the not very accessible heart of her sister-in-law, and reinforced the +adroit flattery which had been offered to her pet prejudices. Perhaps +mother’s heart really spoke to mother’s heart in some language he did +not understand; the woman, with all her faults, might have a genuine +wish to do the best for her brat. He could have checked his sister’s +nascent inclination to befriend her husband’s kinsfolk with a word, but +it seemed an ungracious task. After all, Sarah was not too often in a +melting mood, and if she could do something for this wretched lad, whose +best chance was that he was fatherless, why should he seek to restrain +her? + +‘I don’t like the boy either,’ he couldn’t help saying; ‘he’s a deal too +smooth and civil spoken. He’s no business to have such finished manners +at thirteen, and be such an accomplished little man of the world. But if +you think you can do anything to prevent his turning out such a +blackguard as his deceased parent, pray do; it’s a Christian act. All I +say is, consider whether he is likely to harm your own boys in any way.’ + +‘I’ve thought very much of that. Do you suppose it wasn’t my first +thought?’ his sister answered. ‘But one mustn’t let anxiety for one’s +own stand in the way of snatching a brand from the burning. Something +tells me this boy has not been sent here for nothing.’ + +‘Well,’ said Corstorphine, ‘and what particular form of charity do you +think he was sent for?’ + +Lady Charmington ignored the scoff. ‘I was thinking whether I mightn’t +offer to send him to Eton, if he could be got in,’ she said; ‘he won’t +be fourteen till November. I know his mother can’t afford it. Then he is +very gentle with Sainty, and the child seems to like him; and I thought +if later on Sir John thought Sainty could go to Eton, it might be a help +to him to have a cousin who had been there a year or two, and could look +after him a little. He can never be quite like other boys, you know.’ + +Corstorphine smiled grimly. It tickled his not unkindly cynicism to find +his pious sister had so human a thought for her own offspring nestled +under her zeal for her nephew’s soul. + +‘Well, I agree,’ he said, ‘that the best chance the youth can have is to +see as little as possible of his mother and grandmother. Perhaps if he +gets well kicked at Eton, and you have him here mostly for his +holidays, he may not turn out so ill. It would take an 18-horse power +profligate to corrupt Sainty, it is true; but how about Arthur?’ + +‘Arthur doesn’t like Claude; he makes no secret of it; so I don’t think +he can do _him_ any harm. Besides, when the boys are at home I have them +so constantly under my own eye, I should know in a minute; and by the +time Arthur goes to Eton, Claude will be almost leaving.’ + +‘Or if he turns out badly, he may even have left,’ said Lord +Corstorphine. + +So the matter was broached to Lady Eva, who, you may be sure, was +profuse in a mother’s blessings and tears. She was fond of her son in a +way, and honestly wanted the best that was to be had for him in life. +She had been ruefully reflecting that she would never be able to send +him to a good school, except at the cost of decided privations to +herself; and there was no doubt he would be dreadfully in her way in +London. + +Lord Corstorphine proposed himself for a Sunday to a great friend among +the Eton masters, and found that his host, having an unexpected vacancy +for the next half, was delighted to do a good turn to any one in whom he +was interested. The duchess, when she heard what was on foot, suddenly +insisted on helping, and promised to pay half of her grandson’s +expenses; and though her contribution was frequently several terms in +arrear, she generally paid up in the end, unless she had been unusually +unlucky at cards. + +So, though Lady Eva had failed to extract from her sister-in-law that +general invitation to regard Belchamber as her country-home, which she +had hoped for, she left for town with a comfortable feeling that her +visit had not been wasted. Claude was practically off her hands; he +would go to Eton at no expense to her, and spend most of his holidays at +Belchamber. ‘Dear Belchamber, where poor Char and I spent our happy +childhood, and of which I have always carried the picture in my heart, +through all my wanderings,’ she said to Lady Charmington the day before +her departure. + +‘Indeed,’ said Sarah, with a little dry cough, ‘I always understood +from poor Char that he had hardly ever been here as a child. He said, +when we first came here in the old lord’s time, that he hoped his son +wouldn’t feel such a stranger here as he did, when he grew up.’ + +‘Ah well,’ said Lady Eva hurriedly, ‘my happiest times, almost the +_only_ happy ones of my neglected childhood were here, so I suppose they +bulk large in my memory. I have so little reason to remember most of my +youth with pleasure.’ + +‘You said, Aunt Eva,’ Arthur burst in, ‘vat you wemembered every corner +of ve place, blindfold, but you soon lost your way even in ve shrubbery, +and you thought One-tree Wood was the other side of the village.’ + +‘Ah, traitor!’ cried his aunt, playfully embracing him, ‘have you so +little gallantry as to try to convict a lady of making mistakes?’ + +‘You were a little rash, dear mamma,’ Claude said to her afterwards, ‘in +remembering your happy childhood at Belchamber so well, unless you took +a little more trouble to get up the subject.’ Claude for his part was +quite willing to go to Eton and try how he liked it. Almost the only +principle that had been early instilled into him was that it was always +worth while to accept anything expensive that could be enjoyed at +another person’s expense. It was rather absurd, no doubt, for so +finished a gentleman to go to school; but experience had taught him that +it was always quite easy to get sent away from educational +establishments, if one did not happen to like them; and what was the use +of his precocious knowledge of the world if it did not insure him an +easy victory over such simple people as schoolmasters and schoolboys? As +a matter of fact his astuteness did save him from paying the extreme +penalty for many peccadilloes that would have cut short the career of +less sophisticated youths under ‘Henry’s holy shade.’ His tutor’s +attitude towards him was a curious alternation of attraction and +distrust. But though never cordially liked by either boys or masters, he +was still there, as an overgrown youth in ‘lower division,’ when Sainty +hobbled into the school, a pale, gloomy little boy with an iron boot +and a stick, and was even keeping a precarious footing when Arthur +appeared a year later, and of course took the place by storm with his +frank and friendly manners, hatred of books, love of games, and +perfectly obvious and understandable type of beauty. + +Whether Claude really did much for his cousins on their arrival at Eton +may be doubted, but he certainly managed to impress Sainty with the +belief that he had been of incalculable service to him. To Claude, +Sainty meant Belchamber with all its comforts, horses to ride, pheasants +to shoot, good food, luxurious quarters, and presents at Christmas; +things his shelterless childhood had taught him to consider in a way +that boys to whom they had always been matters of course could not +understand. It never occurred to Sainty that his cousin’s attentions +proceeded from anything but a naturally kind heart compassionating the +limitations of a cripple and an invalid. He soon learned to disapprove +of Claude, and to dread his influence over Arthur, and on several +occasions screwed himself up almost with torture to the point of +speaking very plainly to his senior, a thing especially difficult among +boys; and the indulgent good nature with which his strictures were +received, where they might easily have been resented, gave him an +uncomfortable sense of obligation towards one to whom his conscience +forced him to say such disagreeable things in return for uniform +kindness and affection. + +‘Dear Sainty,’ Claude would say, ‘you do look so sweet when you’re angry +and solemn, for all the world like an old hen with all her feathers up +in defence of her chick. Of course I’m a wicked unprincipled hawk, but I +promise not to devour your bantling.’ He generally managed to refer +again to these conversations when Arthur was present, knowing that +nothing enraged the younger brother so much as the idea that Sainty, for +whom he always entertained the sublimest contempt, had dared to give +himself the airs of looking after him. + +It early dawned on Sainty that a loving heart was not an unmixed +blessing, unless one had the gift of imposing one’s views on the object +of one’s affection. Had he not been fond of Claude, it would be nothing +to him that he disapproved of him; if he did not love Arthur, it would +not have been a daily grief to him to see so clearly what his brother +ought and ought not to do, while he was destitute of the smallest shred +of influence over his actions. + +‘You know, dear,’ Claude said to him once, ‘there is nothing so easy as +to get rid of me. I am horribly _mal vu_ by the authorities. If tutor +hadn’t stuck up for me like a brick, I should have been sacked long ago; +he has told me pretty plainly that if there are any more rows he shall +say he thinks they had better take me away. A hint to him that I am +corrupting his pet lamb, and a word to your mother, and neither Eton nor +Belchamber will be troubled with me much longer.’ + +Such a speech hurt Sainty like a lash. ‘Don’t you see,’ he cried, ‘that +it is just the knowledge of what you say that makes it impossible for me +to do anything? I am helpless.’ + +See? Of course Claude saw; no one better. ‘Dear generous old boy!’ he +said, with one of his sudden pretty changes of manner, throwing an arm +lightly round his cousin’s shoulder; ‘who should know what an angel you +are, so well as your poor scamp of a cousin, who owes everything to +you?’ + +‘Don’t,’ Sainty said, wincing; ‘you do things you know I hate, and teach +Arthur to do them, and then you manage to make me feel a brute, and put +me in the wrong.’ + +Claude shrugged his shoulders, almost the last of his little foreign +tricks of manner that he had not lost at Eton. ‘You are impossible, dear +Saint,’ he said, and went his way, quite secure that what he had let +fall of the ease with which his cousin could get rid of him would +effectually tie his hands. + +The day came, however, when without any intervention of a schoolfellow, +the measure of Claude Morland’s ill-fame overflowed, and the College of +the Blessed Mary numbered him no longer among her children. + +That summer half was ‘long remembered’ at Eton (almost eighteen months) +for what Claude called a ‘great massacre of the innocents.’ We are not +concerned at this distance of time to inquire into the nature of this +old story. As usual, it was not the most guilty who were sent away; +there were angry mothers in many counties of England who declared their +darlings had been most unjustly used, and that ‘there was a boy called +Morland who was much worse than poor Tom, Dick, or Harry, who had only +had to leave at the end of the half, and with no blame attached to him.’ +‘Claude was more or less mixed up in rather a painful affair,’ his tutor +wrote to Lord Corstorphine. ‘He did not know how much he was to blame, +but it would be best for the boy himself if his friends were to remove +him. Personally he liked him, but ...’; and Sainty tried hard not to +feel a certain relief at his cousin’s departure. He atoned for this +unchristian want of sympathy by making the best of the matter to his +mother and guardian, and begging that it should make no difference in +the culprit’s footing at Belchamber. What he never mentioned at home was +that Arthur had come very near being implicated, and that he, Sainty, +had strained his conscience to the utmost, in solemnly pledging his word +to his tutor for his brother’s innocence. Arthur accepted this as he did +everything else from Sainty. ‘What is vere to make a fuss about?’ he +said. ‘I’d have done as much for you, or for vat matter, for any over +chap who wasn’t my bwover. You jaw about your conscience, and not being +sure, and tell me to see what I’ve made you do. I don’t call that lying. +Of course, if a fellow’s asked point-blank if anover fellow’s done a +fing, he’s _got_ to say he hasn’t. Don’t be such a pwig.’ + +Sainty did not stay very long at Eton himself. In spite of constant +staying out, and much sick-leave, he really was not strong enough for +the life there; nor was it a great grief to him to go. He did not make +friends easily; his shy reserved manner, his studious habits, and +inability for athletics, not less than his austerely high standard of +ethics which his minor found so unnecessary, were not calculated to make +him popular with his schoolfellows; and he resented their familiar +abbreviation of his title into ‘Belcher.’ He stayed long enough to see +Arthur launched on a course of prosperity, and in a fair way to become a +‘swell,’ and then sang his _Nunc dimittis_. Arthur remained, alone of +the three, and flourished like a green bay-tree. He did just enough work +to get through his various examinations with a little cribbing, and +found plenty of people ready to do all the rest for him. He was quite +selfish, self-indulgent, easy-going, good-natured, and happy, and was as +popular with the masters as with the boys. The elastic code of schoolboy +honour fitted him like a glove, and he had the makings in him of a +first-rate cricketer. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + + +Lord Corstorphine had been an Oxford man, but some curious lingering +dread of Puseyism made Lady Charmington send Sainty to Cambridge. She +gave a moment’s anxious thought to the vicinity of Newmarket, but, as +she truly said, that hardly seemed a danger to Sainty; and as Arthur was +to read for the army when he left Eton, there was no question of the +University for him. + +Sainty went to college, as he did most things, from the habit of +obedience, but with no great hope of personal enjoyment. Anticipation to +him was rarely pleasurable; he had not the sanguine temperament. He +looked on Cambridge as a larger Eton, a new field for unpopularity and +isolation in the midst of a crowd, but he soon began to be aware of an +atmosphere of wider toleration than he had known at school. + +It is true he was a dreary failure among his peers, the gilded youth who +went to Newmarket, kept hunters, and spent their evenings at the +card-table; and he was ignominiously blackballed for a certain +fashionable dining-club for which some one was so ill-advised as to put +him up. His college, however, was large enough to contain men of all +sorts, and among some of the more thoughtful he found congenial society +and kindly appreciation, especially in the little knot of undergraduates +who gathered round a young don called Gerald Newby. + +Sainty was just ripe for some one to worship, and Newby supplied the +object beautifully. In all his reserved, unhappy boyhood, he had never +known the joy of that falling in friendship, so to speak, which is one +of youth’s happiest prerogatives. The only two companions for whom he +had felt much affection, his cousin and his brother, had certainly given +him more pain than pleasure. The generous delights of an enthusiastic +admiration had hitherto been withheld from him. This young man, +sufficiently his senior to speak to his troubled soul with a certain +authority, yet near enough to his own age for discussion on equal terms, +excited such a feeling in the highest degree. + +It is difficult for older people not to smile at very young men’s +estimates of themselves or of one another. Newby had opinions, splendid +opinions, on all sorts of subjects, which his disciple imbibed with +rapture. Sainty took his young mentor quite seriously, and Gerald, it +need hardly be said, took himself quite seriously; and between them they +were sublimely earnest and high-toned, and perhaps, if the truth must be +told, just a trifle priggish. + +For one thing, of course, Sainty had ‘doubts.’ It is not to be supposed +that a youth with a morbid conscience, a tender heart, a keen mind and +delicate health, reared in Lady Charmington’s school of extreme +Calvinistic theology, should have reached the age of eighteen without +many searchings of heart. + +Little as this profane page may seem the place for the discussion of +such subjects, it would be impossible to give an adequate notion of +Sainty’s life at Cambridge or his relations with Gerald Newby, without a +passing reference to the topics that kept them from their beds far into +the small hours of many a chilly morning. + +Young men of Gerald Newby’s stamp can conceive of nothing that is not +the better for being ‘threshed out,’ as he would have called it. He held +that if the old creeds were ‘outworn,’ it was no reason for abandoning +faith--that there was to be evolution in belief as in other things; and +he had dreams of an universal Church freed from strangling dogmas, in +which all sincere seekers after truth should meet in a common +brotherhood. Perhaps he was a little vague as to what was to be left as +the object of belief, when everything had been eliminated in which the +controversially inclined could find matter for discussion, but that did +not trouble him in the least. + +‘What we want,’ he said to Sainty, ‘is more light. All churches in all +ages have been alike in the mistake of endeavouring to stifle discussion +of their doctrines. Discussion is the breath of life; unquestioning +acceptance is death.’ + +‘But once one begins questioning things, one is so apt to find one +doesn’t believe them----’ + +‘Then let them go. Depend upon it, what won’t bear the investigation of +reason cannot be worth keeping. The truth, and the truth only, must +emerge clearer and purer from every test to which it is submitted; and +it is the truth we want. Why, when in all other departments of knowledge +our understanding becomes truer and stronger every year, should we seek +to stultify ourselves and shrink from all growth in the highest science +of all, that which deals with the fount of all knowledge, and the spring +of all conduct?’ + +‘But suppose,’ Sainty asked, ‘one should find in the end that one +believes nothing?’ + +‘Then believe nothing,’ said Newby grandly. ‘But I won’t, I can’t, +suppose any such thing; it is belief that comes of inquiry, not the +negation of belief.’ + +Sainty was very much impressed. He had never before had any one to whom +he could unburthen himself on these subjects. His mother, he knew well, +would have revolted in horror from any questioning of the doctrines she +herself accepted, and his uncle would not have approached the discussion +in that serious spirit which alone he thought befitting. But the lads +who assembled evening after evening in Newby’s rooms had no angelic fear +of treading on anything, and talked everlastingly on all subjects, +religious doubt or belief among the rest. If they found the world out of +joint they by no means shared Hamlet’s distress at being ‘born to set it +right,’ or doubted for a moment their perfect ability to do so. These +boys who so confidently settled the affairs of the nation, the world, +the universe, are getting middle-aged men now, hard-working public +officials, clergymen, schoolmasters, and would probably smile at their +own youthful enthusiasms. Many of them are married and fathers of +families. Newby himself is senior dean of the college, and a very +different person from the ardent apostle of universal belief and +brotherhood to whom Sainty brought so many of his perplexities. + +Belchamber spent an immense amount of time in the young don’s +comfortable rooms. A kind of sensual austerity marked the place, +something cloistral and monastic, yet with a touch of art and luxury. +Pale autumnal sunlight, or the soft glow of shaded lamps, lingered +lovingly on the backs of well-bound books, some large framed photographs +of early Italian Madonnas, and a reproduction of a Neapolitan bronze. A +great many teacups reflected the fire, while a permanent faint smell of +tobacco just gave a masculine character to the mellow warmth of the +atmosphere. Several armchairs and a huge sofa seemed always trying, by +the sad colour and severe pattern of their coverings, to conceal the +fact of their depth and softness, just as their owner, who had a +handsome refined face and a well-knit frame, affected a slouch and wore +shabby clothes to show he was not vain. + +If Sainty poured himself out to Gerald when they were alone, he took but +little share in the general discussions, when other people were present. +To express himself was always a difficulty to him; he lay, as it were, +on the margin of the pool of talk, into which one eager speaker after +another dashed past him while he was still trying to summon courage for +the plunge. It would sometimes happen that at the end of a long evening +he had not opened his mouth, and he was taken to task more than once on +the subject by his friend. ‘You really should try and talk more; men +take your silence for ungraciousness. It looks as if you didn’t think +them even worth disagreeing with, you know. Locke asked me to-day if you +weren’t very proud; he said you sat all the time he was talking about +the essential Christianity of Shelley’s point of view, the other night, +with a little supercilious expression which said plainer than words that +you thought him a fool.’ + +‘Oh dear! and I was so much interested,’ Sainty cried. ‘I had nothing +particular to say about it; to tell the truth, I had never thought of +Shelley exactly from that point of view, but I liked it all so much.’ + +‘Well, you should have told him so; you see, you didn’t convey that +impression to Locke.’ + +Gerald was by no means always tender with his proselyte. He had great +belief in his own powers of sympathy--(‘I understand,’ he used to say in +a meaning way to those who laid bare their difficulties to him)--but he +was quite capable of ‘smiting friendly and reproving’ when the occasion +seemed to demand it. ‘I shouldn’t be your friend, if I didn’t say ...’ +was a favourite formula with him, and he constantly invited an equal +frankness in others, though it is doubtful how he would have liked the +invitation to be accepted. + +‘I have been thinking a good deal,’ he said, pausing in the act of +making tea, and turning to Sainty with the kettle in one hand, ‘about +what you said the other day of shunning uncongenial society. Of course +there is a great deal of truth in it, and nothing obliges one to live +habitually with people with whom one has nothing in common, but one has +a duty to the outside world as well as to oneself.’ + +‘I can no more be myself with certain people,’ Sainty objected, ‘than I +can write my own handwriting on paper I don’t like.’ + +‘Of course we all feel that,’ responded Gerald rather brutally, ‘but +there are two things to consider: in the first place, there’s the danger +to one’s own character of getting narrow and cliquey; and in the second, +unless you have something to do with men who are your inferiors in aim +or culture, how are you to influence them for better things?’ + +‘I don’t say they are my inferiors,’ said Sainty humbly; ‘I only say +they are so unlike me in their habits and point of view that I can’t +talk to them. They may be quite as good fellows as I am; probably they +think themselves much better----’ + +‘Yes, but _you_ don’t think so; you know you don’t,’ insisted his mentor +sternly. ‘Ah! you are looking at that Giotto; it’s from the Arena Chapel +at Padua; it’s a jolly thing, isn’t it? The meekness of the Virgin’s +expression is so wonderful. Those fellows lost so much of the religious +feeling when they ceased to be archaic. Probably you don’t cordially +like or approve even of all the fellows you meet here. I don’t +altogether myself. But it is one of my principles to welcome all sorts +of men. It is not only that I think they may get good from us, but they +teach us too. We must try to be broad, to keep our sympathies open on +all sides, to be in touch with every kind of person, if we hope to do +any good.’ + +‘You are like St. Paul,’ said Sainty quite seriously; ‘it is very +wonderful of you. I wish I was more adaptable, but people shut me up +so.’ + +Newby smilingly deprecated the likeness to St. Paul, but in his heart he +thought it quite true. ‘Take Parsons, for instance,’ he said; ‘do you +suppose I am not often shocked by things he says? Yet I think he keeps +us fresh, as it were; he is bracing, stimulating, useful, if only as +keeping alive in us the wholesome reprobation of some of the views he +thinks it necessary to advocate. And look at the matter from his point +of view. It is far better he should come here, and find his own level, +and meet with wholesome disagreement, than be driven into thinking +himself a social pariah persecuted for his opinions, or surround himself +with a little set of duller men, who would take what he says for gospel, +and on whom his influence would be wholly bad.’ + +‘I don’t like Ned Parsons,’ said Sainty simply. ‘I know he’s clever and +amusing and all that, but I think he’s rather a beast.’ + +They were interrupted by the arrival of several undergraduates, +including the subject of their discussion, the pursuit of which had +therefore to be postponed to a more fitting opportunity. + +‘Yes, Newby,’ said Parsons, settling himself luxuriously in the deepest +armchair, ‘I will take a cup of tea, though I should prefer a whisky and +soda. And what might we be going to improve ourselves with to-night? the +religious opinions of Swinburne, or the relation of the Ego to the +non-Ego?’ + +‘You are incurably flippant, Ned,’ said Gerald, with an indulgent smile. + +‘Here we all are, burning to be enlightened,’ continued Parsons. ‘Pray +don’t deny us the tonic of stimulating conversation.’ + +‘I’ve been wondering,’ innocently struck in a large rowing man, whom Ned +described as having ‘aspirations after higher things,’ ‘what it is that +keeps us all together, when we’ve so little in common, and I’ve come to +the conclusion it must be our sense of humour.’ + +‘Quite right, Og; no doubt it is,’ said Parsons approvingly. ‘And you +and Newby are specially rich in it; and so is Sainty over there in the +corner, though he is funny by stealth and blushes to find it fame.’ + +The room was growing full of smoke and of the buzz of voices; Newby was +holding forth to a small knot of admirers. ‘The Radicalism of Mill,’ he +was saying, ‘is as dead as the dodo; all the things that were vital to +his generation have been attained----’ + +‘How about female suffrage?’ Parsons asked. + +‘But there is a newer Radicalism,’ Gerald went on, without paying any +attention, ‘which is not incompatible with Imperialism in its best +forms----’ + +‘All Radicalism,’ said the rowing man sententiously, with the air of +making a valuable contribution to contemporary thought, ‘tends to +Socialism----’ + +‘Well, yes, in a way you may say it does,’ assented Newby politely; ‘but +that in my mind is not altogether an objection. The word Socialism used +to be a bugbear to frighten children with; but there is a new Socialism +as there is a new Radicalism. If you come to think of it, all +interference by the State is a form of Socialism; it is the community +at work for the good of the community, instead of the individual making +weak and isolated effort for his own good----’ + +‘Poor dear Mill!’ interjected Ringwood, a young man who in those days +would have been called ‘æsthetic,’ ‘it is a pity he is so _vieux jeu_; +he had such a nice refined face, and learned Greek as a baby, and it was +so nice and unconventional of him to want women in parliament. Perhaps +in time parliament may come to be all women, and men be free to look +after things that really matter.’ + +‘Such as old china,’ said Parsons. + +‘Women,’ said the rowing man, ‘should stick to woman’s province; her +home and children should be enough for any woman.’ + +‘And suppose she hasn’t got any?’ asked Ned. + +‘But I see what Ringwood means,’ said the rowing man. ‘Of course +politics are very important and all that; far be it from me to deny it. +For my part I’m a Conservative, and I don’t care who knows it. But the +thing that really matters is no doubt the intellectual life.’ + +Even Newby smiled discreetly. + +‘No doubt, no doubt,’ he said. ‘There is a great deal in what you say; +but it is essential that politics should not be left to inferior men, or +what becomes of the nation? Look at America with her venal professional +politicians, and see what it has brought her to. Depend upon it, it is +the intellectual element in parliament that leavens the lump. Our +thinkers must not shut themselves up from public life; we must go down +into the arena and put the result of our thought into action, if we hope +to do any good in our generation.’ + +This magnificent sentiment was applauded as it deserved to be, but Newby +had not nearly had his innings. He had much more to say about the new +Radicalism and the new Socialism, and he talked so beautifully of the +wickedness of being a hermit that Sainty resolved to widen his horizon +by asking Ned Parsons to lunch next day, and proceeded at once to ‘put +the result of his thought into action.’ + +It was not often that he indulged in the luxury of entertaining. He had +none of that genial desire for presiding which to many a man makes the +top of his own table such an exciting position; moreover, he had been +trained in the practice of the most careful economy, and had been +accustomed to hear his mother condemn unnecessary profusion as hardly +less sinful than irreligion. + +The question of his allowance had been carefully discussed between his +guardians, and the sum eventually decided on, although it would have +been treated as quite inadequate by most young men of his position, +seemed to him so ridiculously large that he was always endeavouring to +conceal the amount of it from his poorer companions. He did so entirely +from a feeling of delicacy; but it need hardly be said that his motives +were frequently misconstrued, and he was firmly believed by many to be +of a penurious and miserly disposition. As a matter of fact, if little +of it went in ostentatious hospitality, he spent still less upon +himself. Arthur early discovered that his brother was ‘a safer draw for +cash than the mater,’ and Claude, if he asked for help less often and +with more circumlocution, also found Sainty a convenient banker. Lady +Eva’s son was studying with a well-known coach for diplomacy, and though +he lived with his mamma, ‘found life in London,’ as he wrote to his +cousin, ‘horribly expensive.’ ‘I wear my gloves till people look +sympathetic when they shake hands with me, thinking I am in mourning, +and should as soon think of taking a hansom as a coach and four. But +cigarettes I must have; they are literally the breath of my nostrils, +and no matter how skilfully I hide them, mamma will find them and smoke +them when I’m out. If it were not for Sunborough House, I believe I +should starve. How, when, and where my revered parent feeds I am wholly +unable to discover; but there is never anything to eat at home. Luckily, +I am in high favour with grandmamma. I tell her she is the most +beautiful woman in London, and that if I wasn’t her grandson I should be +frantically in love with her, and she swallows it all. We are the best +of friends, but I don’t get much out of her, except food and an +occasional back seat in her opera-box; and of course I have to make her +little presents _de temps en temps_. I ask myself, my dear Saint, how on +earth all the young men I see about, smiling and spruce, contrive to +live in this wicked costly place. They can’t _all_ be millionaires.’ +This was the burthen of many letters. Belchamber smiled indulgently; he +couldn’t help being amused by them; they were certainly better reading +than the ill-spelt scrawls in which Arthur announced he was ‘infernal +hard-up.’ ‘What with subscriptions, and one thing and another, a fellow +had such lots of expenses at Eton, it was perfectly beastly, and the +mater kept him so precious tight, and always seemed to think because you +were at school you were a kid, and had no need of money.’ Unlike as were +their styles, the upshot of all the letters was the same: the youthful +writer was in pressing need of funds, and would ‘dear old Sainty’ kindly +supply the deficiency? And ‘dear old Sainty’ usually did. + +It is no doubt a very bad thing to be in want of money, but it is almost +worse to be the quarry at which the impecunious let fly all their +shafts; to know when you see a beloved handwriting on an envelope, that +it is hunger and not love that has set the pen travelling, and dictated +the letter that lies within. It is an experience that only comes to most +of us later in life; boys of Sainty’s age are not often called upon to +taste that half humorous bitterness. This was one of the few troubles +about which Sainty did not consult Gerald Newby. He knew instinctively +that his virtuous friend would have little sympathy with his supplying +the funds of luxury and extravagance. The double drain, of which neither +the amount nor the recurrence could ever be accurately foretold, kept +the boy perpetually anxious about money matters. Perhaps it really did +tend to make him, as people thought, unduly careful in his daily +expenditure; and, though he took infinite pains to conceal the fact, he +liked to be able to help humbler unfortunates than his brother or +cousin. + +Another eccentricity which showed his unfitness for the state of life +to which he had the misfortune to be born, was his exaggerated +propensity for work; he had a real aptitude for scholarship, a love of +erudition for its own sake. No pains seemed too great to him, no +research too profound, for the illustration of a curious expression or +the elucidation of an obscure passage. There was a danger that his +health, never robust, might suffer from such close application. ‘If you +were a poor student,’ Newby said to him, ‘with your way to make in the +world, having come up from Glasgow with a bag of oatmeal, I should think +it most meritorious of you to peg away as you do, but for _you_ to go +injuring your health by overwork is worse than unnecessary--it’s wrong.’ + +‘My health does not seem to me such an unusually fine specimen that all +risk of injury to it must be avoided at any cost,’ Sainty answered. +‘Besides, what am I to do, if I don’t work? I know few people, and the +men I do know are all busy. I can’t play games or ride; when I am not +working I loaf, and you are always inveighing against loafing as the +root of all evil.’ + +‘You should come out more, have more air,’ persisted Gerald. + +‘In the summer I am out a good deal, as you know,’ Sainty answered, ‘but +at this time of year I can’t sit out, and I can only do a very moderate +amount of walking without getting tired.’ + +‘Why don’t you start a cart and pony?’ his friend asked. + +Sainty looked scared. ‘It costs such a lot to keep a cart and pony,’ he +said. ‘I do hire one sometimes,’ + +‘What nonsense!’ Newby protested. ‘In your position it’s absurd to talk +as if you couldn’t afford a trifling thing like that. That’s the sort of +thing that makes fellows say you are screwy----’ He stopped rather +abruptly, having said more than he intended. + +Sainty froze instantly. ‘Oh! they say that, do they?’ he said, with an +expression which would have recalled Lady Charmington to Newby, had he +enjoyed the privilege of her acquaintance. ‘Perhaps I am the best judge +of what I can afford.’ + +Like many people who are theoretically in favour of independence, Gerald +resented it in his disciples. ‘For all your false air of humility,’ he +said, ‘one has only to scratch you to find the aristocrat.’ + +It seemed to Sainty one more proof of the irony of fate that even such +qualities as his application to study and careful ordering of life’s +economy, which would have been held as highest virtues in many of his +fellow-students, by a curious process of inversion became almost faults +in him, faults too for which he must be rebuked by the mouth of Gerald +Newby, the great apostle of industry and frugality, and the one person +in the University whose praise would have been sweet and valuable to +him. + +‘The things you reproach me with are hardly aristocratic vices,’ he +said, with a sad little smile; ‘but are you quite consistent? You +lecture Parsons on his laziness, and Ringwood on his extravagance, and +then you come and try to drive me into being an idler and a spendthrift, +who have no gifts in those directions.’ + +‘Of course, if you resent advice,’ Newby said, ‘I’m sorry; I have no +business to _lecture_ you at all.’ + +‘Ah Gerald!’ said Sainty, stretching a protesting hand; but Mentor was +nettled and would not immediately be mollified. It was on the tip of +Sainty’s tongue to explain his need of economy, but the story of his +mother’s long struggle to restore its solvency to their house seemed too +sacred and intimate to be told even to his dearest friend. The unveiling +of his own soul was only a personal immodesty, but his mother’s thrift +and Arthur’s premature dissipation could not be touched upon without a +sense of disloyalty to them from which he shrank. + +‘Let us go and get a trap and have a drive,’ he said. + +‘Thanks; I’m busy; I’m afraid I haven’t time,’ Newby said stiffly. ‘Did +you think I was hinting that I wanted to be taken out driving?’ and the +offended sage strode across the court to his own rooms. Sainty heard +the man in the rooms below him, to whom a scholarship was a dire +necessity, being dragged forth to football by clamorous companions who +would take no denial. ‘Well, I won’t go and drive in an east wind and +get neuralgia all alone,’ he concluded, as he turned again to his table +piled up with learned commentaries. + + + + +CHAPTER V + + +In spite of his untoward mania for study, or rather because of it, the +years spent at Cambridge were the happiest of Sainty’s life. He allowed +himself to be dissuaded from going in for a scholarship, which he had +much wished to do, on the ground that, as he would certainly have got +it, it was grossly unfair to men to whom it was of real importance. +Balked in this ambition, he concentrated his efforts on his degree, but +here he encountered a new difficulty. + +It happened that his second year at the University was also the +twenty-first of his life, a coincidence which to most of his +fellow-students would have been productive of no derangement; but it +became apparent that in the very middle of the long vacation, just when +he hoped to go up to Cambridge and do his most valuable and undisturbed +work for the tripos, he had got to be present at a horrible function +known as ‘coming of age.’ + +Nothing like serious hospitality on a large scale had been attempted at +Belchamber during the two-thirds of his life in which he had been the +nominal head of his family, but Lady Charmington was conscientiously +anxious that this event should lack no befitting pomp and ceremony. +Unfortunately, fourteen years of ceaseless watchfulness and economy are +not a good training for lavish display when the time demands it; so the +poor lady found herself much exercised in mind over many details, and +not a little perturbed at the thought of what it was all going to cost. +By no means a diffuse or prolific correspondent at ordinary times, she +began early in the May term to rain letters upon her son about the +selection of the house party for the great occasion. ‘Your Uncle Cor,’ +she would write one week, ‘says that we must ask your grandmother and +the duke. Of course I am only anxious to do what is right, and I suppose +we must have them, though the duchess has never shown any particular +interest in you or Arthur. Tell me what _you_ think about it.’ The next +it would be, ‘I am told there must be a ball, that there has always been +a coming-of-age ball; the county will expect it. Such things are not +much in my line, as you know, but I shouldn’t like anything to be +wanting that ought to be done, or that people expect.’ + +To Sainty the whole thing loomed an unmitigated horror. What pleasing +anticipations, for instance, could the prospect of a ball awaken in a +young man, one of whose legs was shorter than the other, and to whom a +highly polished floor was nothing but a danger? He came to dread these +letters of his mother, each one of which contained some new detail of +the approaching martyrdom; such alarming obligations as the necessity of +a speech at the tenants’ dinner sprang suddenly on him at the turn of a +page, and left him gasping. + +‘You have rather a cold nature,’ his mother wrote, ‘not very +imaginative, so I don’t feel I need fear your being carried off your +balance by all this fuss. If you were excitable and emotional like +Arthur, I should feel more anxious. In your case the danger is more that +you will take the whole thing as a matter of course, and not realise +fully the importance of this epoch in your life, and all the new +responsibilities it entails on you.’ Characteristic passages like the +above, scattered up and down the letters, seemed to give Sainty the +measure of his exact knowledge of his mother, and cast a flickering +light into the depths of her abysmal ignorance of him. The sense of a +somewhat unfair advantage bred in him by these revelations of his +superior insight brought into his love for her an element of almost +pitying tenderness which alone was wanting to rivet the chains of his +early acquired habit of obedience to her will. + +‘Are you afraid of your mother?’ Gerald Newby asked him once, with some +scorn, in reply to his repeated assertion of the impossibility of going +counter to her wishes. + +‘I am very fond of her,’ Sainty answered, with gentle dignity. He had an +almost painful intuition of her sacrifices, her hopes, her frustrate +ambitions for him, and of the disappointment he must inevitably be to +her; he probably read into her not very complex emotions, fine shades of +sensibility from his own consciousness, after the manner of +tender-hearted ladies with their dogs, which made his sympathy for her a +little exaggerated. It was this habit of deference to her lightest wish +that sent him forth sorely against his will to make a solemn call on a +youth whom Lady Charmington had indicated for this attention. ‘My friend +Lady Eccleston has been staying here,’ she wrote, ‘with her daughter, +and I have asked them to come in August for your coming of age. She +tells me her son Thomas is at Cambridge. I didn’t know he had left +Harrow, but it seems he has been at the University two terms. She said +it would be very kind of you to call on him, and I hope you will, as his +mother is a friend of mine. If you find the young man agreeable, you +might ask him to come with his mother and sister in the vacation. _A +propos_, of course you will ask any of your own friends you would like; +we shall want some young men; there will be Cissy Eccleston and the two +de Lissac girls--only let me know in good time how many you ask.’ + +On his way to show a grudging civility to Tommy Eccleston, Belchamber +revolved in his mind his mother’s parting injunction to provide a band +of youths for the feast. Luckily, here lay one ready indicated to his +hand, but as he ran over the restricted roll-call of his intimates, they +did not strike him as ornamental. Young Lord Springald and Sir Vaux +Hunter and their friends would have been the very people for the +occasion. They would have been voted ‘nice, gentlemanly young fellows,’ +or ‘fine, high-spirited lads,’ according as they were shy and dull, or +noisy and rowdy; but then, unfortunately, he did not know them. He could +not ask men whom he had spent two years in avoiding, and who had +blackballed him for their club, but his terrible habit of appreciating +other people’s points of view showed him how unsuitable his own friends +would seem in the eyes of the duke and duchess. Gerald of course he +wanted, and Gerald would be at home and imposing anywhere. His uncle +Corstorphine at least, who had many friends among the intelligent +obscure, could be trusted to appreciate Gerald; but he inwardly hoped +that his friend might not select Lady Charmington as the recipient of +his views on revealed religion. Apart from Newby, his progress towards +the compilation of a list had been purely one of elimination up to the +time of his arrival at Mr. Eccleston’s lodgings. In response to his +knock, the voice of some one who evidently spoke with a jersey over his +head made muffled answer from an inner apartment. + +‘All right, damn you, wait a sec., there’s no hurry. I’m changing,’ and +a moment after the owner of the rooms appeared, a pleasant commonplace +pink youth struggling into a college blazer, with one shoe on and the +other dangling by its strings from his teeth. + +‘Hulloa! beg pardon,’ he remarked; ‘I thought you were Johnson, who was +coming to go down to the river with me. I thought as he was so quiet he +was probably smashing something,’ and he held out a blistered palm of +welcome. + +‘Oh! er--how d’ye do,’ said Sainty, laying his own in it with no +unnecessary cordiality. ‘My name’s Belchamber. My mother asked me to +call on you; she knows your mother, don’t you know. I should have come +sooner, but I didn’t know you were up.’ + +‘Oh, it doesn’t matter; awfully good of you,’ answered Tommy. ‘Sit down, +won’t you; have some lunch?’ A piece of cold pressed beef and a boxed +tongue, with a pot of marmalade, showed that the host had himself +recently partaken of that meal. + +‘No thanks, I’ve had lunch,’ said Sainty. ‘But I oughtn’t to keep you; +you are just going out.’ + +‘Oh no, not at all; there’s no hurry; I haven’t got to be at the river +for half an hour. Besides, I’m waiting for Johnson; he said he’d come +and go down with me.’ + +Then there was a moment of uneasy silence, broken with an effort by +Sainty. + +‘Your mother and sister have been staying with my mother,’ he remarked. + +‘No, really?’ said Tommy, with the faintest possible show of interest. +‘My mother stays about a lot; she’s awfully popular.’ + +There was another pause, during which he finished putting on his shoes. + +‘I say, are you _sure_ you won’t have some lunch?’ he cried suddenly, +with quite a show of eagerness. ‘Do. I’m afraid I haven’t got any cake +or anything, ‘cos I’m in training. Have a whisky and soda, won’t you?’ + +‘No thanks, really not; I’ve just lunched. But I’m sure I’m keeping you +in.’ + +‘Oh, that’s all right,’ Tommy responded genially, and added, not very +consistently, ‘I can’t think where that ass can be?’ + +The conversation seemed in danger of collapsing altogether, when the +long-looked-for appearance of Johnson came as a welcome relief to both. + +‘Tommy, you brute, why ain’t you ready?’ + +‘Well, I like that, when I’ve been waiting half an hour for you.’ + +Sainty got up. + +‘Well, I mustn’t keep you,’ he said. + +‘Beg pardon; didn’t know you’d got any one here,’ said Johnson. + +‘Oh! Lord Belchamber--Mr. Johnson,’ said Eccleston, getting very red +over the fearful embarrassment of an introduction. Then to Sainty, who +remained standing, ‘Must you go? Awfully good of you to come; wish you’d +have had some lunch.’ + +‘Good-bye,’ Sainty said. ‘I hope you’ll come and see me--D, Old Court. +Come to lunch or tea or something; or look me up in the evening if it +suits you better.’ + +Sainty reported this conversation verbatim to Newby. + +‘You see,’ he said, ‘how hopeless it is for me to try and be gracious to +people with whom I have nothing in common. If you could have seen how +hard that poor boy struggled to look pleased to see me, and the grimness +with which I sat and scowled upon him, you would have felt sorry for us +both; you couldn’t have helped it.’ + +‘Of course, if your idea of being gracious is to sit and scowl at +people----’ Newby said. + +‘I didn’t mean to; I wanted to wreathe my unfortunate features in +smiles, but it was not a success. I am sure I feel as kindly towards my +fellow-creatures as most people do; but I approach them with invincible +terror; and there is no such sure way of making a dog bite you, as to +think he is going to.’ + +‘Then don’t think so,’ Newby said. ‘Have you _no_ control over your +apprehensions? Strengthen yourself in any way you like. If you can do it +in no other way, say to yourself that you are a great personage and that +most men will be only too glad of your attentions.’ + +‘Oh! but _that_ is a way that I should _not_ like,’ Sainty cried in +horror; ‘the one thing that finishes me completely is any idea that +people may think _I_ think they could want to know me for such a +reason.’ + +‘“The idea that people may think that you think,”’ Gerald repeated. ‘My +dear Belchamber, this is very morbid. Do try and be simple.’ Like all +elaborately synthetical people, Newby was always preaching simplicity +and a return to nature. + +‘And the sad part of this individual failure,’ Sainty continued, ‘is +that I particularly wanted it to be a success. I had a purpose in +calling.’ + +‘And what dark designs had you on this innocent fresher?’ + +‘My mother told me to ask him to the horrible business in August; his +people are coming. By the way, she suggests that I should provide other +victims, and I can’t think of any one who would not be hopelessly +inappropriate and bored to death. None of our friends _could_ take the +thing seriously, except, perhaps, Og.’ + +‘Well, he’s no use to you, as Providence having unkindly made him nearly +your twin, he has got, in a small way, the same business on, at home, +and _he_ takes it seriously enough, I promise you. I happen to know, +because he has done me the honour to ask me to stay for it.’ + +Sainty gave the cry of a thing in pain. ‘You haven’t accepted?’ + +‘Well, I didn’t commit myself; I’m really not quite sure yet where I +shall be this Long. I rather want to go abroad, and perhaps do some +climbing. Holmes and Collinson want me to coach them part of the time, +and I thought we might combine the reading and the exercise, and drop +down to the Italian lakes in the autumn.’ + +‘And I had so counted on your being there, Gerald,’ Sainty said. ‘You +are just the one person I did want. I felt there would be something +human about it all if I had you with me.’ + +‘You never said so, you know,’ Newby interjected. + +Sainty felt the hot pricking sensation at the back of his eyes which was +the nearest he ever got to tears. He had so intensely desired that +Gerald should be at Belchamber in August, that it had not occurred to +him to put his desire into words; they had talked the subject over so +often that he took it for granted his friend would know that he looked +for his help on the occasion. + +‘I thought--’ he began, ‘I hoped--I suppose you would feel----’ He +couldn’t express just what he meant at the moment. + +‘You see, you didn’t ask me,’ Newby persisted, ‘whereas Og did.’ + +‘Oh! go to Og, or Switzerland, or Hell, as far as I’m concerned,’ Sainty +broke out. + +Gerald laid a kind restraining hand upon his shoulder. ‘My dear boy, you +needn’t lose your temper and swear at me,’ he said; ‘I haven’t said I +wouldn’t come. I only said you hadn’t asked me, and I couldn’t be +expected to assume that I was invited to your coming of age, unless you +said something about it.’ + +Sainty was trembling all over; his little gust of passion had passed and +left him humbled and ashamed. How could he have spoken so to his friend? + +‘Oh! forgive me,’ he cried. ‘I suppose I felt in my heart such a need of +you, that I couldn’t but fancy you would know it.’ + +Newby coughed uneasily. ‘For Heaven’s sake, don’t let us be +sentimental,’ he said, in his little, prim, dry manner. + +‘My mother says I am cold and unimaginative,’ Sainty answered sadly, +‘and you accuse me of hysteria. You can’t both be right; but anyway, I +suppose _I’m_ wrong. After all, why should I assume that just because I +wanted you I was certain to get you? I haven’t so often got what I +wanted in life. I should have remembered that though you are nearly +everything to me, I am to you only one of a hundred men your kindness +has helped.’ + +Gerald smiled. Like all Englishmen he had been frightened by the +indecency of a glimpse of naked emotion, but he was always prepared to +accept any amount of solid adulation soberly offered. + +‘You make too much of anything I may have been able to do for you,’ he +said graciously. ‘And affection is a great gift; I’m sure I’m very proud +that you like me and feel I have been of some use to you. I have no +doubt I can manage to make it fit in.’ + +Sainty was profusely grateful; he really felt that Gerald had conferred +a tremendous favour on him, which is probably what Newby meant he should +feel. + +His other invitations were less successful. Even Ringwood, whom at last +he decided to ask, though he knew his mother and Arthur would say he was +an affected ass, had pledged himself to the rival celebration. + +Tommy Eccleston, to be sure, accepted. ‘Oh, thanks!’ he said, ‘very good +of you; I shall like it awfully.’ + +So Sainty wrote and announced this meagre harvest to Lady Charmington, +who forthwith responded: ‘Do you mean to say that out of all the young +men you must know at Cambridge, you can only get two? Try and find two +more, or we shall be more women than men. Johnny Trafford is coming, and +I have asked Algy Montgomery, and of course there will be Claude, but +none of the other Trafford boys can come, and I know so few young men. +You see, we are such a lot of women. There is grandmamma (my mother, I +mean), and your Aunt Susie, and Lady Eccleston and her daughter, and +Alice de Lissac writes that her husband, she is sure, won’t come, so +there are three more women. And now the duchess insists on my asking +Lady Deans, whom I don’t know, and your Aunt Eva wants to bring a friend +of hers. I counted on your having lots of friends you would want asked, +or I should not have agreed.’ + +At last, in despair, Sainty had recourse to Tommy Eccleston again, who +seemed sociable and friendly, and was the only person who had accepted +with anything like cordiality. ‘You haven’t got any friend you’d like to +bring, have you?’ Sainty asked. + +‘I think Johnson would come, if he was asked,’ said Tommy thoughtfully. +‘You see, between you and me, he’s rather sweet on my sister.’ + +It only wanted two days to the end of the term, when the list was +finally completed in the most unexpected manner. + +Sainty was hobbling disconsolately across the court one evening, when he +almost ran into Parsons. Since he had invited this gentleman to lunch as +an attempt at greater catholicity, they had frequently met, and +something like friendship might by a little stretch of imagination be +said to exist between them. Sainty, feeling how very little strain their +intercourse would bear, was always careful not to tighten it unduly. + +‘I hear you are coming of age,’ Ned remarked, ‘and have got a regular +corroboree in honour of the event at the family fried-fish shop. I can’t +think why you haven’t asked me.’ + +The intention was evidently humorous, but Sainty was a little taken +aback. The fact was that Parsons was the only man of whom he saw +anything like as much, whom he had not tried as the possible fourth +demanded by the necessity for sexual symmetry. + +‘Should you care about it?’ he asked, a little doubtfully. + +‘My dear fellow,’ Ned answered candidly, ‘don’t ask a poor devil like me +to a place like Belchamber; I should be ludicrously out of place. +Besides, you know, you don’t really like me. Of course I was only +joking.’ + +Sainty was touched. Perhaps he had done Ned injustice. He certainly had +never been very civil to him, and Parsons had borne no malice. + +‘Will you come?’ he said. + +‘Do you mean it?’ said Ned. ‘Of course I will.’ + +As Sainty wrote to announce this last recruit to Lady Charmington, he +could not help smiling at the thought of three out of the four who were +to represent his chosen intimates and cronies on the great occasion. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + + +During the long years of Sainty’s minority there had been but a moderate +establishment kept at Belchamber. Lady Charmington had been anxious the +boys should be brought up there, and have the early associations which +alone make a place a home, though it would have been simpler and much +more comfortable to have lived in the dower-house, and some of her +relations had blamed her for not doing so. + +Sainty had hardly ever been into the great central body of the house, +where what were called the State Apartments seemed only to exist to be +shown to tourists by the housekeeper. A whole wing of guests’ and +servants’ rooms had been permanently closed, and was only occasionally +aired and inspected. Sometimes, when the boys were little, they had +played at hide-and-seek in the long vista of empty chambers; but for the +most part the family lived entirely in the west wing, much like royal +pensioners to whom a set of apartments had been granted in some unused +palace. Sainty had exactly the intense love for the place, not unmixed +with awe, which might have been felt by the child of a custodian. His +mother’s long habit of unquestioned and unquestioning authority, not +less than her constant inculcation of a sense of stewardship and +responsibility to a certain abstraction known as ‘the estate,’ had +combined with his natural modesty and self-effacement to eliminate all +sensation of personal ownership. + +In the stable one pair of carriage horses, Lady Charmington’s cobs and +favourite hack, the boys’ old ponies, and a riding horse or two, had +sufficed for all their needs; and old Bell the coachman had never wanted +more than the groom and a couple of stable-lads under him, cheerfully +doing much of the work himself. The butler, who had been with them +fourteen years, was perhaps rather practical than ornamental, but could +turn his hand to anything, and the two footmen were lads from Lady +Charmington’s own bible-class in the village, released by their +proficiency in the scriptures from the necessity of following the +plough, to wear the badge of servitude upon their shining buttons. The +housekeeper and her ladyship’s maid held sound evangelical views, and +the morals and health of the under-servants were looked after with equal +care and sternness. Lady Charmington was thoroughly versed in the +spiritual state of the odd man, and could have told without a moment’s +hesitation the date of the third housemaid’s confirmation, or when the +scullery-maid last had a quinsy. + +Now, however, all was to be changed. Sainty came home to an atmosphere +of expansion and innovation. He found his uncle, Lord Corstorphine--whom +in future we must remember to call Lord Firth, the old earl having been +dead some years at the date of his grandson’s majority--in constant +consultation with his mother, consultations in which, to his extreme +embarrassment, he was expected to take part. He discovered that he had +absolutely no views as to the proper functions of a groom of the +chambers, or the relative undesirability of keeping a lot of young men +unemployed when you were alone, or having extra liveries into which, on +the occasion of a large party, temporary hirelings could be hastily +inducted; about whom, as Lady Charmington truly remarked, you could know +nothing, and who might steal the spoons and flirt with the maids. Old +carriages that had not seen the light of day for years were dragged from +their retirement and unveiled before him, while all the horse-dealers in +the county brought animals for his inspection of every shade of +unfitness for the duty of drawing them. Lord Firth’s political +engagements made his presence necessarily intermittent; he could but +seldom be there; and in his absence Lady Charmington would look +anxiously at her son, hoping for some expression of opinion from him, +but Sainty’s ignorance was only equalled by his indifference. He tried +in vain to care whether, supposing the carriages were worth doing up at +all, they should be sent to London or confided to a provincial +renovator. + +As to the horses, as Bell scornfully told him, he ‘had never knowed one +end of a ‘oss from the other.’ On general principles he was on the side +of the least expenditure. If he had said what he really felt, it would +have been ‘Why need we live any differently because I shall be +twenty-one next month than we did when I was twenty? We have always had +all we wanted; why spend all this money on things that are not going to +give me the smallest pleasure--rather the reverse?’ But these are the +things one must not say. He looked at his mother’s wistful face and +strove manfully to show the interest in all these questions which was +expected of him. + +Arthur, when presently he came home, having just left Eton for good, +flung himself into the whole business with very different gusto. The +spending of money, either his own or other people’s, was always a +genuine pleasure to this young man, and the horse-coping afforded +opportunities for displaying to an admiring audience a knowingness quite +amazing in one so young, and a pair of irreproachable riding-breeches. +Once when Sainty was walking in the shrubbery that masked the +stable-yard he overheard the dealer from Great Charmington expressing +himself to Bell with a freedom in which he would not have indulged had +he known who was behind the wall. + +‘I’d a deal rather have to do with Lord Arthur,’ he was saying, ‘than +with either my lord or my lady. His lordship, he don’t want no horse at +all; Lady Charmington, she knows a good horse when she sees ‘im, but she +don’t want to pay for ‘im; but Lord Arthur, he wants a good article, and +he’s willing to pay a good price. He’s a gentleman, he is.’ + +‘Ah!’ answered Bell, ‘it’s a pity ’e wasn’t the eldest; ’e’d ’ave made +something like a markis, ’e would.’ + +It was the old old story; the one thing poor Sainty seemed able to do +was to stand between his younger brother and the position for which the +very stablemen saw his superior fitness. + +Arthur had been allowed to stay at Eton over his nineteenth birthday +that he might once more represent his school at Lord’s. A finer-looking +young fellow it would have been hard to find at this time, tall and fair +and ruddy, of athletic proportions and agreeable manners, a most +attractive personality, and as Sainty felt sadly, admiringly, but +without a touch of envy, a most complete contrast to his elder brother. +No one but Sainty, and he only imperfectly, knew the selfishness, the +carnal appetites, the imperious need of enjoyment, the lack of moral +sense, that lay beneath that smiling surface, or suspected the rock of +primitive obstinacy above which the floating growth of apparent +pliability waved so prettily in the tides of circumstance. Arthur had +not been at home a week before the usual demand for money made its +appearance. There is no doubt the younger brother had been extremely +useful to the elder just then; his happy presence had eased the strain +between Lady Charmington’s strenuous eagerness and Sainty’s +incompetence, and lent quite a spice of amusement to the fearful +upheaval in house and stable. The boys were together in what had been +their common sitting-room ever since it had been their schoolroom. +Sainty had had thoughts of asking for a study of his own, having much +need of somewhere to work undisturbed; but it seemed ungracious to ask +for the one thing that would have added to his comfort, when so much was +being done for him that gave him no pleasure whatever. + +Arthur, arrayed in a new pair of yellow boots, spotless white +‘flannels,’ and a lovely pink shirt, was whistling the airs from the +latest musical farce while oiling his favourite bat and sadly shaking +the table at which Sainty was trying to write a treatise on Epictetus. + +‘I don’t suppose, dear old boy,’ he said suavely, ‘that you could oblige +your little bwuvver with a small sum of money?’ + +Sainty looked up quickly. ‘Why, Arthur,’ he said, rather sternly, ‘I +heard you tell mother you didn’t owe a penny now. You know she offered +to pay any debts you had at Eton when you left, and you said you had +given her a complete list.’ + +‘So I did, poor dear, and it made her hair curl. I even took my bill and +sat down quickly and wrote fifty,’ which was a hint I had got from the +passage of scripture she had read to us at prayers, so as to have a +little to go on with; but the fact is, dear boy, I’ve been cursedly +unlucky----’ + +‘Arthur! you haven’t been betting?’ + +‘Yes; you see that’s just what I have been doing. Damn it all, Sainty, +don’t look as if I’d been robbing a church. Every fellow has a little +something on his favourite horse: it’s not a crime.’ + +Sainty stared aghast. He had often wondered how Arthur managed to get +rid of so much money at Eton, where, as he knew, though the boys were +absurdly extravagant, the opportunities for spending were not unlimited. +Now he understood, and a bottomless gulf seemed to open at his feet. + +‘Of course it’s only a temporary thing,’ Arthur went on. ‘I made a good +thing over Ascot, but I’ve been unlucky with the Eclipse; one can’t +always win, you know. Unfortunately these things have to be paid up, +don’t yer know. My bookie’s a very good sort of chap, but he’s got to +pay his losses, and he naturally wants his money. You can call it a +loan, if you like. I’ve got a splendid tip for the Leger----’ + +Sainty looked down at his paper. Epictetus seemed to have gone a long +way off and become suddenly very unimportant since he had looked up from +it. He knew how useless it would be to expostulate; but he wanted time +to adjust his mind to this new terror. + +‘How did you come to know _how_ to bet?’ he asked; ‘I mean the machinery +of the thing. Who introduced you to a bookmaker?’ + +Arthur laughed aloud. ‘Upon my word I don’t remember,’ he said; ‘but I +assure you it’s not difficult. Half the fellows I know have a book on +all the meetings. I rather think it was Claude told me of this chap; +he’s a very good sort. The man I went to before when I won a pony over +the Derby wrote and said my telegram had come too late. I wasn’t going +to stand that kind of thing, so I cut him, naturally----’ + +Of course Arthur got what he wanted; it wasn’t, as it happened, a very +large sum. But Sainty was left with an abiding dread. He wondered +sometimes how it was that he saw so clearly the dangers that menaced his +brother, while Arthur himself remained so sublimely unconscious and +untroubled. The mention of Claude’s name in the matter, too, had +reawakened an old anxiety. He had supposed that after his cousin left +Eton Arthur would not be likely to have much to do with him except at +Belchamber, and under his own eye. Claude’s was an influence he +particularly dreaded for his brother, and it was evident that they had +at least been corresponding. He wondered if he ought to say anything to +his cousin about it, but he remembered the small effect such +interference on his part had always produced. + +The Morlands were among the first to arrive for the coming-of-age +festivities. Lady Eva had said, when she proposed it, that there must be +heaps of things to attend to, and she should love to be of use. It need +hardly be said that she was not. Her notion of offering assistance was +to look in when Lady Charmington was busy, and say, ‘Dear Sarah, I see I +should be dreadfully in the way just now; you will do much better +without poor silly me. I will take a book out under the trees.’ + +Claude, on the other hand, was extraordinarily helpful. He was capable, +when it suited him, of taking immense pains, and he had a genius for +order and detail which was of incalculable service to his aunt and +cousin. He helped Lady Charmington and the housekeeper to arrange the +long disused rooms, he settled who should occupy each, and wrote out +lists of every kind of thing and person, in a beautiful, neat, clear +little handwriting. He was gay, tactful, amusing, good-humoured. Sainty +was overcome with gratitude, and felt it more than ever impossible to +take this smiling, affectionate person to task for such a little thing +as introducing Arthur to a bookmaker. After all, it was not his _first_ +introduction to a gentleman of that profession, and apparently all his +cousin had done was to substitute an honest for a dishonest member of +the ring. + +Claude’s attentions to his grandmother had not proved fruitless, for +when he failed, no one quite knew why, to pass his examinations for +diplomacy, she had persuaded the duke to take him as his private +secretary; and his experiences in that capacity made him now of +incalculable use in coping with the new groom of the chambers, a young +man of Olympian beauty, with a sepulchral voice and manner, who had been +the duchess’s footman, and in keeping the peace between him and the +butler, who regarded this recent acquisition with unconcealed distrust +and aversion. The establishment was now more or less on its new footing, +the unwieldy machine beginning to act, with much creaking and groaning +and a need of all the oil that Claude and Sainty could supply between +them. + +Old Lady Firth had been for some time installed in the warmest spare +bedroom in the family wing, with her maid next door to her, and her son +came down as soon as the session was over, giving up the ‘Twelfth’ with +a sad heart, but promising himself to fly to the golf-links and moors of +his native land as soon as he had done this last duty for his ward. +Sainty appreciated the sacrifice his uncle was making for him, and much +wanted to thank him for it, but only succeeded in feeling and looking +embarrassed. + +‘I’m sure it’s very good-natured of you coming here for this boring +business, Uncle Cor,’ he said suddenly one evening. ‘I feel sure you’d +rather be in the north.’ + +‘I don’t know, my dear boy,’ answered his uncle patronisingly, ‘why you +should not give me credit for a natural interest in being present on +what is really rather a big occasion in your life.’ + +‘It is so ungracious of Sainty,’ said Lady Charmington, ‘to persist on +looking on the whole thing merely as a bore, when we are all doing our +utmost to mark our sense of the event.’ + +My dear mother,’ Sainty cried, ‘don’t think I don’t appreciate----’ + +‘Oh, I don’t want to be thanked,’ his mother made haste to interrupt; +‘nor, I’m sure, does your uncle. We are only doing what we feel is our +duty; but it would be pleasant to know you took a little interest. I +believe no one takes so little interest in your coming of age as you do +yourself.’ + +‘It does sometimes seem about the worst thing I could have done,’ Sainty +said bitterly, a remark not calculated to soothe his mother’s +susceptibilities. He wondered why, whenever he tried to express any +kindly feeling, it always appeared that he had said something +disagreeable, with the result that by the end of the conversation he +generally had actually done so. + +‘Who comes to-morrow, Aunt Sarah?’ inquired Claude tactfully. ‘I declare +I’ve forgotten, though we went through them only this morning.’ + +‘Let me see,’ said Lady Charmington, swiftly reabsorbed in her duties as +mistress of the house; ‘Ecclestons, three; de Lissacs, three; my sister +Susan and Johnny, two; and a young man Firth has asked, Mr. Pryor. Algy +Montgomery has written that he can’t come till Monday; he will come with +his father and the duchess and the Rugbies. When do your Cambridge +friends come, Sainty?’ + +‘Johnson comes to-morrow with the Ecclestons, mother: he’s Tommy +Eccleston’s friend more than mine; Parsons on Monday; Gerald Newby, I’m +afraid not till Tuesday.’ + +It will be seen that a tolerably large party was being gathered +together. The actual festivities were to occupy two days--Wednesday, +which was Sainty’s birthday, and the following day; and not only was +Belchamber being once more filled with guests, but Hawley and the +Grange, and even some bigger houses further afield were preparing to +bring over large contingents for the garden party and ball. + +‘Do you think we had better dine in the big dining-room to-morrow +night?’ Lady Charmington asked. + +‘Oh, not till Monday,’ Sainty pleaded; ‘surely that’ll be time enough, +mother. This room is quite big enough for to-morrow’s dinner.’ + +Lady Firth, who was dreading the draughts in the great banqueting-hall, +and secretly wondering if she would not dine upstairs the first night it +was used, and let the rest of the party air it for her, was strongly of +Sainty’s opinion. + +‘Do let’s stay a family party as long as we can,’ said Lady Eva. ‘With +mamma’s advent on Monday we shall inevitably become very _mondain_. Who +are all these smart people she has insisted on adding to the party?’ + +‘The Nonsuches are cousins and old friends,’ Lady Charmington answered +grimly; ‘but your mother wished Lord and Lady Dalsany asked, and Lady +Deans; I confess I don’t quite see why. I suppose she thought she would +be bored here unless she provided her own company.’ + +Lady Eva laughed as if her sister-in-law had said something witty. + +‘Oh! is Vere Deans coming? That will be nice!’ exclaimed a young lady +who had come with Lady Eva. Amy Winston dabbled in literature, and spelt +her name Aimée. She always wore black, white, or yellow, and still +looked remarkably handsome in the evening. ‘She is a dear, and so +clever,’ Lady Eva had said of her; ‘writes, you know, and dresses so +well on simply nothing. You would love her.’ + +If Lady Charmington did love Miss Winston, she disguised the feeling +with perfect success. ‘Is Lady Deans a friend of yours?’ she asked +coldly. + +‘Oh no!’ said Miss Winston; but I’m simply dying to know her. She’s so +handsome, and has such splendid jewels, and they say she’s so wicked.’ + +‘I hope not,’ Lady Charmington returned, with an increase of severity; +‘but if she were, it seems a strange reason for wishing to know her.’ + +Every day now some of the renovated carriages rolled up from the +station, bringing recruits to the house party, in one of whom the reader +will be pleased to recognise an old friend. The Mrs. de Lissac, of whom +mention has several times been made, was no other than Sainty’s former +governess, Miss Meakins. Outwardly in rustle of silks and flash of +diamonds, and the deference with which the world treated her, Alice de +Lissac was a very different person from Alice Meakins, but inwardly she +was just the same kindly, tender, sentimental creature as ever. Riches, +which have such a corroding effect on some people, had left that shy +gentle heart quite untouched; they represented to her only delightful +means of doing good to her less fortunate brethren, and she was still +wondering why all the great ones of the earth were so kind to a poor +humble little creature like herself. It has been related in a former +chapter how this kind lady had entered the service of a Jewish family, +when she left Belchamber, as governess to two little girls. + +Mrs. Isaacs, her new employer, was a little, fiery, black-eyed woman of +immense social ambition, which grew with the steady growth of her +husband’s carefully accumulated wealth. She would have been the Napoleon +of London society, had she only lived, so instinctively did she grasp +the market value of her possessions in the exchange to which she brought +them. She had already effected the removal of the family from Lancaster +Gate to Grosvenor Square, and the metamorphosis of Isaacs into de +Lissac, when Death, who, alas! is no respecter of even the largest +fortunes, put a term to all her hopes. It seemed as though the very +energy that spurred her to ever fresh exertions was a fever burning in +her blood, and sapping while it stimulated her vital forces. Poor Madame +de Lissac!--as she insisted on being called--she died within sight of +the goal. To the end she fought her illness, and would stand with +trembling limbs and head aching under the weight of a huge tiara, while +the names of half the peerage shouted in her staircase gave her strength +to bear the pain that was killing her. Her widower remarked truly, +between his sobs, that it ‘would have been a comfort to Rachel’ to have +seen the cards that snowed on the hall table for days after the funeral. + +He, poor man, cared little for all this. He had been glad Rachel should +have it, just as he liked to give her superb presents on her birthday, +and anything else his money could buy for her. Personally, his interest +was in his work; he did not like the great people who had eaten his food +and been rude to him. After a hard day in the city, he wanted his carpet +slippers, a big strong cigar, and a volume of Schiller by the fire, or +perhaps a sonata by Mozart or Beethoven. + +Alice Meakins was an angel in the bereaved household; the little girls +adored her, and gradually Mr. de Lissac found that he could not do +without her. The girls were just coming to an age when most of all they +needed the care of a mother; if she, of whom they were all so fond, +abandoned them, what would become of them? Poor Alice had a terrible +struggle. She was sincerely attached to the good man who had been the +most generous and considerate of employers, and she loved her charges +with all her heart. The great luxurious easy house had been the kindest +home to her. How could she turn away from all this warmth and affection? +‘You know--you know how I respect, how I love you, if I may say so,’ +cried the poor girl, with tears in her eyes; ‘and I’d lay down my life +for the children. But oh! Mr. de Lissac, feeling as I do about things, I +couldn’t marry any one who wasn’t a Christian.’ + +And now the most wonderful thing came to pass. Her principles inspired +this shyest and humblest of human beings, who blushed if she had to +correct a pupil’s mistake, and to whom a difference of opinion was +almost a physical pain, with something of the spirit of the early +martyrs. She herself always considered that she had been miraculously +aided; perhaps a certain pagan divinity, whose assistance she would have +made haste to repudiate, counted for something in the matter. But +certain it is, that she was the means of leading a whole family after +her into the fold, and it may be imagined the excitement she was to Lady +Charmington under the circumstances. Mr. de Lissac had not been a very +fervent Jew, and he made a most unenthusiastic Christian; but he was +nominally converted. Instead of not attending the synagogue, he now +stayed away from church, and that satisfied his not very exacting +helpmate, to whom the permission to bring up her stepdaughters in her +own faith gave the last brimming happiness in her cup of blessing. They +at least supplied all the warmth and devotion she demanded. An eminent +co-religionist of her husband’s, in the city, remarked to a friend: +‘Isaacs can shanshe his name, and shanshe his religion, but he cannot +shanshe his nose.’ Neither could he change his habits. He accompanied +his wife once to the rectory, and once to Belchamber, where the +rejoicing of the angels embarrassed him to the point of regretting that +he had not stayed in the wilderness; but his wife mostly made her +excursions to the scenes of her youth without him, and the present +occasion was no exception to the rule. + +Mrs. de Lissac was always fluttered and excited when she came to +Belchamber, and Sainty’s coming of age was just the sort of occasion to +appeal to her imagination. The young ladies were fine-looking girls: the +eldest, Gemma, whose biblical name Jemima had been thus abbreviated +about the time of the removal to Mayfair, was tall and slight, with a +clear olive paleness and almond eyes. Nora was more like her father, +shorter, and with more pronounced features, but with her mother’s +brilliant colour and black burning orbs. They were both a marked +contrast to Cissy Eccleston, who was the fairest, pinkest, and whitest +creature imaginable, with a little button of a nose, a more refined +etherealised edition of her brother Thomas. Lady Eccleston, too, had +been fair, but had grown a little red and wrinkled with time. She had an +astonishingly slight and youthful figure, with rather an elderly face. +Her hair, having a choice in the matter, had very naturally elected to +stay young with her waist rather than grow old with her countenance; +indeed, its adherence to the party of youth seemed to become more marked +with each succeeding year. + +This lady was slightly known to Sainty as a rather unlikely friend of +his mother; she was, in point of fact, of the nature of a favourite sin +to Lady Charmington. Her late husband, Sir Thomas Eccleston, K.C.B., had +been a permanent official in one of the Government offices, and had left +her with a moderate competence, and a colossal visiting-list. She was +essentially in and of London, a Belgravian to the marrow of her bones. +Nothing but insufficiency of income could have prevented her living in +Eaton Square. As it was, she worshipped at its temple, the church of St. +Peter, and lived as immediately round the corner as her means permitted. +She shopped in Sloane Street, she had her books from Westerton’s, she +visited a ward in St. George’s Hospital; she also took a fashionable +interest in a poor East-end parish. In short, she mingled religion and +philanthropy with the punctual performance of her immense social duties +in exactly the proportion demanded by the society of which she was a +living, breathing, integral part. Much in so mundane a personage was at +first rather alarming to Lady Charmington; but they met in the committee +rooms of charity, who, among the multitude of sins she covers, could +surely spare a corner of her mantle for the few venial transgressions of +such a respectable devotee as Lady Eccleston. The very worldliness of +her relations made her a powerful factor for good works. She might +always be confidently relied upon for a duchess or minor royalty to head +a list of patronesses, or a rich friend ready to lend a big house for +drawing-room meetings; and even her deplorable habit of asking +theatrical people to dinner on Sundays had been proved to have its good +side, the professional gentlemen and ladies being very useful in giving +their services in aid of many deserving funds. No one was a more +practical hand at organising bazaars, concerts, tableaux, the various +conduits which brought to the objects of her own interest the +fertilising stream of other people’s money. She and Mrs. de Lissac and +their families had travelled from town together. Alice was made for Lady +Eccleston, who feasted at her expense, used her carriage, copied her +bonnets, directed her charities, and revised her visiting-list. They +were allies in many good works. The girls adored Cissy as only dark +girls can adore a creature composed of rose-leaves and sunlight, though +they were a little shocked at the triviality of her ideals, and the way +she occasionally spoke of her mother. + +The visitors arrived about tea-time. Five o’clock tea had never been the +institution at Belchamber that it is in most country-houses, the +domestic altar where the high priestess makes her little daily sacrifice +of blue spirit flame and fragrant herb. Lady Charmington did not drink +tea as an everyday thing; being a rigid abstainer, she kept it for a +stimulant when she was tired, which was not often. When there was +company, a tray of half-cold cups ready poured out used to be handed +round by one of the footmen, the other following with cream and sugar, +and the butler bringing up the rear with a plate of bread and butter and +some spongecakes in a silver basket. + +For the present party, the wonderful Claude had brought about a charming +revolution. A pleasant table with its white cloth and gleaming silver +was spread under the cedars, at which he and Arthur and Aimée Winston +dispensed good things to the tired and dusty travellers. + +‘How good tea is after a journey,’ Lady Eccleston remarked, beaming on +the company. + +‘I never touch it,’ said Lady Firth, with a shudder; ‘it is destruction +to the nerves. This habit of five o’clock tea is having the most +deplorable effect on the younger generation. My maid, who has been with +me five-and-twenty years, always brings me a glass of taraxacum and hops +at half-past four; it is wonderfully strengthening.’ + +‘Oh dear! it is very dreadful of me to like tea so much,’ cried poor +Lady Eccleston. ‘And I so agree with you, dear Lady Firth; we do all +live on our nerves so much, too much, nowadays. I declare now you put it +like that, I shall be quite afraid to drink it; but taraxacum----’ + +‘Let me send for some for you,’ said Lady Firth earnestly; ‘you can’t +think the good it does you. I gave some to the dear bishop of +Griqualand, after that drawing-room meeting at my house, when he spoke +for two hours and a half, and was quite exhausted.’ + +Hardly was Lady Eccleston able to escape the proffered refreshment by +tender and well-timed inquiries after the dear bishop and his mission. + +Sainty, by reason of his lameness, was not expected to hand about +eatables. He sat, as he usually did, a little drawn back from the circle +about the table, talking little, noticing everything--Lady Eccleston’s +striving after cheap popularity, Mrs. de Lissac’s parted lips as she +listened to his mother, for whom she had retained all her old +reverential admiration, his uncle Firth’s bored expression as his Aunt +Susan Trafford held forth on some small bill that had been too hastily +passed at the end of the session, and the easy grace with which Claude +moved about among the groups, dispensing sugar or fruit, and saying +little laughing nothings to every one. ‘Really, he is marvellous,’ +Sainty thought; ‘it is impossible not to love him.’ Claude was solemn, +brief, and official with Sir John Trafford, the young M.P., knowing and +mysterious with Austin Pryor of the Stock Exchange, playful with Arthur, +_empressé_ with the young ladies, and kindly civil to Tommy Eccleston +and Johnson, who were very shy, while always ready to fill the teapot +for Miss Winston, or hand a third cup to Lady Susan, who, like all great +talkers, was a thirsty soul. + +But something else seemed vaguely perceptible to Sainty, watching from +his low chair under the cedars, a sense of some secret bond or +understanding between his cousin and the tea-maker. What gives these +sudden intuitions? What silent, mysterious voice speaks to what inner +sense, when with all our outward senses we are receiving quite different +impressions? Claude failed in no shade of pretty deferential politeness +to Miss Winston; his manner had just that touch of insolence which it +had to all women, and which many of them take as a compliment. They were +the centre of a large party, and bathed in the clear golden light of a +summer afternoon. Sainty intercepted no meaning glance between them, no +contact of monitory fingers, yet he felt as if a curtain had been +momentarily withdrawn from some secret thing that he should not have +seen. + +He roused himself with a start that was almost guilty, to find that Miss +Eccleston, who was sitting near him, had addressed a remark to him which +he had not heard. + +‘I beg your pardon,’ he said; ‘I didn’t know you were speaking to me.’ +Cissy laughed a little, clear, bubbling laugh. + +‘You were a thousand miles away,’ she said. ‘I wonder what you were +thinking of; but I am not so indiscreet as to ask; it was evidently none +of the present company. I hope I haven’t broken into some important +thing you were thinking out. I’m told you’re awfully clever and deep, +and read a lot.’ + +‘You mustn’t believe all the harm you hear of people,’ Sainty said, with +a weak attempt at persiflage. He was thinking how pretty this fresh +young creature was, the childish face shaded by a great hat, the small +head rising flower-like from among the laces at her throat. No young +monk in his cloister had had less to do with girls than Sainty; it was a +curious fact that in his generation there were none in the family. Lady +Susan Trafford, like her sister and Lady Macbeth, had ‘brought forth men +children only.’ No early intimacy with sisters or girl cousins had +taught him any of their ways. + +‘You must have had a hot journey down,’ he remarked politely. + +‘Oh! it was unbearable,’ cried Cissy; ‘the carriage was like a furnace. +You can’t think how fresh and sweet it all seems here, after London.’ + +‘We were on the Montagues’ yacht for Cowes, and did Goodwood from it; +you can’t think how delightful it was,’ said Lady Eccleston in a +slightly raised voice to Lady Eva. ‘They wanted us to go on a cruise +with them afterwards, but there were so many things I had to see to, I +was obliged to go back to town for a day or two before coming here, and +I wouldn’t have missed _this_ visit for anything.’ + +Cissy drew her chair a little nearer to Sainty, and dropped her voice +to a confidential whisper. ‘Isn’t that like mamma? She heard me say we +had come from London, and all that was put in for fear you should think +we had stayed in town after the season was over.’ + +‘For fear _I_ should think?’ Sainty repeated, slightly bewildered. + +‘Oh! you or any one else,’ said Cissy. ‘Mamma would die if any one +thought she hadn’t more invitations than she could accept. I do wish she +wouldn’t listen to me when I’m talking to men; it makes me furious.’ + +‘I’m sure you never say anything you would mind her hearing,’ said +Sainty rather priggishly. + +‘I wouldn’t answer for that, you know,’ rejoined Cissy, with an arch +expression of something not unlike contempt. + +If Sainty had been old Lady Firth, he could not have felt himself more +outside the sphere of the ordinary attraction of man to maid. When his +eye rested with admiration on Cissy Eccleston, his first thought had +been what a charming couple she and Arthur would make. He thought it +very kind of this pretty young lady to take pity on his disabilities, +but he felt that it was hard on her to be left to talk to him; he didn’t +want to monopolise her, and he looked round to see if some more suitable +companion were not within reach. As if in answer to his thought, Claude +came towards them at the moment. + +‘It is cooler now, Miss Eccleston,’ he said. ‘Some of us are going to +the kitchen-garden in search of gooseberries; do you care to come, or do +you despise gooseberries?’ + +Cissy rose with alacrity. ‘I love ’em,’ she said simply. + +Sainty was quite inconsistently annoyed at the sight of the two standing +there before him. Had Arthur or one of the other boys come for her, he +would have been glad, but he felt on a sudden that in the light of what +he had half surprised between his cousin and Miss Winston, Claude had no +right to come making eyes at this fair young creature. An impulse +stirred in him to snatch her away, to save her from he did not quite +know what. He rose too. ‘I am sure Miss Eccleston is tired,’ he said; +‘it’s a long way to the kitchen-garden; she had much better come in and +rest.’ + +‘Oh, I’m never tired, except when I’m bored,’ said Cissy. + +‘I know who _is_ tired,’ said Claude, with affectionate solicitude. ‘You +look quite done up, old chap; you ought to lie down before dinner. +Remember you’ve a lot before you.’ Sainty saw in a second how silly and +unreasonable he was being. + +‘Yes, you’re right,’ he said; ‘I am tired. I’ll go in.’ + +Claude and Cissy moved off in the rear of the little procession of young +people that was beginning to stream across the lawn, and Sainty stood a +moment watching them. As he turned towards the house, he saw Miss +Winston, who had not gone with the others, also looking after the +retreating couple. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + + +The Duchess of Sunborough had not revisited her former home since she +left it after the death of her first husband. Sainty had paid one or two +duty visits to his grandmother on the rare occasions of his being in +London, sometimes with his mother, sometimes alone. He had always found +the duchess smiling and debonair, very civil and entirely indifferent, a +most mysterious personality, both in her strange spurious youthfulness +and her entire detachment from family ties. She returned on the present +occasion as cheerful, as amiable, and as unembarrassed as though she +were paying a first visit to some distant acquaintances, in a place that +was entirely new to her. She was accompanied by her husband, his eldest +son and daughter-in-law, Lord and Lady Rugby, and one of his younger +sons, Algernon Montgomery, a young officer in the Life Guards. The duke +was a well-preserved, clean-shaven, spick-and-span old gentleman, whom +people were fond of citing as a typical nobleman, and indeed among the +dukes he made a very creditable appearance. Had he been the senior +partner of some large commercial house he would have passed unobserved +in a crowd of equally respectable-looking contemporaries on any suburban +railway. In his youth he had been a gambler and a rake, and had made his +first wife (the mother of his children) thoroughly unhappy by his +devotion to many ladies, chief among whom had been his present duchess; +but having at seventy outgrown his taste for youthful pleasures, he was +spoken of as a pillar of the State and a model of all the virtues. In +the year of Belchamber’s majority, a Tory government, of which his grace +was an inconspicuous ornament, was busy making Great Britain what she +is among the nations. The Chamberses, as far as they had a political +creed, belonged, it is needless to say, to the same party. Lord Firth’s +family, on the other hand, had always been Whigs, and the old lord, as +well as the present one, had been a member of more than one Liberal +cabinet. It was Lady Susan in her younger days who had given vent to the +sentiment that she would as soon have married the footman as a +Conservative; but a recent cataclysm among the Liberals had driven this +ardent lady as well as her cooler brother into antagonism to their own +party, though they had not as yet been absorbed into the other. There +was a political flirtation going on between the duke and Lord Firth, who +found themselves in novel agreement as to the line their young relative +ought to take in politics. ‘When the Union is threatened, all minor +differences must be sunk,’ the duke said graciously; ‘when the ship has +sprung a leak, no matter what are our views of the way she should be +sailed, we must all take a hand at the pumps’; which made Claude call +his revered chief the ‘Pompier.’ + +The guests were assembled before dinner in the great saloon, which even +in August had a chilly suggestion of not being habitually used. + +‘I hope,’ Lord Firth said, with an inviting side glance at his nephew, +‘that Belchamber will be able to help Hawley’s election. I don’t know +exactly what his views are----’ and here he paused long enough to give +Sainty an opportunity of making a profession of faith if he were so +minded. Nothing, however, was further from Sainty’s intention. + +‘I think Mr. Hawley’s election quite safe,’ he said; ‘it is fifty years +since the county returned anything but a Conservative,’ and he moved +away to take Ned Parsons, who had arrived since the other guests had +gone to dress, and present him to Lady Charmington. + +Sainty had been a little apprehensive how Ned would fit into the +picture. Parsons had grafted on to the slovenliness that was either +natural or affected at Cambridge a rather aggressive splendour; though +a rebel tuft waved defiance on his crown, and his shirt-front was a +little crumpled, his collar and tie were of the moment, his pumps were +new and glossy, and he wore a gardenia in his buttonhole. Lady +Charmington was talking to Lord and Lady Rugby. Lord Rugby was +explaining with tactful grace that it was lucky Sainty had been born in +the summer, otherwise he, as a M.F.H., could not possibly have been +present on the occasion. From Easter to the beginning of the cub-hunting +he was, so to speak, at leisure, and had nothing to do but talk of last +winter’s hunting. Lady Rugby, though also a keen sportswoman, was +capable of other forms of amusement, and said for her part she liked a +‘bit of season,’ but ‘poor Rug was so bored in London it was a terror to +see him.’ She was dressed with the uncompromising neatness affected by +hunting-ladies; her complexion had that bricky tint that results from +much exposure to the weather at the covert side, and fashion decreeing +undulation, her naturally straight brown hair was crimped into a series +of little ridges and furrows, whose hardness of outline and mathematical +regularity suggested corrugated iron. Somewhat to Sainty’s surprise, Ned +fell into easy conversation with this horsey person, rather suggesting, +though he did not actually say it, that he spent his life in the saddle. + +But now the duchess appeared in all her glory, and dinner being +announced, Sainty offered his arm to his grandmother and headed the long +procession to the dining-hall. + +‘Well, my dear boy,’ she began, when they were seated, ‘and how have you +been lately? You don’t look strong; you must take care of yourself. What +do you drink? you look as if you wanted red wine. My doctor has put me +upon whisky. I hate it, but he says I am _goutteuse_. They call +everything gout nowadays; too silly, isn’t it?’ + +‘I am sorry you haven’t been well, gr----’ + +Sainty paused, and ‘grandmother’ died in his throat. It seemed so +ludicrously inappropriate to this festive apparition at his side. He +glanced with quite a new tenderness to where old Lady Firth sat huddled +in shawls and then back to the lady on his right. Above the thick +frizzle of sherry-coloured chestnut that descended to the carefully +pencilled brows shone one of the duchess’s smaller tiaras--the great +Sunborough family crown was being kept for the ball on Thursday--the +little nose gleamed unnaturally white between the tired eyes heavily +rimmed with paint and the puffy cushions beneath them that merged into +the vivid carmine of the cheeks. The wrinkles under the chin were +gathered tightly into a great collar of diamonds and pearls sewn on a +broad black velvet. Below it the shoulders sloped away in their still +beautiful curves, displaying to the world with the indifference of long +habit their great expanse of lustreless pallor. The little of her +grace’s dress that was visible above the line of the table-cloth was of +a delicate peach colour embroidered in silver, and a huge bunch of +purple orchids cut with an almost brutal contrast against the excessive +whiteness of the flesh. She sat erect, placid, exhaling a faint +sweetness, not unlike the idol of some monstrous worship. + +‘Do you like the smell of my _verveine_?’ she asked. ‘I think every +woman should have her own _parfum_. I have it sewn into all my +_corsages_. I never could bear strong coarse scents. My daughter has +rather brutalised herself, and is quite capable of using patchouli. +Horror!’ + +‘I’m afraid I don’t like scent at all,’ Sainty avowed penitently; ‘it +makes me feel rather sick always.’ + +‘And now, tell me who every one is,’ continued the duchess affably. ‘Who +is the champagne blonde with the iridescent perlage trimming next your +brother?’ + +‘That is Lady Eccleston,’ said Sainty. + +‘Oh! of course, she has been at Sunborough House at parties; one sees +her everywhere. I ought to have remembered her’; and the duchess sent a +gracious smile towards Lady Eccleston. ‘And the pretty girl that Claude +is flirting with is her daughter--one can see the likeness. _Elle est +très bien, la jeune fille_; charming. Madame de Lissac I know: she is +_richissime_ and very generous; and your mother tells me she was your +governess once; that is very romantic. The black girls are not her +daughters, _n’est-ce pas_?’ + +‘Her step-daughters.’ + +‘Ah yes. And the men? Pryor I know; they say he is making money and will +get on. The pink boy is _encore_ a (what did you say?) Eccleston. They +resemble each other like peas, that family. And the untidy young man who +is amusing Aimée Winston so much? By the way, how came _she_ here? With +your Aunt Eva, of course. She is not a nice girl.’ + +The duchess delivered this condemnation with a most majestic air of +virtue. ‘I do not like a girl to be talked about,’ she continued; +‘afterwards, _je ne dis pas_; but before marriage a girl cannot be too +careful. She always succeeds with men, however. The duke declares she is +very clever; and one can see she is pleasing Mr.---- Who did you say he +was?’ + +‘He is a Cambridge friend of mine; his name is Parsons.’ + +‘He seems a nice fellow,’ Lady Rugby cut in from the other side of +Sainty. ‘I wonder if he is anything to do with the Leicestershire +Parsonses. My old uncle, Sir Tom Whittaker, who hunted the Scratchley +for years, married a widow, and one of her daughters married a Parsons. +I know it used to be a great joke in the family because he was a Parson, +don’t yer know.’ + +‘I couldn’t say, I’m sure,’ Sainty answered; ‘you will have to ask him.’ +Really, Ned was fitting in beautifully, and if only his relationship to +Lady Whittaker could be established, he felt he need trouble no more +about him. + +The duchess yawned. ‘They are all charming, no doubt,’ she said; ‘but, +my dear boy, none of these people give much _éclat_ to your coming of +age. I felt you must have a few people whose names people would know, +just to put into the _Morning Post_. And your mother has lived so long +out of the world she knows no one--but no one. I believe she is angry +with me for insisting on the Dalsanies and Vere Deans; but I am used to +that; she has always been angry with me.’ This was getting on dangerous +ground. + +‘It is very good of you to take an interest,’ Sainty said in his +stiffest manner; but the duchess did not in the least wish to be treated +as family; she thought it _was_ good of her. + +‘Oh! _du tout_,’ she said suavely. ‘Besides, it was not all unselfish. +Ella Dalsany plays piquet with me, and Dalsany takes a very good hand in +the duke’s whist. I suppose,’ she added tentatively, ‘your mother would +not allow a baccarat?’ + +‘Good gracious!’ cried Sainty, much alarmed, ‘I don’t suppose there is a +card in the house.’ + +‘Oh, I always travel with my little box,’ said his grandmother. ‘But we +must respect the prejudices of the _châtelaine_; we will only play +whist.’ This was before the days of the tyranny of bridge. + +The duchess glanced at Sir John Trafford, who was sitting at her right, +and seeing his attention engaged by the lady whom he had taken in, she +leaned a little towards her grandson, and sinking her voice +confidentially she murmured, ‘When I knew that your cousin here was +coming, I felt it was only kind to ask the Dalsanies; and if Ella had +her cavalier, then poor Dalsany must have _la belle comtesse_ to amuse +him; he couldn’t be left out in the cold, poor dear.’ + +‘Scandal, Hélo,’ Lady Rugby called out--(the duchess liked the younger +members of her family to call her by her Christian name). ‘When you have +on that expression, and I can’t hear what you say, I always know you are +taking away some one’s character.’ + +‘Whose character is the duchess taking away?’ asked Sir John; ‘not mine, +I hope’; and this struck her grace as so humorous that she almost +choked. + +Sainty sat bewildered and vaguely pained. In the mouth of an old woman, +and that old woman his dead father’s mother, the playful innuendoes, +which to the duchess seemed only the ordinary small change of +dinner-table talk, struck him as signs of a monstrous depravity. He +glanced round the great room with its ceiling by La Guerre, and heavy +gilt decorations, and the rows of portraits by Vandyke and Lely, down +the long table with its lights and flowers and massive plate, at the two +rows of flushed, eagerly talking people stretching away on either hand, +and his heart failed him. He wondered sadly why Ned Parsons, who was one +of six children in a little shabby rectory, and the de Lissac girls, +whose grandfather was said to have been a rag and bone merchant, should +seem perfectly at home among all these splendours, while he, the founder +of the feast, the owner of the house, who had been born and bred in it, +felt so curiously ill at ease at the head of his own table. Arthur, just +fresh from school, was chattering away to Lady Eccleston and Nora de +Lissac, between whom he sat, with the ease and assurance of an old +London diner-out. It was neither birth, breeding, nor custom, then, +which made people feel at home in society. Whence came this horrible +sensation of being out of place? After all, these people, who together +produced such a dazzling effect of glittering festivity, were +individually nothing but relations, old friends, undergraduates, +schoolboys. His mother, his grandmother, his uncle Cor, his aunts, his +former governess, his cousins, his brother; he had sat down with each +and all of them to a score of meals without feeling like the lady in +_Comus_. He feared it was very snobbish of him to be so disagreeably +affected by dining in an unaccustomed room and with an unusual number of +guests. Perhaps it was the duchess, with her shocking old shoulders and +naughty hints, and the little scent bags sewn into her bodice, who +brought such a disturbing atmosphere of the great world into his life. +If so, how much worse was it going to be next day, when she would be +reinforced by these threatened strangers of her own undoubted fashion +and loose morality? The thought of all these guilty married people, +cynically invited ‘for’ each other, filled him with horror. No doubt he +exaggerated, and took the whole matter more tragically than the +circumstances warranted, but he was very young and very unsophisticated, +and things that were not right appeared to him terribly and +portentously wrong. He felt as though the home of his mother, of his own +innocent childhood, were being turned into a house of ill fame. + +But Tuesday, if it brought this last brimming influx of unwelcome +strangers, brought with them one supreme compensation in the person of +Gerald Newby. Gerald, who was making a cross-country journey, was +arriving at a different station from the other guests, several miles in +an opposite direction, and Sainty decided to drive his own confidential +pony to meet his friend. His mother looked grave when she heard of it, +and asked if he did not think it would be more civil for him to be there +to receive the Dalsanies and Lady Deans. ‘Oh no, mother; the last person +they would care to see is their host,’ Sainty said. ‘You will be here, +and Uncle Cor has promised to be about; he knows them all. I shan’t be +missed.’ + +For once Sainty had his way, and drove off rejoicing in his escape. He +was generally nervous of driving alone, his lameness making him so +helpless in case of an accident; but to-day, that his conversation with +his friend might be quite free, he would not even take a groom with him. +He had so much to say to Gerald, so much which he could say to no one +else, that he wanted to pour it all out unchecked by fear of listening +ears. As he drove to the little roadside station in the shimmering heat +of the August afternoon, by great fields of waving corn, and under the +thick sleepy woods knee-deep in fern where he could hear the pheasants +scuttling and clucking, he felt a weight lifted off his heart; now at +last he would have some one to talk to, some one who understood. The +train was late, and the flies bothered the pony dreadfully, but at last +the long wait came to an end, and Newby, bronzed by foreign suns and +very cindery and dusty, emerged smiling from the station, and climbed +into the cart beside him. + +‘Oh! you have come yourself,’ he said; ‘that was very kind. Where’s your +man?’ + +‘I came alone,’ Sainty answered; ‘I wanted to talk. I wanted you all to +myself, and your portmanteau must sit behind; there was no room for the +groom.’ Something in Gerald’s face made him add playfully, ‘Did you +expect a coach and four? Am I not receiving you with sufficient +ceremony?’ + +‘Oh, _me_!’ said Newby, with a little deprecating gesture of quite false +humility. + +Sainty wanted to hear all that his friend had been doing, of the +countries he had visited, the walks he had taken, the peaks he had +climbed; but for once Newby did not seem to be inclined to talk about +himself. He leaned back, beaming lazily on the passing landscape. + +‘After all,’ he said, ‘one may go where one will, to the grandest of +Swiss peaks, or the sunlight and flowers of Italy, but there is nothing +like this English country in the summer; it is so prosperous, so +established, at once homelike and ineffably high-bred, like the best of +our old landed aristocracy.’ + +‘O Lord!’ Sainty cried. ‘That same landed aristocracy is smothering +_me_. Wait till you see the awful specimens who have come together to +rejoice in a new recruit to their ranks.’ And he launched out into a +tirade, as enthusiastic young people will, on the barbarism of the +English upper classes, their want of education and refinement, their +inability to appreciate intellectual pleasures, their low standard of +morality, and, above all, their entire self-satisfaction and conviction +of their own perfect rightness.’ + +‘Look at the duke,’ he said; ‘there’s a man who owns the finest private +library in England. I don’t believe he knows even its chief treasures by +name. If it was sold to-morrow, and the shelves fronted with sham +book-backs, like the doors in the library at Belchamber, it wouldn’t +make the smallest difference to him. Rugby could keep his collection of +riding and driving-whips in them; I am told it is unique. He is a kind +of centaur; he can, and will, recount to you every run of last winter, +without omitting a fence or a ditch; but if you ask him the simplest +question about the history or archæology of the country he hunts over, +he will stare at you as if you were a madman. What have I in common with +such people? By what curious freak of nature have I been born among +them?’ + +‘Lord Rugby is the Duke of Sunborough’s eldest son, isn’t he?’ asked +Newby. ‘And the present duchess, if I’m not mistaken, is your +grandmother. I like to know who the people are that I’m going to meet.’ + +‘My grandmother!’ said Sainty tragically. ‘Well, she’s my father’s +mother, and I mustn’t say how she affects me; but oh! heavens, Gerald, +wait till you see her! And she has asked some other people, whom I don’t +even know, but who all seem to be in love with each other’s wives, and +to have to be asked to meet each other as you would engaged couples. It +sickens me, I tell you. It’s an atmosphere I can’t breathe.’ + +Somehow Newby, whom he had often heard give vent to sentiments of a +lofty and republican purity, and in whose mouth a favourite phrase was +‘the aristocracy of intellect,’ did not seem to enter as sympathetically +into his feelings as he had hoped. He continued smiling peacefully on +the prospect around him. + +‘And where do you begin?’ he asked presently, a little inconsequently. + +‘Where do I begin? How do you mean?’ Sainty stammered. + +‘I mean your property, your land. When do we come to your boundary?’ + +‘Oh! the property,’ Sainty answered. ‘It’s pretty well all Belchamber +all the way, except just for a bit on the left of the road soon after we +started, where the Hawley woods cut in, in a sort of wedge.’ + +Gerald nodded placidly, as if the thought gave him pleasure. + +‘I expect you’re tired after your journey, this hot weather,’ Sainty +said, finding his friend so languid. ‘Shall we shirk all the crowd, and +go and have some tea in the schoolroom when we get in?’ + +‘Whatever you say, my dear boy,’ Newby agreed. ‘I am entirely in your +hands.’ + +Sainty was aware of the slightest, most impalpable change in his +friend’s manner towards himself, just the faintest tinge of something +that might almost be called deferential in a person so naturally +authoritative as Newby; and this seemed to accentuate itself with every +acre of Chambers land across which they drove. It made him vaguely +uncomfortable; his denunciation of his peers seemed somehow to dwindle +and lose force in such an unfostering atmosphere. He had still a great +deal on his heart of which he longed to unburthen himself, but Gerald +was perversely interested in the size of the park and the number of +deer, and paid but a polite and perfunctory attention to his host’s +exposition of the sins of the British aristocracy. Later on, when they +joined the rest of the party, and Sainty, having been himself presented +to the newcomers, proceeded to perform the same office for Newby, he +noted with terror something that in any one else he would almost have +called obsequious in his friend’s attitude. He resolutely shut his eyes +to it; it was of course out of the question that a person of Newby’s +commanding intellect and noble independence of character could be in any +way affected by the mere baubles of wealth or rank in the people with +whom he came in contact. He wondered he could be so snobbish as to think +of such a thing, even to deny it; but he couldn’t help seeing that +Gerald’s manner to the duke and even his uncle Firth and Lord Dalsany +was not absolutely frank and unembarrassed. + +‘He is trying to make himself agreeable for my sake,’ Sainty thought. ‘A +man whose whole life has been spent in a bracing atmosphere of noble +thought cannot feel _at home_ in the exhausted receiver that is called +“society”; but if he only knew how much better he appears with his own +natural manner, though it _is_ a little dictatorial, he would not try +and soften it even for the sake of being civil to my guests.’ What with +trying not to observe that Newby smiled and bowed too much, and not to +watch for indications of the good understanding at which his +grandmother had hinted as existing between certain members of the party, +Sainty spent an even more miserable evening than he had done the night +before. + +When the duke and Lord Nonsuch had smoked their elderly cigars and gone +to bed, he succeeded in persuading Newby that he was tired, and leaving +the rest of the party listening to Lord Dalsany’s Irish stories, he +accompanied his friend to his room, bent on having out the rest of the +talk of which he had been defrauded in the afternoon. + +‘It is awful, simply awful!’ he burst out, as he shut the door, ‘all +this horrible display and waste of money! I feel like Nero, sitting +through these long steamy dinners with too much to eat and too much to +drink, and thinking of the thousands of starving people who could be fed +for months on the money we waste on a meal.’ + +‘That is very good of you, my dear lad,’ Newby answered, stretching +himself luxuriously in the armchair which he wheeled up to the open +window, ‘but not at all what Nero would have felt.’ + +‘Don’t laugh at me, Gerald,’ Sainty said piteously. ‘I know it’s absurd +to rant and be highflown; but it nauseated me to hear Lady Deans talking +about these new clubs and restaurants and saying what a mercy it was to +have some place where one could get decent food. I thought of that woman +never spending less than a pound on her dinner, and thinking it was a +merit, while people were starving a few streets off. My bookseller told +me he wanted her to buy a six-shilling book the other day, and she said +she couldn’t afford it, she should get it from the library.’ + +‘That tall lady on your left with the black pearls was the Countess +Deans then, whom one hears so much about,’ said Newby. ‘I didn’t catch +her name when you introduced me, but I thought it was she from her +photographs, though they don’t do her justice.’ + +‘Grandmamma says she and Lord Dalsany are _au mieux_. Good God! what +does she mean? And that Lady Dalsany----Faugh! I can’t stir about this +dirt. Is this just their silly way of talking, or are they all really +people whom decent folk oughtn’t to ask into their houses?’ + +‘Oh, you exaggerate,’ said Gerald, waving his hand gently. ‘You have +lived the life of an anchorite. These Londoners have their shibboleths, +and understand each other; the badinage of a great city is not meant to +be taken literally,’ + +‘What _you_ must think of it all!’ cried Sainty affectionately. He had +an uneasy feeling that Newby was not as much horrified as he ought to +be. ‘I hoped,’ he went on, ‘that you might have found some congenial +companionship in my uncle; but Uncle Cor disappoints me. When he gets +with all these smart people, he seems to sink to their level. I can’t +make him out. Seeing him to-night you would never guess what real +convictions he has. I have looked up to him all my life, but this +evening he appeared frivolous and cynical; I could hardly believe it was +he talking.’ + +‘I thought Lord Firth charming,’ Gerald replied, with real conviction. +‘His talk seemed to me in just the right tone of easy playfulness for +light social intercourse, with ladies present. He was not in his place +in the House of Lords; nothing called for a profession of faith.’ + +‘And I hate all this Unionist business,’ Sainty continued. ‘I never +thought I should live to see Uncle Cor, who has always been a Liberal, +and from whom I imbibed all my own politics till I met you, making up to +that old Tory duke. They tried to get some expression of agreement out +of me last night, but I wouldn’t say what was expected of me. You know +I’m a Radical, and a Home Ruler.’ + +‘That is all very well for _me_,’ Gerald answered, ‘but, my dear child, +doesn’t it seem a little absurd in _your_ position? Oh, don’t mistake +me. I don’t want you to deny your convictions, but there are so many +things one believes without flourishing them in the face of the public. +You wouldn’t, for instance, care to tell your mother just how you feel +about the doctrines of revealed religion----’ + +Sainty drooped with discouragement. ‘It is true; it is hideously true,’ +he said. ‘One is tied and bound with the chain of a hundred shams. Shall +I never be able to say what I really think? To-morrow, for instance, +nothing would content my mother but that the performances should begin +with a sort of thanksgiving service at Great Charmington. It is meant as +a solemn dedication of me. If I were really brave and honest, I should +refuse, but I think it would break my mother’s heart.’ + +‘You are quite right, quite right; and why _should_ you refuse? I am +sure you _do_ dedicate yourself to the principle of good which rules the +universe. What more do you mean, what more need you mean?’ + +‘My mother will take it as meaning much more, and I know that she does, +and so will Mrs. de Lissac and her dear old father; they will look on it +as giving in a solemn adherence to all their doctrines.’ + +‘You take things too seriously, my Sainty,’ said Gerald, with an +indulgent smile. + +‘But it is you who have always exhorted me to take things seriously; I +have heard you inveigh a hundred times against the careless flippancy +that is the curse of our generation.’ + +‘Good heavens!’ said Newby, suppressing a yawn; ‘have I invented a +Frankenstein monster, who is going to turn and devour me?’ + +‘I don’t know you to-night, Gerald,’ Sainty said reproachfully. ‘You are +like my uncle; you seem changed somehow. Surely if there is ever a time +for serious thought and serious talk, it is the vigil of one’s +twenty-first birthday.’ + +‘Ah yes,’ said Newby solemnly. ‘Don’t think I minimise the importance of +all to-morrow means to you. You are coming into your kingdom, and must +rule it wisely and well; but I don’t want you to make your first +appearance in arms tilting at windmills, my dear fellow, and alienating +all the people who are your natural allies.’ + +‘I wanted to consult you,’ Sainty said, ‘about my speech to the tenants, +but you are tired and sleepy; it is a shame to keep you up.’ + +‘Not at all, not at all,’ said Newby politely, with the most transparent +effort at interest. + +‘I was going to show you some heads I had put together, but I think I +won’t bother you; there is only just one thing I want to ask you. Ought +I to tell them what I really think and feel about things, about Home +Rule, for instance? Some sort of utterance will be expected of me about +politics, I feel sure.’ + +‘Your uncle was talking most sensibly to me after dinner about that very +thing. “My family,” he said, “have always been Liberals, but this is a +Conservative county, and the agricultural population is always +Conservative. I have had, as you know, to differ from the chiefs of my +own party. It is a painful position. Luckily for Belchamber, he has not +been required to make the choice that I have found so hard; he inherits +his politics as he inherits his estate, both, I flatter myself, the +better for a little enlightened handling by his mother and myself. He +will not be a worse statesman for having come under some Liberal +influences in his youth.” It struck me as admirable.’ + +‘Then you would have me be merely colourless, indulge in a few +platitudes, instead of saying what I think?’ + +‘What good could you effect by starting in to preach Radicalism to a +tentful of Conservative farmers merry with beef and ale, supported on +one side by a duke who is a member of a Tory government, and on the +other by a Unionist earl?’ + +Sainty sighed. ‘You know it is always fatally easy to me to hold my +tongue and let people think that I agree with them,’ he said bitterly; +‘courage has never been my strong point.’ He had looked to his friend +for counsel, for support, for the strength to tell the truth in the face +of all the world, the strength in which he felt himself so sadly +lacking. He left him baffled and discouraged, and all at sea as to what +he would do and say on the morrow. + +As he passed down the long corridor of bedrooms, he saw the last door +before the staircase open noiselessly a very little way, as if some one +were looking out. When he came quite near to it, it was swiftly, but +still silently, closed again. The hinted scandals that had oppressed him +came crowding to his mind, thoughts of shameful, illicit things being +done in the great silent, dark house. He could not resist the curiosity +that made him lift his candle and read the name on the little ticket on +the door: it was Miss Winston’s. + +Sainty and Arthur still kept the rooms they had occupied as boys, which, +with the old schoolroom and another that had once been the tutor’s and +was now Claude’s, formed a small pavilion adjoining the west wing, and +consequently at the opposite extremity of the house from the guest +chambers. To regain his own room he had to cross the whole great central +part, now black and quiet as the grave. Just as he reached the door that +shut off the family wing, he heard some one behind it. No doubt the +tapping of his stick had warned whoever it was of his approach, for as +he opened it he saw a figure swiftly vanish into the room on the right. +His first impulse was to pass on and take no notice; then it struck him +that it might be a thief, and with the sudden courage of nervous people +he went into the room holding his light high, and cried ‘Who’s there?’ +He found himself face to face with his cousin. The stable clock struck +two at the moment. + +‘Good heavens! Sainty,’ said Claude, with an uneasy laugh, ‘who expected +to find _you_ prowling about the house at this unearthly hour?’ + +‘I have been sitting up talking to Newby,’ Sainty said rather sternly. +‘What are _you_ doing dodging into rooms in the dark?’ + +‘We have only just left the smoking-room. I came in here to get a book +to take up to your friend Parsons; he said he should like to see it.’ + +‘Your candle is out; shall I give you a light?’ said Sainty. + +‘So it is,’ said Claude; ‘the draught from the door, no doubt. How lucky +I met you. Good-night, dear old man.’ + +‘Good-night,’ said Sainty. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + + +Whether or not there was truth in what Lady Charmington had said, that +no one took so little interest in the festivities of his coming of age +as Sainty himself, it certainly came about that hardly any one took so +little part in them. + +The memory of his birthday remained with him as a shifting +phantasmagoria of painful images that partook of the nature of a +nightmare. To be the principal figure in any pageant must always have a +charm for the imagination of youth, if combined with the ability to play +the part becomingly; but it is a very different matter for one conscious +in every nerve of his own inadequacy to be set up a butt for +disappointment, and a peep-show for ridicule. + +The day had begun with a message from his mother that she would like to +see him before prayers. He found her in her private sitting-room, where +the picture of his father which he had worshipped as a child was +enthroned on its gilt easel in the corner. Lady Charmington was clean +and cool from her morning toilet, her hair even smoother and tighter +than usual. She was dressed in her Sunday black silk, and seated in a +high-backed chair beside a little table, with the air of a priestess at +the altar. Her large serviceable hands were crossed on the Bible on her +lap. They had big knuckles and many rings, some of which, having been +her late husband’s, were more massive than is usual in a woman’s. +Sainty’s quick eye noticed that a signet she habitually wore was not +among them. He also saw that on the table beside her was an imposing +pile of ledgers, a small morocco box, and a book which, from its being +bound in black with depressing-looking soft flaps folding over the edges +of the leaves, he rightly conjectured to be a work of devotion. + +Lady Charmington was not a demonstrative woman, and she was a very shy +one. She drew her son towards her, and gravely kissed him on the brow, +by no means a daily occurrence or matter of course between them; then +she plunged rather nervously into a little speech she had prepared for +the occasion. + +‘This is a solemn day for both you and me, Belchamber’ (he noticed that +she did not call him by the familiar nickname), ‘and one to which I have +long looked forward. I have worked hard,’ and she glanced at the pile of +account-books beside her, ‘in your interests. God forgive me if it is +wrong, but I fear it is not without pride that I come to you to-day to +give an account of my stewardship.’ + +Sainty gently pressed his mother’s hand, which he still held. ‘Dearest +mother,’ he said, ‘I know well how hard you have worked, and all you +have done for me. I assure you I appreciate----’ But Lady Charmington +withdrew her hand, and held it up in deprecation. + +‘I do not wish to boast or to be thanked,’ she said, ‘but I think I may +truly say I have spared neither time nor labour. It has been my object +to be able to hand over the estate to you free of debt and unencumbered, +and I can do so. To-day my stewardship ends.’ + +‘But oh, mother!’ Sainty broke in, ‘it mustn’t end to-day, nor, I hope, +for many days to come. You know how utterly inexperienced I am, and then +I have got to go back to Cambridge till I have taken my degree. You +won’t refuse to go on looking after everything just as you have always +done, will you?’ + +Lady Charmington had lost the thread of her discourse; she looked rather +anxiously at her son. + +‘We have no time to-day to go into accounts,’ she said; ‘but some day, +when all these people have gone, you must give me an hour or two, and we +will go through everything.’ + +‘Very well,’ said Sainty. + +‘Before we go down,’ his mother went on, ‘I must wish you many happy +returns, which I haven’t done yet, and give you my little presents. The +new set of harness for your cart is with the other things; you saw that: +Arthur says your old one is a disgrace; but, besides that, here is your +father’s signet-ring, which I want you to wear,’ and she produced from +the morocco case the ring he had missed from her finger. ‘And this is a +little book I want you to use every morning and evening; you will find +it very helpful.’ + +Sainty just touched the ring with his lips before he slipped it on his +finger, and glanced with passionate tenderness at the simpering image in +the corner. Then he began turning over the leaves of the little book +with its limp cover that reminded him of French plums. He was wondering +if honesty obliged him to say that he did not use such aids to devotion, +did not, in fact, very often pray at all. Finally, he decided that he +had not the courage to say anything of the sort, so he accepted the +volume without much enthusiasm, and put it in his pocket. Then, +detaining his mother as she was preparing to leave the room, ‘I want to +tell you, mother,’ he said, ‘that, though I don’t _say_ much, I do +really value all you have done for me, and been to me, and Uncle Cor +too. Between you, you have almost done away with the disadvantage that +every boy must be under who has no father.’ + +Lady Charmington was faintly stirred--probably she was pleased. + +‘There are many things, my son, that I should like different about you,’ +she said, ‘and especially I wish you stronger. But no one can say you +have ever been anything but a good boy.’ They went downstairs, both a +little moved by having performed the operation so difficult to the +British race, of displaying feeling. + +At breakfast the question had arisen of which of the party would attend +the service at Great Charmington parish church. This part of the +proceedings did not seem to find favour among most of the company, and +Lady Charmington’s brow grew dark as one after another excused himself. +The duchess was of course out of the question, as she seldom appeared +before lunch, her elaborate construction being a thing of time and +caution. To Lord Nonsuch, communion after breakfast was nothing short of +sacrilege; he was a leading light in the High Church party, and this was +his first appearance at Belchamber since a memorable occasion many years +before, when he had said Lady Charmington was an Erastian, and she had +called him a Jesuit. + +‘_I_ should _love_ it, dear Sarah,’ said Lady Eva, ‘but a poor literary +hack’s time is not her own. I _must_ work this morning, to be free this +afternoon.’ + +‘What has your mother got to do?’ asked Cissy of Claude. ‘Is she writing +a book?’ + +‘Didn’t you know mamma was “Maidie,” who does “the girls’ tea-table” in +the _Looking-glass_? She has very nearly got the sack because she never +gets her article ready in time; but she takes herself very seriously as +a journalist, I assure you.’ + +The Dalsanies were Roman Catholics, and Lady Deans nothing in +particular; and Gerald Newby, when he found that the people of higher +rank were shirking, discovered that he had letters to write which could +not be put off; but the climax of Lady Charmington’s displeasure was +reached when Arthur announced he would rather stay at home and play +lawn-tennis with Parsons. Lord Firth had not intended to go, but he +sacrificed himself to mollify his sister. His religion was of that +comfortable, rational kind in which there is more state than church, and +which is first cousin to agnosticism, but infinitely more respectable. +He took a great interest in the distribution of bishoprics and the +proper conduct of the service, which, however, he rarely felt called on +to attend, except in such cathedrals and college chapels as gratified +his fastidious taste and fondness for sacred music. + +Finally, a dozen people had been got together, and made a sufficiently +imposing appearance. Old Lady Firth, Mrs. de Lissac and the girls, and +Lady Eccleston went as a matter of course. Claude went to please his +aunt, Cissy because Claude did, Johnson because Cissy did, and Tommy +because his mother told him to. ‘I never have _any_ trouble about church +with my boys,’ Lady Eccleston said. ‘I never have _made_ them go, even +when they were little. I let them play tennis or do whatever they like, +till the time comes; if I’ve time I play with them. Then I just +cheerfully say “Now, boys, who’s for church?” and they nearly always +say, “All right, mother, we’ll go,” unless they’re ill.’ + +Lady Charmington, sore over Arthur’s defection, was in no mood to admire +the success of this plan. ‘Do you mean to say you play lawn-tennis on +Sunday?’ she asked frigidly; and Lady Eccleston discovered she ‘must fly +and put her bonnet on, or she’d be late.’ + +Through the service in the church, and the subsequent ceremony of +presenting him with a silver salver and an address from the tradesmen of +Great Charmington, the headache with which Sainty had most inopportunely +begun the day grew steadily worse. The thought of all these poor men +putting their hard-earned pounds together to give a great ugly useless +thing to him, who had already so much more than he wanted, unmanned him; +the tears were in his eyes as he tried to thank them. Nor was he less +cruelly embarrassed by the discovery that the guests in the house had +all thought it necessary to come laden with gifts. In his life no one +but his mother and uncle had ever given him anything; he was not +accustomed to presents, and received them with an awkward sense of +obligation. + +Belchamber being peculiarly rich in beautiful old plate, Arthur +presented him with a huge heraldic claret-jug of monumental hideousness, +for which long afterwards he paid the bill, when settling his brother’s +debts. The duchess gave him a cabinet inlaid after the manner of +Sheraton, in which a whole army of tumblers and sodawater-bottles, +lemon-squeezers, spirit-cases, and cigar-boxes rose and sank and +manœuvred with incredible ingenuity on innumerable springs. Down to Lady +Eccleston, who brought the latest fashionable invention for tearing the +leaves of his beloved books, no one was missing from the list; even Lady +Deans and the Dalsanies contributed their tale of paper-knives and +cigarette-cases. + +The only person whose gift showed any care or knowledge of Sainty’s +tastes and wants was Claude, who had taken the trouble to get from Paris +a really beautiful cane, a true Malacca, strong enough to be a support, +with tortoiseshell crutch encrusted with little gold stars, and an +indiarubber shoe to prevent its slipping on the floors of the house. +Sainty flushed with pleasure at sight of the charming thing, which +seemed to adorn his lameness with a certain elegance. He wondered why +his cousin, who was full of such pretty little cares and tendernesses, +should be so wanting in moral sense. His heart yearned over him. ‘Ah +Claude,’ he said, and could say no more. + +‘Dear old boy,’ said Claude, pressing his hand, ‘what do I not owe you? +There is nothing that a pauper like me can give to _you_; but such as it +is my little present brings real affection and heartfelt wishes for your +happiness.’ + +Sainty’s head was by this time aching cruelly, his temples throbbing +like sledge-hammers; he was feeling worn out mentally and physically, +ravaged by conflicting emotions. Having what was very rare with him, a +slight flush, he looked less ill than usual, and nobody thought of his +being tired; but it was at the tenants’ dinner that he set the seal on +the ignominy of his failure. + +In consideration of the fact that this was a long and crowded day for +one who was not robust, it had been settled that he should not preside +at the meal, but merely come in and take the chair, for the healths and +speeches, when the solid business of feeding had been satisfactorily +disposed of. It was between three and four o’clock, the hottest part of +the afternoon; and though the sides of the tent had been opened here and +there, the atmosphere was stifling, heavy with the odours of meat and +drink and the acrid exhalations of humanity. Sainty almost reeled on +entering, and had to steady himself by Arthur’s arm. There were some +seventy or eighty men present of all ages and degrees of stoutness, all +very hot, and mostly somewhat red in the face. Many of them were +intimately known to Arthur, who stopped several times in the progress +up the tables to shake hands right and left. He met them at the covert +side, he shot over their farms, he played in cricket matches with them. +Sainty would have given anything for a touch of that happy graciousness, +that power of being hail-fellow-well-met. Circumstances had combined to +make him almost a stranger to the men who were on such friendly terms +with his younger brother. He knew that in his heart he had far more real +brotherhood with these sons of the soil, a much more jealous respect for +their manhood and independence; but his very sense of equality made him +feel the falseness of his position, whereas Arthur’s easy familiarity +sprang from a firm conviction of his own unquestionable superiority. +Sainty was only too well aware, as he took his seat in gloomy silence, +that his grave bow in answer to their friendly greetings, would be set +down to pride by most of the people present. When, after loyally +drinking the Queen’s health, the guests were once more seated and their +glasses filled, the oldest tenant rose to propose the toast of the +occasion. He began by complimenting the young man on attaining his +majority, spoke shortly of his attachment to the place and the family, +and at great length on the badness of times and the difficulties of the +agriculturist, which he seemed in some mysterious way to attribute to +Mr. Gladstone. The voice went droning on, monotonous by reason of its +very emphasis, until Sainty felt almost hypnotised by it and by the +buzzing of the numberless wasps and flies that were hovering over the +remnants of food and drops of beer on the table-cloths. Sainty had quite +ceased to attach any meaning to the sounds, when suddenly the voice +stopped; the old man was sitting down; the audience, which had been +dozing, shook itself and sat up alert, and all eyes were turned on the +hero of the occasion. For weeks past Sainty had given anxious thought to +what he should say to his tenants. He had never before had to make a +speech, and he had rehearsed many alternative utterances in the privacy +of his chamber. He had felt somehow that this was going to be his +opportunity, the electrical moment when he was to make himself known to +those for whom it was of such importance what manner of man he was. He +would let them see that he was not an indifferent invalid, still less a +selfish pleasure-seeker, a careless eater of the produce and neglecter +of the producer; he would tell them how much he had their welfare at +heart. In carefully prepared sentences he would allude to his great +obligations (which incidentally were theirs also) to his mother’s long +laborious stewardship, his uncle’s enlightened economic teaching. He had +devoted hours to the consideration of just how much it would be well to +hint at his political convictions; sometimes he had been pleased to +fancy himself electrifying his hearers by a militant profession of +faith, but in calmer moments more moderate counsels prevailed. + +Now the time so anxiously anticipated had actually arrived. With a great +shuffling of feet the company got to its legs; some one started ‘For +he’s a jolly good fellow’ rather shakily, which was promptly taken up +and cheerfully shouted in a great variety of keys, and then all settled +down to await the answering speech. + +Sainty rose unsteadily and passed his hand across his forehead; for a +second he stood silent, while the guests greeted his rising by drumming +on the tables with their knife-handles. Then it seemed as though a +crushing weight descended through the top of his head to his brain, the +hum of the insects swelled to an organ roar in his ears, the hundred +faces before him seemed to float and swim in a mist, and with a kind of +gasping cry he sank back unconscious in Lord Firth’s arms. + +After this there could be no question of his appearing at the monster +fête and garden-party which had been organised for the afternoon. The +distant braying of a band, the sounds of many voices and laughter, and +the scrunching of innumerable wheels upon the gravel were borne to him +on the summer breeze, as he lay prostrate upon his bed. He had not yet +come back to any sense of shame or distress; for the moment, pure +physical pain was almost a relief, a restful half-consciousness that, +with no effort of his, a solution had been found, a way out of all +difficulties and disagreeables. + +Not till late next day did he crawl downstairs, feeling very weak and +battered, to receive the hollow sympathy and polite inquiries of his +guests, and apologise with what grace he might for having failed so +lamentably in his duties as a host. + +Arthur had got up a cricket match. ‘You needn’t worry, old man,’ he said +cheerfully, as he carried out his bat and found Sainty among the group +of spectators. ‘You weren’t missed a bit. The duke made a speech after +dinner, and proposed your health, and I returned thanks for you, and +said all sorts of nice things about you, which you never could have said +for yourself. I did it much better than you could have done, because I +was rather drunk, which you would never have been.’ + +‘O Lord Arthur! how _can_ you say Lord Belchamber wasn’t missed?’ cried +Lady Eccleston. ‘We all missed you dreadfully, didn’t we, Cissy? But +your brother did do his best to supply your place, and really made a +delightful speech; and I do hope your head is better; it was too bad +your breaking down, and we were all quite miserable about you.’ + +‘I wanted to send you some really wonderful nerve tonic Dr. Haslam gave +me,’ said Lady Firth. ‘I’m sure it would have done you good, but your +mother said you had everything you wanted.’ + +Sainty insisted on showing himself at the ‘treat’ for the children and +the labourers; this was the one part of the ‘rejoicings’ in which he +took a personal interest; but after a very brief appearance he was +forced to go and lie down again till dinner, if he hoped to receive the +guests at the great ball which was to wind up the proceedings of the +second day. + +The ball was a very grand affair indeed; there must have been over five +hundred people present. Every woman there had put on her most gorgeous +raiment, and the best of her jewellery. The duchess positively shone in +white and gold brocade, hung in ropes of pearls, and with a great crown +upon her head. Even Lady Charmington had had what she considered a +low-necked dress made for the occasion, and had withdrawn the Belchamber +emeralds from their twenty years’ seclusion at the bank for the pleasure +of wearing them before her mother-in-law. Sainty’s share in the +entertainment was strictly limited to standing by his mother, under the +portrait of his great-great-grandfather, leaning with his left hand on +the crutch stick which his cousin had given him, while his right was +shaken by a long procession of people, who all one after the other said: +‘I must--er--congratulate you, Lord Belchamber, on this auspicious +occasion. Sorry to hear you weren’t well yesterday; hope you’re all +right again.’ To which he had to reply, ‘Thanks awfully, very good of +you; so glad you could come; you’ll find the dancing through that next +room, straight on.’ + +By the time he had repeated this phrase between three and four hundred +times, and the guests had all defiled before him, he felt so sick and +giddy that he had to be helped to bed by his valet, where he lay awake +hour after hour, listening to the distant strains of the dance music, +and picturing the scene in the great saloon to himself. He thought how +nice it would be to be an ordinary normal, healthy, courageous young +man. He did not desire to be exceptionally gifted, strong, or beautiful, +only just like any one of a hundred youths who were at that moment +whirling in his ballroom, or eating his supper. Surely, he thought, no +one had ever got so little fun out of his own coming-of-age ball before. +He thought how pretty Cissy Eccleston had looked, all in delicate pale +green, with a sort of white butterfly of some shimmering stuff just +poised on her bright curls for only ornament--not a jewel on her +beautiful neck or arms. He fancied her, aglow with dancing, sitting to +rest under the great palms and banana-trees of the winter-garden, and +perhaps Claude ensconced beside her in one of those nooks that he had +watched his cousin arranging, ‘for flirtations,’ as he said. + +It was in these sleepless hours of the early morning that he decided to +say something to Claude Morland which he had had on his mind for two +days, and the first time he got him alone, he put his head down, dug +his nails into his palms, and said, ‘Claude, may I ask you something?’ + +‘Of course; what is it?’ + +Sainty gulped and was silent. He had made up his mind to speak the first +time he got an opportunity, but he had been genuinely relieved by every +interruption, and was conscious that he had even purposely avoided being +alone with his cousin. + +‘It is rather a queer question,’ he said, ‘and one which you may +resent.’ + +Claude was lolling in a deep chair with a book; his hat tilted over his +eyes left little of his face visible but his moustache and the soft +curve of his chin. + +‘How could I resent anything from you, old chap?’ he said sweetly, but +without looking up. ‘For which of my many sins am I to be taken to task? +Fire away.’ + +‘I know I’ve no right to ask such a question, but I wish you would tell +me if there is anything between you and Miss Winston.’ + +Claude gave an almost imperceptible start, and sank lower into the deep +chair. Sainty was conscious that under his air of supreme nonchalance he +was suddenly tensely on his guard. ‘Between us?’ he murmured +interrogatively. + +If Sainty were going to be indiscreet, his cousin obviously did not +intend to make it easy for him. + +‘I mean, are you in love with each other, or engaged, or anything?’ +Sainty persisted. Claude gave a little laugh; he was evidently trying to +keep a certain relief out of his voice as he answered in his usual soft +tones, ‘I would not be so rude to our dear Aimée as to say I was not in +love with her; I have been in love with her any time these two years; as +to being _engaged_, you really do ask the most simple-minded questions. +Will you tell me just what you think I have to marry on? Am I in a +position to think of marrying, especially another pauper like myself?’ + +‘That’s just what I was coming to,’ said Sainty eagerly. ‘I didn’t ask +from mere idle curiosity. But if you are in love with Miss Winston, of +course you _want_ to marry her, and you think you ought not to propose, +because you are not in a position to support a wife--isn’t that so?’ + +‘Well--no, dear boy,’ answered Claude slowly; ‘to be honest, I don’t +exactly know that it is. Aimée and I understand one another perfectly,’ +he added, after a little pause. + +‘Do you think she _does_ understand? Don’t you think you may have given +her the impression that you mean more than you do?’ + +‘I am not the first man Miss Winston has met,’ said Claude, turning +rather an ugly grin upon his cousin; ‘the dear creature was having her +little flirtations before I went to Eton.’ + +‘Of course, if you don’t want to, and you are sure she doesn’t want to, +there is no more to be said. I only wanted to say that if you were being +held back by want of money, perhaps I--perhaps we--you know--I mean, +that part might be arranged, don’t you know,’ and Sainty blushed hotly. + +Claude reached out a long white hand, and very gently pressed Sainty’s +knee. ‘You really are more kinds of an angel than any one I know,’ he +said, laughing softly, ‘but you need not worry about Aimée Winston; she +has no vocation for matrimony; if she ever makes up her mind to marry it +will be some one who can give her a far larger share of this world’s +goods than even you could spare for my dot. And as for me, if I should +ever find myself, either through your kindness or in any other way, in a +position to take to myself a wife, she would be a very different person +from _la belle Aimée; elle n’est pas de celles que l’on épouse’_; and +Claude turned again to his book in such a way as to intimate that the +subject was closed. + +By the time that the opportunity for this singularly abortive +conversation presented itself the house-party had dwindled sensibly. +Those who came to please the duchess, to meet each other, and to lend +the support of names well known to the chronicles of fashion, had fled +the day after the ball. They had come for an ‘occasion,’ and the moment +existence at Belchamber threatened to resume a course remotely +resembling home life, they departed to other ‘occasions,’ with all their +baggage and camp-followers. Lord Nonsuch could not spend a Sunday where +the services were conducted according to the ideas of Lady Charmington; +and by the Monday all had gone except old Lady Firth, the Morlands, the +Traffords, and the Ecclestons, who somehow or other contrived to stay on +till they should be due at another country-house. + +Lord Firth, ere he departed for Scotland, had a talk with his nephew. +‘It has all gone off very well, my boy, on the whole,’ he said, +‘considering how new you and your mother were to anything of the sort. +Your breakdown was unfortunate, of course, but it couldn’t be helped. +You had better come up to Fours for a bit next month; it’ll do you good; +and in November you ought to have another party here, for the covert +shooting. You will have to live suitably in the place in future; all +these new servants will get lazy and demoralised unless you give them +something to do.’ + +‘But I shan’t be here in November,’ said Sainty, ‘I shall be back at +Cambridge, you know.’ + +‘Your mother and I were thinking that perhaps you wouldn’t want to go +back to Cambridge now you are of age,’ said his uncle. + +‘Not go back to Cambridge!’ Sainty interrupted, with unfeigned horror; +‘not take my degree!’ + +‘Many people don’t, you know; and in your case, though it was no doubt +right for you to have a little taste of university life, there seem to +be claims which call for you more urgently elsewhere.’ + +‘Don’t ask this of me, Uncle Cor,’ Sainty said earnestly. ‘You and I +have both been workers; in my way I have worked as hard as you. You can +understand what it must be to be told when one is in sight of one’s goal +that one must give it up and not try for it. I gave up the scholarship +because I saw that it was a shame to take it from men who needed it; but +this is different. I stand no chance with Cook; he deserves to be +senior classic, and is safe to be; he has nothing to fear from me, or +any one; and if I beat any of the men who come next, well, it won’t hurt +them; they will have their first class all the same, and it makes no +difference to a man if he is second, third, or fourth.’ + +‘Do you care as much as all that?’ asked Lord Firth. + +‘Yes, I do,’ said Sainty. + +His uncle appeared to consider. ‘Well,’ he said, after a pause, ‘I don’t +see, if you want to go back and take your degree, why you shouldn’t; but +couldn’t you come down for a week, say, for the pheasants?’ + +‘Uncle Cor,’ said Sainty, ‘why _should_ I come down, just in the middle +of my work, and idle away a whole week, in order that other people +should shoot pheasants? I don’t shoot, myself; I hate the sound and +sight of shooting.’ + +‘Don’t you think you could get to like it? Of course it’s out of the +question for you to hunt, but you could quite well shoot, with a quiet +pony and little cart, or even from a campstool, if you couldn’t walk.’ + +‘I don’t _want_ to shoot; I should hate it. And in my case, the one +excuse, the tramping, the manly exercise, would be wanting. I should +seem to myself a kind of monster, dragged out to the work of slaughter +in some form of machine; sitting down to butchery, like Charles IX. +firing on Huguenots out of a window.’ + +‘Well, I only thought it would give you something more in common with +your fellow-men, make you more like other people.’ + +‘Oh yes, I know; it’s the old story, my unlikeness to other people, my +hopeless incurable unfitness for my position in life. I do so hate my +position in life.’ + +‘Many people would be glad to change with you, my boy,’ said his uncle +gently. + +‘I wish they could, with all my heart,’ said Sainty. ‘Oh, I fully +realise, no one more, what an anomaly I am. If only some one of the +hundreds of nice impecunious young men with a public school education +and no taste for work could have it all instead of me! Arthur, for +instance, would be ideal. He would hunt, shoot, play cricket, captain +the Yeomanry, be popular, successful, suitable, and enjoy the whole +thing immensely into the bargain.’ + +‘My dear boy,’ said Lord Firth, taking refuge behind Providence with a +simple piety worthy of his sister, ‘does it never occur to you that if +it had been intended that Arthur should have your birthright, he would +have had it?’ + +‘Oh, if you come to what was “intended,”’ Sainty answered, ‘I give up. I +don’t pretend to understand.’ + +‘It comes down to the simple old rule that you learned in your +catechism,’ said Firth, in a more natural manner; ‘“to do my duty in +that state of life unto which it shall please God to call me.” (I quote +from memory.) You can surely understand _that_?’ + +‘Oh yes,’ said Sainty, ‘I can understand _that_ right enough, as a +principle; but it is when you come to the question of just what _is_ +one’s duty that the difficulty comes in. For instance, I don’t believe +that it is a duty incumbent on me from any religious point of view to +sit in a chair and shoot tame pheasants, nor to waste money in +expensively feeding a whole tribe of people with whom I have no sympathy +whatever.’ + +‘We must “use hospitality,”’ quoted Lord Firth a little half-heartedly. + +‘Oh, if you quote Scripture on that matter,’ said Sainty, not without +malice, ‘I think you would find I was enjoined to entertain a very +different class of person from the duke, or Lady Deans, or the +Dalsanies. Indeed, I am not without the highest authority for selling +all I have and giving to the poor; I sometimes think it would be the +best solution, as it would certainly be the simplest.’ + +‘And how about the entail?’ asked his uncle. + +The wholesale disposal of his property being thus declared out of the +question, Belchamber had to try and find some other answer to the riddle +of life. For the present he was contented to have carried his point +about going back to Cambridge; the terrible coming of age was safely +past, and the danger of his university career being cut short averted. +As he had not gone up till he was nineteen, he had still a year of happy +college life before him, a year of peaceful study, of stimulating +discussions, of congenial society, a year of hard work for a definite +object. With a sigh of relief he found himself once more in his old +rooms, surrounded by the dear familiar shabbinesses, his accommodation a +bedroom, sitting-room, and Gyp-closet bounded by a battered ‘oak’; his +establishment the tenth part of an old woman in a sat-upon black bonnet, +and a twenty-fifth share in the services of a Gyp, but lord of his own +soul, and free to follow his own bent, an undergraduate among +undergraduates, and not the slave of a cumbrous estate and an unwieldy +palace. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + + +Sainty did not think it necessary to go home for the covert shooting, +and it is doubtful if he was much missed. Young Traffords and +Montgomeries came as usual, Lord Firth brought an older man or two, and +Arthur acted as host, not without a few skirmishes with his uncle, who +had been accustomed to appear in that capacity on such occasions. Arthur +was now at a crammer’s preparing for the army, but he had none of +Sainty’s objection to breaking in on his studies for a little sport, and +every one thought it quite right and natural that he should do so. It +might be all very necessary that he should help to slaughter his +fellow-men by and by, but the immediate duty was the destruction of +pheasants; and whatever might be the shortcomings of the absent lord of +the mansion, Arthur and the guests assembled at Belchamber had a proper +sense of their responsibilities in this respect. + +Sainty only wished that his brother would take his other duties in life +as seriously; there was permanently at the back of his mind an anxiety +about Arthur, which, like some latent poison in the blood, might lie +dormant for months, but was liable to stir up and give pain at any +moment. A certain sense that his own existence, unreasonably prolonged, +was, as it were, keeping his brother out of his inheritance, added +poignancy to all Sainty’s feelings about him. But for the unfortunate +accident of his own eighteen months’ seniority, Arthur would have +stepped naturally into his appropriate position, and found congenial +occupations, duties, pleasures ready to his hand. He felt that anything +that might go wrong with his brother before his own death made tardy +restitution, would be almost his fault. It did not occur to his morbid +apprehension that with superior means at his command all Arthur’s +vicious tendencies would have increased a hundredfold; he only saw the +boy who had no aptitude for study obliged by circumstances to work that +he might pass examinations, and driven from healthy and innocent +recreations at Belchamber into a world of dangerous companions and +temptations which he lacked self-control to resist. Sainty appeared to +himself as an unwilling Jacob, who by no act or fraud of his own stood +possessed of the birthright which was only a burthen to him, and who yet +had no appetite for the pottage for which a younger Esau’s full red +mouth watered so hungrily. As in the nursery days when he had decided to +die young that his brother might succeed him, he still cherished an +undefined feeling that he was only occupying for a time. He would never +marry; all must eventually go to Arthur and to Arthur’s children; but he +was possessed of an ever-growing terror lest meanwhile, before this +desirable end should be reached, his brother might steer the frail bark +of his good behaviour to some irreparable shipwreck, commit himself +irrevocably in some way that should disqualify him for the position ere +it should come to him. + +Sainty mused much on abdications, on men who had cast aside rank and +wealth for the peace and seclusion of the cloister; the monastic calm of +his beloved courts drew him like a spell; had he been born in the +turbulent times of his fighting ancestors he would probably have been +violently dispossessed and immured in some convent of holy monks. He +began to wonder whether in spite of all the boasted progress of the +centuries they had not managed things in a simpler and more effectual +manner in the middle ages. He even went so far as secretly to consult a +solicitor as to whether a peer could legally renounce his title and +estates in favour of the next heir entail, with the discouraging result +that he learned that while he lived no act of his, short of high +treason, could make him other than Marquis of Belchamber in the eye of +the law, or bestow that title on any other human being. + +‘It seems hard,’ he said to Newby one day, ‘that a man can be born into +a position with no act or consent of his own and bound in it for life; +struggle as he will he cannot free himself.’ + +‘Are we not all alike in that respect?’ asked Gerald. ‘Are not +circumstances, as they are called, the fetters that each man wears? We +delude ourselves with a phantom of free-will, but I suspect that men are +really born as irrevocably parsons, doctors, politicians, as you are a +peer. Who shall free himself from the bonds of fate?’ + +‘You are strangely inconsistent, Gerald. I can fancy no one less of a +fatalist than yourself.’ + +‘The doctor varies his medicines according to the disease of the +patient,’ said Newby sententiously. ‘When men come prating to me of +fatality as an excuse from all effort and responsibility, I have a very +different word to say to them; but in your case, when you complain of +being fettered by your position, I wonder whether some of those who +perhaps think they would like their path thus plainly marked for them, +may not really, by inherited tendencies and a hundred other intangible +threads, be as truly constrained in their life choice as yourself.’ + +‘“All men are born free,”’ quoted Sainty. ‘There never was a more +deplorable fallacy; for my part, I feel like the ghost in Dickens’s +story, who had to drag that chain of cash-boxes and keys and +deposit-safes wherever he went. Perhaps it is my lameness which +accentuates this sense of being hobbled. I can’t take a step without +feeling the pull of the whole Belchamber estate; it is hung round my +neck like the Ancient Mariner’s albatross.’ + +‘You certainly have a most deplorable trick of mixing your metaphors,’ +said Newby. ‘But,’ he added, with the mild awe of which Sainty had been +so disagreeably sensible at Belchamber, ‘yours is certainly a great +position, a grave responsibility.’ + +‘If I might have gone in for a scholarship, like you, and stayed and got +work in the college till I could try for a fellowship!’ Sainty sighed. +‘The life would have suited me down to the ground.’ + +‘There are many leading that life who would be glad to change with you,’ +Gerald answered with conviction. + +‘That is just what my uncle says, “many people would be glad to change +with you.” It is the old saying of our nursery days--“Many a poor man in +the street would be glad of that nice pudding.” Do you think it makes +unpalatable food more savoury to feel that one is keeping what one does +not like from some one to whom it would perhaps be an escape from +starvation? It is the strangest doctrine.’ + +‘Nevertheless Lord Firth is a very sensible man,’ said Newby; ‘and I +don’t feel disposed to pity you overmuch.’ + +‘I don’t think I want pity,’ said Sainty, ‘I want help. It seems too +deplorable that there should be no way out of an undesirable position. I +think it is this sense of being shut in that drives men to suicide far +more than great grief. Is any situation really hopeless, unalterable by +human effort? If any one were once persuaded of that, he _must_ go mad. +I suppose the pistol or the overdose of chloral is the last supreme +refusal to accept such a belief. “What!” you say, “no way out of this +_impasse_? Well, there is always this.”’ + +‘How theatrical!’ said Newby. ‘You are talking claptrap. Who ever heard +of a man committing suicide to avoid a marquisate and £50,000 a year?’ +and he resolutely led the talk into other channels. + +Arthur hadn’t been a month at his crammer’s before he began to justify +his brother’s anxiety. Of course he broke all the rules of the +establishment, came and went as he pleased, drove tandem, and hunted +several days a week. Then there were complications about dogs, of which +he kept a perfect kennel of all sorts and sizes, which raided the +reverend gentleman’s poultry-yard, killed his cat and his children’s pet +rabbits, and harried his wife’s old pug. Sainty had always wanted a +dog, but had never been able to have one because Arthur’s perpetually +changing menagerie had kept Lady Charmington’s powers of endurance +stretched to their easily reached limit. + +In the Christmas vacation Arthur had already stigmatised the +establishment to his brother as a ‘damned hole,’ where a gentleman +couldn’t live, and obliged him with graphic accounts of his many +differences of opinion with its principle. + +‘But doesn’t he _mind_ your setting your dogs on his pig?’ Sainty asked. + +‘Mind? of course he minds; it makes him wild. But you should see the old +woman; she gets twice as mad as he does. She’s always telling us we are +“no gentlemen,” and that we shouldn’t do the things at home, and why +don’t we treat her as we would any other lady.’ + +‘And why don’t you?’ asked Sainty, with delicate irony. + +‘What, _her_!’ with fine contempt; ‘the fellows say she was the old +man’s cook, and that he _had_ to marry her, ‘cos he’d got her into +trouble. You should see her in the evening in a greasy old black satin +and a sham diamond locket; she’s awfully particular about our dressing +for dinner, so Wood came in the other evening in muddy shooting-boots. +She asked if he wanted to insult her, but he said he was awfully sorry +but he couldn’t find his pumps, and glanced significantly at her toes +that were sticking out of her gown: she has enormous beetle-crushers, +and had sported a brand-new pair of patent-leather shoes. She fairly +cried with rage.’ + +Sainty saw the futility of trying to suggest the poor lady’s side of the +question; Arthur was never very quick at seeing other people’s point of +view. + +‘I just don’t pay ’em any attention,’ he said; ‘the old ‘un is always at +me about not working. Says I shall never pass my prelim., and objects to +my hunting. I tell him it’s necessary for my health.’ + +‘And how often _do_ you hunt?’ + +‘Oh, well, not more than two days a week mostly, never more than three. +You see, I’ve only got two hunters there; it’s so infernally expensive +keeping ’em at livery, and I have to pay for the man’s keep too. It runs +into a devil of a lot of money.’ + +After several such conversations, Sainty was not altogether surprised to +hear from his mother that a three days’ absence without leave to attend +a race meeting had brought matters to a crisis, and that the care of his +brother’s education had been transferred from the church to the army. +Arthur went to this new place with only a pony cart and a bicycle, +promising great things; the hunters had been suppressed and the kennel +cut down to two fox-terriers and a bob-tailed sheep-dog. Sainty was +rather surprised at hearing nothing from him for several weeks--not even +the familiar demand for money had broken the silence between them--and +the day he came home for the Easter vacation he made haste to ask for +news. + +He was sitting in Lady Charmington’s sitting-room, where she had +conceded a cup of tea to his fatigue after a journey, but was rigorously +abstaining from refreshment herself. Sainty was drinking his tea and +eating cake, while his mother hastily ran through some farm accounts she +was going to submit to him. + +‘How does Arthur get on at Colonel Humby’s?’ Sainty asked. + +Lady Charmington looked up from her ledger with an abstracted air and +her mouth full of figures. ‘Thirty-seven, forty-two, fifty, fifty-six, +fifty-six pounds, seven and fourpence halfpenny,’ she murmured. ‘Didn’t +I tell you he’d moved?’ and she noted the sum at the bottom of the page +and turned over. + +‘What! again?’ cried Sainty in dismay. + +‘He said he couldn’t get on there; he felt he wasn’t making any +progress, and he didn’t seem to like the men there; apparently they +weren’t a very nice set.’ + +‘He’ll never pass his exams. if he keeps chopping about like this, a +month in one place, a month in another. I’m afraid as long as he’s +expected to do any work, he’ll never find a coach who quite suits his +views. Where has he gone now?’ + +‘His friend, young Hunter, who was with him at Oxbourne, had gone to +that man in London they say is so wonderful----’ + +‘Mother! you _haven’t_ let him go to London?’ + +‘Why not? The boy seemed to think he should do better at Monkton’s; it +is such a new thing, as you say yourself, for Arthur to want to work, +that it seemed a pity to balk his good intentions.’ + +‘But surely you must see--London! Dear mother, won’t there be many more +distractions there for a boy of Arthur’s temperament than at a dull +place like Hog’s Hill?’ + +‘He said that was one trouble with Colonel Humby’s place, that it _was_ +so dull; there was never anything to do there. If he wanted any +amusement, he always had to go away for it, and this broke into his +work, interfered terribly with it, in fact.’ + +‘And so you think he’ll be likely to do more work when the things that +break into it are under his hand? Oh! why didn’t you ask me before +agreeing to this?’ cried Sainty in genuine distress. + +This being his first day at home, Lady Charmington only smiled +indulgently at the suggestion. She was not in the habit of consulting +other people before making up her mind, and least of all Sainty. ‘My +dear boy,’ she said, ‘you are scarcely older than your brother, and in +some ways have really seen less of the world. Why should you think you +can settle things for him so much better than he can for himself? or, +for that matter, than I, who have been accustomed for years to arrange +your lives for both of you?’ + +Sainty felt despairingly that there was nothing to be done with his +mother in that direction. He had come to know the signals, and to +recognise Lady Charmington’s ‘no thoroughfare expression’ as though it +were written on a notice-board. He wondered sometimes if she were really +as much at ease about her younger son as she seemed, but he never dared +try to find out, for fear of awakening in her heart the uneasiness that +oppressed his own. It was incredible that a woman so shrewd and +far-seeing in most of the relations of life as his mother, should really +feel a restful confidence about Arthur. To be sure, she was ignorant of +many things that he knew only too well, such as the younger boy’s habit +of betting and constant appeals to his elder for money; on the other +hand, Arthur took but little pains to conceal his views of life, and +occasionally delivered himself in his mother’s presence of remarks +which, it seemed to Sainty, could not fail to enlighten a much more +obtuse intelligence than Lady Charmington’s. + +When he came to breakfast next morning he found her entrenched behind +the zareba of teapots and kettles, under the shelter of which she +habitually partook of that meal. She looked up from her letters with a +certain air of triumph to say, ‘I have a letter from Arthur; he is +working so hard that he will not even come home for Easter; he says he +might run down just for the Sunday and Monday, but he thinks it would +only break into his work, and that on the whole it is best for him not +to come away at all.’ That was all the voice said, but the eyes said +quite plainly, ‘You see!’ + +Sainty said nothing. He went and peeped into the dishes on the +sideboard, and picked himself out a poached egg with no great appetite. +This habit of his of saying nothing when he had nothing to say was +called ‘rudeness’ by some people, by others ‘pride’ or ‘indifference.’ +If he had spoken out his real thought to his mother she would have told +him he was suspicious and could never believe any good of his brother, +and would probably have exhorted him to watch against such an unamiable +disposition. + +The breakfast, the day, the weeks passed in this silence between the +two, a silence eloquent of disagreement, yet broken only by a few words +on indifferent subjects, except when the presence of guests made +necessary some form of conversational rattling of peas in a bladder. + +Whether it was duty or pleasure that kept Arthur away, the house seemed +strangely empty and silent without him, even when some of the inevitable +family party were gathered together in it--perhaps most so then, for +though Arthur put himself out for no man, the mere fact that his +pursuits were those of the normal young Englishman made him an important +help in the entertainment of cousins. Sainty took endless trouble, but +sent the men after rabbits who were secretly pining for the last meet of +the season, and mounted the only Trafford who hated horses and had come +down burning to throw the first fly of spring. Claude made things easier +when he arrived a little later, but now that he was the duke’s private +secretary, his presence was generally required at one of his grace’s +numerous country-houses on the festivals of the Church, so that he was +much less at Belchamber than formerly. + +‘I’m worried about Arthur,’ Sainty said to him the first time they were +alone. ‘You know he’s left the second place he went to, and my mother +has let him go to London to read at Monkton’s. They don’t even board +there, you know; he has rooms somewhere near.’ + +Claude’s eyebrows arched themselves, and he gave vent to a low but +expressive whistle. + +‘Yes,’ said Sainty, ‘that’s what _I_ think; I feel sure he must be in +mischief, he’s keeping so quiet. He wouldn’t even come home for Easter; +it’s incredible that a woman of mother’s cleverness should really +believe that it springs from excessive devotion to work.’ + +‘Have you told your mother what you think?’ + +‘I’ve tried, but there’s the difficulty. She thinks it is only my base +jealousy and suspicion. I wonder why she so readily believes all good of +him, and never gives me credit for even decent feelings. I’ve tried all +my life to please her, studied her, thought what she’d like, and I don’t +believe Arthur has ever done or given up one single thing for her sake; +yet she cares more for his little finger than for my whole body.’ + +‘Oh, the secret of Arthur’s favour is not hard to guess. In the first +place, he’s got nothing, and you’ve got everything. On the face of it, +that seems like an injustice to him; so, with true woman’s logic, she +takes it out by being thoroughly unjust to you.’ + +‘Got everything! Heavens! Do you suppose I wouldn’t rather be tall and +strong and straight like Arthur, be liked by men and admired by women, +than own half England and be fifty Lord Belchambers?’ + +‘Very likely; though a woman of my aunt Sarah’s respect for “plenishing” +is not likely to appreciate that point of view. But the real reason of +her partiality is that Arthur is just the one person in the world who +isn’t afraid of her. Oh yes, you are afraid of her; it’s not the least +use your saying you’re not, and so am I, and so’s every one about the +place. Whereas Arthur doesn’t care a damn _what_ she thinks; he does +jolly well what he pleases, and, _maîtresse-femme_ as she is, she can’t +help admiring him for it.’ + +‘Well, never mind about that; I didn’t mean to complain; that any one +should prefer Arthur to me is not a phenomenon that needs explanation. I +only deplore this particular result of her devotion to him for _his_ +sake. What am I to do about it?’ + +‘It’s a good thing you mentioned it to me; I must see what I can do. +Perhaps I shall be able to keep an eye on Master Arthur to a certain +extent.’ + +It is true that his cousin’s influence had hitherto been unmixedly bad, +yet he seemed so sympathetic, so anxious to help, so entirely at one +with him in his desire to keep Arthur from making an ass of himself, +that Sainty went back to Cambridge vaguely consoled, and with a feeling +that Claude, being on the spot, might really perhaps be able to exercise +some kind of check on the object of their common solicitude. + +This was his ninth and last term, the term of his tripos exam. and his +degree, and he was so busy that he had but little time for thinking of +his brother. Lady Charmington mentioned him but rarely in her letters, +beyond a casual observation that Arthur was as hard at work as ever. +Arthur himself wrote even less than usual, but he did vouchsafe a few +brief notes, saying he was ‘all right,’ and ‘sapping like the devil,’ +and ending with the usual demands. In spite of his close attention to +business, London seemed by no means an economical place of residence. +‘His landlady robbed him shamefully; he was told they all did; and +though he was sure of the fact, he knew too little about such things to +be able to spot her.’ + +One day Sainty showed one of these epistles to Newby, and hinted at his +uneasiness. ‘You remember my brother Arthur?’ he added, seeing Gerald +look a little vague. + +‘Remember him? of course I do. A nice lad, a very jolly lad; an awfully +charming type of healthy English boyhood.’ + +‘Oh yes, he’s all that,’ Sainty assented; ‘but I wish he wasn’t knocking +about in lodgings in London by himself. He’s very young, and awfully +fond of pleasure, and hasn’t a great deal of self-control.’ + +‘Let him alone, my dear boy,’ returned Newby airily. ‘He must sow his +wild oats, like another; but he won’t go far astray. _Bon sang ne peut +mentir._’ + +‘Oh, can’t it?’ groaned Sainty; but his friend wouldn’t hear of any +danger. + +‘That kind of healthy well-bred English lad always comes out all right +in the end,’ he said. ‘You can’t ride a thoroughbred with a curb.’ + +‘Dear me, how sporting you’ve become; you’re as horsey as Ned Parsons +when he talked to Lady Rugby.’ + +‘Talking of Ned, have you heard about his book?’ + +‘No--what book?’ + +‘Why, he’s written a book which they say is going to be the success of +the year; it ought to be out by now. I saw some of the proofs, and +thought it deplorably flippant and vulgar, as anything by him was sure +to be, but undeniably clever in a way.’ + +‘Is it a novel?’ + +‘Yes, a novel of society--as if Ned knew anything about society!’ + +‘How came you to see the proofs? Did he show them to you?’ + +Newby’s pale cheek took on a faint flush. ‘Well, some one told me he had +put _me_ into it; there is a young don in the story, and of course some +one who wanted to be clever immediately decided it was meant for me, so +I just taxed Parsons with it the first time I met him. “I hear you’ve +been putting me into your book,” I said.’ + +‘And what did he say?’ + +‘At first I thought he looked a little queer, then he laughed one of +those irritating insolent laughs of his and said he’d send me the +proof-sheets of the chapter where his young don was described, and I +could judge for myself.’ + +‘Well?’ + +‘Oh, of course, as soon as he offered to show it to me I knew it must be +all right, and directly I saw it I found as I expected the character +wasn’t the least like me. The fellow was a most egregious prig, and not +only that, but a snob; and whatever my faults, _that’s_ a thing my worst +enemy couldn’t say I was, could he?’ + +‘I’m glad it was all right,’ said Sainty. ‘It would have been too +caddish of him to return all your kindness in that way, and somehow I +don’t think Ned’s a bad sort at bottom.’ + +As the tripos drew nearer Sainty had less and less time for anything +outside his work. It may be said at once that he took a very good +degree. In country rectories and cheerful middle-class households from +which the clever son of the family had been sent to college at the cost +of some privation and not a little grumbling, a place among the first +six in the Classical Tripos would have been acclaimed with grateful +pride and rejoicing. In Sainty it was accounted an innocent eccentricity +to care what degree he took, or whether he took one at all. Lord Firth, +who was the most understanding among his kinsfolk, wrote a kind little +note of congratulation. Lady Charmington was mildly gratified to find +that her boy had brains and the grit to work for a desired end, but she +frankly acknowledged that she could see no use his first class would be +to him in after life, nor how it would help him to manage his estates. +Arthur said ‘his brother was the rummest devil he ever came across, he +was hanged if he could understand him.’ They would all have been +infinitely better pleased had Sainty taken his uncle’s advice, bought a +gun and gone shooting in some form of movable go-cart. It was the more +remarkable that he should do so well, as he was always more and more +preoccupied about Arthur. Once the examination was over, and his mind at +ease on that score, the old anxieties came crowding back upon him, and +he decided to go to London and try and find out for himself what his +brother was about. He would come up again for his degree. Meanwhile, his +work was done and he had kept his term, so there was no difficulty about +getting an exeat for a day or two, and he wrote to his uncle to ask if +he could put him up. + +After old Lord Firth’s death his widow had given up the house in +Bryanston Square and retired to Roehampton with an elderly companion, an +elderly maid, and an elderly Blenheim spaniel; and the present peer had +bachelor quarters somewhere near Whitehall, close to the House of Lords, +and with a sidelong squint at the river if you got very close to the +windows. + +Having arrived and ascertained that his uncle would probably not be in +till dinner-time, Sainty went westwards in search of his brother. The +educational establishment, familiarly known to candidates for the army +as ‘Monkton’s,’ was situated in the wilds of South Kensington, and in +order to be handy for his place of study Arthur had taken rooms in the +same respectable region. But neither at the crammer’s nor his lodgings +did Sainty find trace of him. At the former he heard that his brother +had been there in the morning, but had not returned since lunch, and his +rooms seemed an even more unlikely place to obtain tidings of the +studious youth. ‘Oh yes!’ the maid said who opened the door, ‘’is +lordship ‘as rooms ’ere right enough, but ’e isn’t often in ’em; ’e +generally either calls or sends for ‘is letters most days, and once in a +way ’e’ll sleep ’ere, but it isn’t often. Sometimes I don’t clap eyes on +‘im for days together.’ + +Neither this information nor the fact that his brother’s ideas of +‘sapping like the devil’ were consistent with taking the whole +afternoon, from lunch on, for amusement, struck Sainty as very +reassuring. However, there was nothing to be done except to write on a +card a request that Arthur would come and see him at his club on the +morrow, and trust that it might be one of the days when ‘’is lordship +called or sent for ‘is letters.’ + +As his hansom bore him eastwards again, he could not help having his +mind diverted from his anxieties by the rush of London life at five +o’clock of a day in the season unrolled before him like a picture-book. +The streams of vehicles of all sorts flowing in either direction made +progress necessarily slow, and gave ample time for studying their +occupants. He was not yet twenty-two, and had hardly ever been in +London; the whole pageant was absolutely new to him, and it is small +wonder if he found much to interest and amuse him. The great toppling +vans and omnibuses were interspersed with equipages beside which the +renovated carriages of Belchamber seemed suddenly rustic and +old-fashioned. Little victorias slid past, bearing beings in shining +raiment and crowned with improbable headgear. Family landaus containing +no less gorgeous matrons, and perhaps a brace of pink-cheeked +sulky-looking daughters in clouds of blue and white feathers, or small +parterres of roses nodding in the summer breeze, made stately progress +towards the park, or to fetch papa from his club. One of the prettiest +of the passing girls leaned forward in sudden recognition and touched +her companion’s arm, and Sainty found himself responding to a volley of +smiles and bows from Cissy Eccleston and her mother, which at a touch +made him part of the great glittering show, and no longer a mere +onlooker and outsider. It occurred to him with a little thrill that it +only rested with himself to come in and take his place among all these +people, the place that was his by right of birth. Already invitations +had poured in, more or less unheeded, on such an eligible young man. +Unversed as he was in the ways of the world, he knew enough to be aware +that a fatherless peer with a long minority behind him, an unencumbered +rent-roll, and one of the show places of England, would not be forced to +take the lowest room at the various feasts to which all these votaries +of fashion were so eagerly pressing. + +But this unusual uplifting of his horn was of brief duration. One glance +at the little mirrors on either side of the cab in which he rode, and he +would have bartered all his advantages for the health and good looks of +the poorest of the well-groomed, broad-shouldered youths in shiny boots +who trod the pavement of Piccadilly with floating coat-tails and such a +happy insolence. At one point where the throng was thickest, Sainty’s +attention was arrested by a tall and very showy-looking young person in +a smart private hansom going in the opposite direction from his own. She +was much dressed in the height of the prevailing fashion, and wore what +is called a ‘picture hat’ adorned with a great number of nodding plumes. +Her charms, deftly enhanced by art, were of the more obvious order, and +she scattered smiles broadcast among the throng of young men, where +dogskin-covered hands flew up to many a burnished hat as she passed, +enjoying a sort of triumphal progress with the western sun shining full +on her flashing gems and dazzling complexion. As the two cabs came +almost abreast of one another she leaned back to say something to the +man beside her, and with a clutch of the heart Sainty recognised in the +slim youth leaning lazily back with his hat tipped over his eyes, who +looked so distressingly boyish beside all this full-blown beauty, his +brother Arthur. + + + + +CHAPTER X + + +Belchamber’s first feeling was that it was a judgment on him for having +allowed his mind to wander to worldly frivolities and thoughts of +personal amusement. Certainly he had been brought up with a round turn. +His next was one of bewilderment as to what it behoved him to do under +the circumstances. Ought he to let his mother or Lord Firth know what he +had seen? He recoiled with all the force of schoolboy traditions from +the idea of telling tales. Had Arthur recognised him? he wondered, and +would he come to the rendezvous at the club next day, even supposing +that he got his message? He had been on his way to call on his +grandmother, and, as he omitted to give the driver any fresh +instructions, he presently found himself at Sunborough House. Having +ascertained from the porter that the duchess was out, he was turning +away when he saw some one signalling to him from one of the ground-floor +windows, and Claude came running bareheaded down the steps. + +‘My dear old boy! this _is_ nice,’ he said. ‘I’d no idea you were in +town. I saw you from the window of my room. Come in and have some tea, +and I’ll tell them to let us know when grandmamma comes in.’ + +Sainty was drawn affectionately into a large room near the front-door, +which Claude explained was his peculiar sanctum. ‘It used just to be a +sort of waiting-room, and was much wasted, so I got the Pompier to let +me have it for mine. That bell rings from his study, so he can get at me +whenever he wants me.’ + +It was a pleasant room, with two high windows draped with some sombre, +respectable, woollen fabric. Its original furniture consisted of a +large writing-table with a gallery, and a set of green leather chairs, +two high-backed mahogany bookcases with brass lattice-work in their +doors, and several good old engravings on the walls, the duke’s father, +mother, and grandfather, after Lawrence, Mesdames Taglioni, and Fanny +Ellsler, Count d’Orsay, the Queen on horseback, and the Duke of +Wellington. On this severe ground Claude had, so to speak, embroidered a +fantasia of more modern objects--little tables, low easy-chairs, +cigarette-cases, a vase or two of flowers, several books, reviews, and +paper-knives, and a vast quantity of signed and framed photographs of +all shapes and sizes. With the exception of an eminent man or two, and a +few sleek young peers, they all represented beautiful ladies--ladies +looking over their shoulders, with their hands behind their backs, +ladies with sheaves of lilies and baskets of flowers, ladies looking out +of paper-mullioned windows wreathed in sham ivy, ladies with children in +lace frocks, ladies in ball dress, court dress, fancy dress, or simply +what may be called photographic dress, consisting of the sitter’s best +low-necked gown and a hat, a combination which no one could be expected +to believe was ever worn outside the studio. Three large official +dispatch-boxes with paper tags hanging out of their ends stood on the +writing-table, and a receptacle like a good-sized dog-basket bulged with +letters for the post. + +His cousin was so cordial and affectionate, did the honours of his +official residence with such charming grace, that Sainty felt impelled +rather against his will to tell him of his late encounter. Perhaps if +circumstances had not thrown him so immediately in his way, he might not +have selected Claude as his confidant; but he desperately needed help +and counsel, and here was some one ready with both, some one whom to +tell would have none of the grave, official importance of a report to +Lady Charmington or his uncle. Warmed by tea and his cousin’s +enthusiastic welcome, he had not been ten minutes in the room before he +had confided to its occupant all his uneasiness and its latest cause. + +‘Really! Arthur _is_ an ass!’ was Claude’s comment. ‘What strikes me +first of all is the infernal imprudence of the whole thing. Why can’t he +go and see the lady quietly, instead of flourishing about Piccadilly in +a hansom with her at five o’clock in the afternoon? He’s just as likely +as not to meet grandmamma or your uncle as any one else, and then all +the fat will be in the fire.’ + +There was a ring of very genuine annoyance in Claude’s voice; and +Sainty, though he smiled at the aspect of the matter that so +characteristically presented itself to Morland as the important one, +felt that he had not brought his troubles to an indifferent or +unsympathetic person. + +‘But who do you suppose it is?’ he asked, ‘and where can Arthur have +made her acquaintance? Perhaps it may not be--what I fear; but she +looked rather--well, rather----’ + +‘Yes,’ said Claude, laughing; ‘I should say it was ten to one she _was_ +“rather.”’ + +‘It’s no laughing matter,’ cried Sainty. ‘It was bad enough when I +thought he was only neglecting his work, and just idling and amusing +himself; but this makes it all much more serious. But Claude, can’t you +help? Can you not guess who it might be?’ + +‘Oh, it might be any one of a dozen people,’ said Claude indifferently. +‘It doesn’t so much matter _who_ it is,’ he added; ‘the great thing is +to try and get him not to make a fool of himself. You know, dear Saint, +it is useless to expect the high moral view from _me_. What you want is +that Arthur shan’t go and do anything idiotic, isn’t it? Well, I’m much +more likely to prevent his giving the whole show away than you are, +ain’t I? You leave it to me; I’ll see what can be done.’ + +It was on the tip of Sainty’s tongue to say that the eye which Claude +had promised him at Belchamber to keep on Arthur, could not have been +peculiarly vigilant; but he did not wish to alienate the one person who +might perhaps help him, so he expressed gratitude and a confidence he +did not wholly feel; and just then a footman came in to say that ‘’Er +grace had come in, but was dining out, and must rest before dressing, +and she ‘oped Lord Belchamber would come to luncheon next day.’ + +‘By the way, yes,’ said Claude, when the man had left them. ‘To-night is +the dinner at the French Embassy, and then there is the ball at +What’s-their-names, and grandmamma must shed her day-skin and give the +new one time to harden.’ + +‘What do you _call_ her, Claude?’ asked Sainty. ‘I never feel as if I +_could_ call her “grandmamma.”’ + +‘Oh, I never call her that to her face, _bien entendu_. It was a +dreadful question at first. I couldn’t call her Hélo as her stepsons do; +but I’ve hit on a lovely plan. I call her ‘Grace,’ suggesting +facetiously ‘Your grace,’ do you see? and it sounds like a cross between +a Christian name and a sort of compliment, grace personified, that kind +of business. Well, good-night, old chap, if you must go. Don’t worry +about the little blessing; you had much better let me see what I can do. +Right you are. And for the Lord’s sake, don’t say a word to your uncle +or any of ’em.’ + +‘Don’t worry,’ that was still the burthen of such very various +counsellors, as Gerald Newby and Claude Morland, and more or less the +line his mother took, who was again so unlike either of them; and +meanwhile he was expected to stand by and see Arthur drifting to ruin +under his eyes. However, he so far obeyed Claude’s injunctions as to say +nothing to Lord Firth on the subject, when they presently dined +together, though his principal object in coming to town had been to ask +his advice. + +‘Have you seen Arthur?’ his uncle asked in the course of dinner, and +Sainty only said, ‘I called at Monkton’s and at his lodgings, but I +didn’t find him.’ + +‘It was a rum idea of your mother’s, letting him come to London, but it +seems to be working, and so does he. I’ve asked him once or twice to +come and dine, but he hardly ever comes. He says the evening is one of +the best times he has for work.’ + +Sainty had but little chance of private talk with Claude the next day, +when he lunched at Sunborough House. His cousin drew him gently to a +window when he arrived, while the numerous chance guests were awaiting +the appearance of their hostess. + +‘I’ve thought of who it very likely was,’ he said, with engaging +frankness. ‘If it’s the person I think, she’s a good girl, and won’t do +him any harm. You know you can’t expect to keep Arthur away from women; +the important thing is that he shouldn’t get into bad hands, and I’ll +drop him a hint to be more careful and not to go and _afficher_ himself. +Hush! here’s our respectable ancestress. Well, Grace, here’s your _good_ +boy come to see you, to make a change from your bad one.’ + +Sainty never knew whether it was circumstances or design that made it +impossible for him to get another word alone with Claude. He did not +feel that Morland’s help would be exactly of the kind or in the +direction that he wanted, and he was more than ever anxious to see his +brother himself, and try and find out just how much was wrong. He went +early in the afternoon to a club in St. James’s Street, of which he had +lately become a member, so as to be sure not to miss Arthur if he should +come there. To his surprise, the porter handed him a letter as he went +in, which proved to be a note from Lady Eccleston asking him to dine the +same evening. He thought it would be pleasant to accept, but decided to +keep it till he had found out if Arthur had any plans for the evening; +so he put it into his pocket, and turned into a room on the ground +floor, where some of the latest publications were displayed on a long +table. + +A group of young men who were laughing uproariously over a book desisted +rather suddenly on his entrance, as one of them, in whom he recognised +the young stockbroker Pryor, looked towards him and whispered something +to the rest. They faced round and stared at him much as sheep look at a +dog, while Austin Pryor came forward holding out his right hand, with +the book still in his left. + +‘I say,’ he said, ‘how odd you should come in just this minute! Have you +seen this book of your friend Parsons’? It’s only out to-day, and they +say you can’t get a copy for love or money. Wasn’t he that untidy chap +with a fishy eye who was at your coming of age last year? I’m blowed if +he hasn’t gone and stuck the whole show into his book, only he’s made +your brother the hero instead of you, he’s turned you into a girl, a +great heiress with rather jimmy health and a cork leg, who’s in love +with the villain. But the rest of us are there, even down to poor little +me. Your mother, your uncle--oh! and the duchess--he’s touched the old +duchess off to the life, even to the colour of the gowns she wore at +dinner. Well--he’s made his fortune. They say he’s been offered ten +thousand for his next book, if he’ll only guarantee two well-known +people bein’ in it. It’s better biz than the House; here am I come away +at three-thirty; absolutely nothing doing, I give you my word. I haven’t +made a fiver this account. Here--would you like the book? I’ve got to go +out, and some one’ll grab it like a shot if you don’t lay hold of it.’ + +The other youths seemed to have melted away during this speech, so that +when Mr. Pryor, convinced that he had made himself most agreeable, +handed him the fortunate novel of the season, and hurried away to gossip +about it in as many drawing-rooms as he could work in before +dressing-time, Sainty found himself alone with the book in his hand. He +sat down to wait for Arthur, and began turning over the pages. + +So it was for this that Parsons had wanted to come to Belchamber. Now he +understood. As Pryor had said, they were all drawn to the life. ‘Well, +it doesn’t demand much imagination to write a book in that way,’ he +thought. Presently he came to the passage about the young don, and found +he was smiling in spite of himself at Newby’s happy confidence that the +character could by no possibility have been drawn from him. The portrait +was one-sided and most malevolent, but quite unmistakable. A year ago he +would have been beyond words indignant at this ill-natured caricature +of his friend and hero. Now he could not repress a faint feeling of +amusement. What had happened to him in the meanwhile, he wondered; he +felt ashamed of his want of loyalty. ‘Lord Arthur Chambers askin’ for +you, m’lud,’ a discreet club waiter murmured in his ear; and he +remembered with a start that in life as in Ned Parsons’ story, the +protagonist of the moment was not himself but his younger brother. + +‘Infernally thirsty weather,’ Arthur remarked, as he dropped gracefully +into a chair. ‘May I have a whisky and soda?--thanks.’ Then to the +waiter, without allowing Sainty time to answer, ‘A large whisky and +soda, please, with some ice and a slice of lemon. Well, old chap,’ he +continued, turning again to his brother as the man departed, ‘and what’s +brought you to town?’ + +‘You,’ answered Sainty severely. + +‘O God! old man, not a jaw,’ Arthur pleaded wearily; ‘it’s too hot’ + +‘Did you see me yesterday?’ Sainty asked suddenly. + +‘No, old boy--where?’ said Arthur, with slightly awakened interest. + +‘About five o’clock, in Piccadilly. You were in a hansom.’ + +Arthur flushed crimson all over his handsome face. ‘The devil!’ he said +simply, in a manner which told more plainly than words that he had _not_ +seen his brother. + +‘Think of the imprudence of it,’ Sainty remonstrated (quoting Claude, +rather to his own surprise; it was not in the least what he had meant to +say). ‘You might just as likely have met Uncle Cor as me, or some one +who knew you, and might have written to mother.’ He did not like to name +Lady Eccleston, who was the person he had in his mind. + +‘I wasn’t doing anything I was ashamed of,’ Arthur answered doggedly. + +Then there was a little pause, during which the waiter reappeared with a +long clanking tumbler, and the brothers sat and looked at one another +gloomily. + +‘Well?’ asked the younger, as he sipped his refreshment. + +‘Do you often drink between meals?’ Sainty asked. ‘Are there none of the +stereotyped bad habits that you haven’t contracted yet?’ + +‘An occasional whisky and soda when one’s thirsty doesn’t make a man an +habitual drunkard----’ + +After a second pause, ‘I suppose you want to know who it was?’ Arthur +suggested, with another blush. + +‘I don’t know that I do,’ Sainty answered. ‘It was evident enough the +sort of person----’ + +But Arthur cut him short. ‘I won’t hear a word against her,’ he said +hotly. ‘Of course she’s an actress, and that’s enough to make people say +deuced ill-natured things; but she’s as good a girl----’ + +‘Do you mean to say----’ Sainty was beginning, when Arthur suddenly +melted, leaned forward, and laid an affectionate hand on his. + +‘Look here, old man,’ he said, ‘of course I don’t mean that she’s +immaculate; but she’s told me a lot about herself, and I’m sure she’s +more sinned against than sinning, you know, and all that. And I’m +awfully in love with her; you may as well know it first as last. And I +can’t stand hearing her talked about as if she was just a common woman. +What are you doing to-night? I’ve persuaded her to come to supper with +me, and asked some of her pals; will you come to the theatre with me and +see her act, and come and meet her at supper? You’ll see for yourself +how awfully respectable and jolly and all that she is.’ + +Sainty’s mind flew to the little note in his pocket; he would much +rather have dined with the Ecclestons, but perhaps it was his duty to go +and inspect the syren who had captured his brother, and he was not +without curiosity as to a side of life with regard to which he was as +ignorant as a girl. ‘How can I help him,’ he thought, ‘if I know no more +of his life and temptations than mother does?’ And he shuddered to think +of the light in which Lady Charmington would view his acceptance of the +proffered supper-party. + +‘You had better dine here with me first,’ he said resignedly; ‘Uncle Cor +is dining out.’ + +Arthur was so delighted at the ease with which he had brought his +brother into line with his plans, and so excited by the anticipation of +the evening’s amusement, that Sainty found it impossible to get anything +out of him as to the extent to which he had been neglecting his work. +All mere prosaic questions of that sort seemed to the enamoured swain so +entirely trivial that Sainty himself began to wonder why he attached +such undue importance to them. Under the influence of what seemed almost +like an unselfish passion, Arthur appeared so much more amiable than +usual, that he, who had come to lecture, came perilously near remaining +to sympathise. He learned that the lady of the hansom was Miss Cynthia +de Vere, who was performing in a piece called ‘_Africa Limited, or the +Day of All Jeers_,’ a really rattling piece, in which she was perfectly +ripping, that she had a not very important _rôle_, as far as words went, +which was of course due to professional jealousies, but she was on the +stage nearly all the time, and wore some ‘clinking’ costumes. + +‘By the way,’ Sainty inquired, just as Arthur was about to leave him, +‘how did you come to meet Miss de Vere?’ + +‘Oh, Claude introduced me to her, one of the few good things I owe him.’ + +‘Claude!’ Sainty bounded. He could only gasp, as the full measure of his +cousin’s duplicity forced itself upon him. + +‘You needn’t think the worse of her on that account,’ Arthur said. ‘She +doesn’t like our slimy cousin; she told me so. She says he’s a bad lot, +and so he is. Between you and me, I think he’s behaved badly to her in +some way. She said she’d no cause to love him, but of course I couldn’t +_ask_ her anything about it. Tata, old chap; see you later. I must go +and tell a certain person you’re coming; she’ll be awfully pleased.’ + +_Africa Limited_ was one of the first of those musical farces which have +revolutionised the English stage; it had a great quantity of characters, +and no particular plot. The first act took place in England, the second +in what was supposed to be Algeria, and was represented by a mixture of +the tropics and a pantomime transformation scene. There were any number +of songs and dances, that could be introduced or omitted at will, and +the time of day was morning, sunset, limelight, or back to high noon, +with bewildering rapidity, and a total disregard of the ordinary +sequence of the hours. There were a pair of serious and lyrical lovers, +who discoursed sentimental ballads and duets; a pair of secondary +lovers, more facetious and less sentimental; an excruciatingly funny +comic man from the halls, who assumed every kind of disguise for no +particular reason; a barbarous potentate, who turned out to be Irish, +and the comic man’s long lost grandfather; several dancers of +_pas-seuls_, and last, but not least, a number of extremely handsome +young ladies, who did not seem to have much connection with the story, +but who turned up in the most unlikely places, always gorgeously +dressed, and had each three sentences to say in the course of the +evening. It was one of this frolic band whom Arthur shyly indicated to +his brother as Miss Cynthia de Vere, and in whom Sainty without much +difficulty recognised the damsel he had seen in Piccadilly. Across the +footlights and out of the pitiless sunshine of a summer day, she made a +striking and picturesque appearance enough. She smiled affably at the +brothers, and at several other acquaintances in the stalls and boxes, +and took a most perfunctory interest in what was going on upon the +stage. + +A rather _recherché_ dandyism was at that moment the correct style for +young men about town, and Arthur was got up to kill, with a vast expanse +of shirt-front illuminated by a single jewel, white kid gloves, and a +cane, his fair curls cropped, flattened, and darkened as near to the +accepted model as nature would allow, and his face very pink and solemn +over his high collar. He went out between the acts ‘to smoke a +cigarette,’ and returned with a new buttonhole and a peculiarly fatuous +smile never produced by tobacco. + +As they drove to the restaurant where they were to sup, he obliged +Sainty with a catalogue _raisonné_ of the guests. ‘Charley Hunter’s +coming, and Agnes Baines, the girl next but two to Cynthia, because +Charley’s awfully mashed on her; Mabel Hodgson, that handsome girl at +the other corner from Cynthia; and I had to ask that little cad Harry +Atides, because he won’t let her go anywhere without him; they say he +beats her. Cynthia has such an awfully good heart; she asked me to ask +her, because she has such a dull life. I don’t see why she stays with +that little beast. Then there is Elise Balbullier, the French +girl--she’s awfully amusing and clever; Clara Bingham, one of the chorus +girls--she’s a pal of Cynthia’s; and Colonel Hoby--he knows all the +girls, and they like him, and he chaffs ’em, don’t you know.’ + +Some of us not yet in our dotage can remember when it was by no means an +easy thing to find a place in London whereat to sup; but about the time +that pieces of the type of _Africa Limited_ came into fashion, the +play-going public discovered that it was unequal to the intellectual +effort of witnessing them without the support of two dinners, and the +first house of entertainment to cater for this new need was the Hotel +and Restaurant Fritz, so called after its enterprising manager. +Everything was on a scale of hitherto unprecedented luxury and +proportionate expense; the waiters, of every conceivable nationality, +wore short jackets and white aprons like those in a French café. A real +chef directed an army of myrmidons in the adjoining kitchen. There were +shaded electric lights, and little vases of flowers on the tables, among +which dignified head-waiters walked like dethroned potentates in +irreproachable evening dress, while a string-band made conversation +appear a superfluity. A negro in a fez made Turkish coffee at a sort of +altar in the midst, and the decorations suggested the saloon of the most +expensive Atlantic liner. + +The brothers had to struggle to the cloak-room through a crowd of all +ages and sexes, the women with fresh powder on their noses pulling out +their crushed laces, the men settling their ties and stroking their back +hair. Among these latter they suddenly found themselves face to face +with Claude. Arthur pushed past him with a sulky nod. Claude jerked his +head after him. ‘So you’ve got hold of the culprit,’ he said; ‘is it all +right? have you got anything satisfactory out of him?’ + +‘I have got the most surprising things out of him,’ answered Sainty +witheringly, looking his cousin straight in the eye. + +Claude did not seem to notice. ‘I’m waiting for Lady Deans and Lady +Dalsany,’ he said. ‘Women take such an infernal time prinking. Have you +seen your cousin Trafford? He’s supposed to be supping with us, or +rather we with him; but what are _you_ doing in this unlikely place?’ + +‘Oh, _I_’m supping in quite a different _monde_,’ said Sainty in a low +vibrating voice, which he tried to keep very steady and sarcastic; ‘my +brother has invited me to meet the girl of his heart. I really must +offer you my sincerest thanks for the admirable way you’ve looked after +him for me.’ He was swelling with righteous indignation and a +consciousness of having driven a nail of incisive bitterness through the +counterfeit coin of his cousin’s sympathy, as he rejoined Arthur and +delivered up his hat to the attendant. + +Possibly with some touch of quite new prudence born of his conversation +with Sainty, but much more probably with a view to doing proper honour +to his fair guest, Arthur had retained a private room, rather, as it +appeared, to the disappointment of the ladies, who had looked forward to +seeing and being seen in the big restaurant, but immensely to the relief +of his elder brother. The table was profusely decked with long trails of +smilax and a quantity of those florists’ roses that are all of one size +and shape and colour, and seem to have been manufactured by the dozen, +ready packed in cardboard boxes, having no more suggestion about them of +growth by any natural process than the little red silk shades on the +electric lights. + +Miss de Vere, resplendent in green velvet, with a vast number of diamond +ornaments, hearts, stars, crescents, arrows, and even frogs and spiders, +pinned into the front of her gown, sat on Arthur’s right and between +the two brothers. She just touched a string of pearls at her throat, +smiling archly on her host, as she took her seat. Long afterwards, +Sainty had the opportunity of verifying his surmise that it was a +present from that open-handed youth, when, in settling his brother’s +outstanding liabilities, he came across it in Messrs. Rumond & Diby’s +little account in company with the claret jug that had figured on the +occasion of his own majority. + +Seen at close quarters, the fair Cynthia was a little coarse looking, +and it seemed to Sainty that a person to whom the art of painting her +face must be professionally familiar, ought to have acquired more +delicacy of touch. Her eyes were very large, and what the French call _à +fleur de tête_; her lips were too full, too red, and seemed to show too +much of their linings; and her teeth, which had flashed so brilliantly +across the footlights, were less dazzling on a nearer inspection. Her +figure and carriage were superb, but her hands, though unnaturally +whitened, were not pretty, and her nails were ill-cared for and perhaps +a little bitten. She was extremely gracious to Sainty, and evidently +anxious to impress him with her _tenue_ and the elegance of her manners. + +‘I met Lady Deans in the cloakroom,’ she began; ‘isn’t she a handsome +woman? I _do_ admire her. Isn’t it odd, her Christian name’s Vere, and +so’s my surname? and we’re both so tall. Some one once said we might be +sisters, but of course that’s nonsense. I know she’s a great deal better +lookin’ than me.’ + +‘It had not occurred to me that you were alike----’ Sainty was +beginning, but Arthur cut in. ‘Rats,’ he said. ‘You know she isn’t a +patch on you,’ for which gallant speech he was rewarded by a rap on the +knuckles from his enslaver’s fork. Though he gazed enraptured in her +face, she paid him very little attention, and continued to address her +conversation to Sainty. + +‘We had a little supper at my place last night; I wish I’d known you +were in town; your brother was there. Oh, all very quiet, of course; +only a little soup, and lobster cutlets, and nothing else hot but the +fowls; a few little things in aspic, and some plover’s eggs, that’s all; +but we were very jolly. Straddles came, the famous _comique_, and sang +some of his songs and made us roar; and one or two other people sang, +and then we cleared away the furniture and had some dancing. We kept it +up till four o’clock. I declare I’m quite sleepy; ain’t you, Clara?’ + +Miss Bingham, a little, heavily painted black and red lady, replied from +the other end of the table that she couldn’t keep her eyes open. ‘Lor! +we did have fun, though,’ she said; ‘how was the poor piano this +morning, after those boys pouring the champagne into it?’ + +‘Oh, don’t speak of it,’ said Miss de Vere. ‘You know that lovely new +drapery I’d got for it, plush and Liberty silk; they completely ruined +it. I was really cross. I don’t see any fun in spoiling people’s +things.’ + +‘What a shame!’ said Arthur. ‘May I give you a new one?’ + +‘No, naughty boy, don’t you be extravagant. Why didn’t _you_ come?’ she +added, turning to Miss Hodgson, the beautiful statuesque lady who sat on +Arthur’s left with a fixed smile on her lovely mouth that recalled the +hairdresser’s window. She was eating a good deal, but not adding much to +the conversation. Thus appealed to, she glanced towards the little +Greek, still with the same amiable absence of expression, and nodded +gently. + +‘Do you mean I wouldn’t let you go?’ snarled Mr. Atides. + +‘Oh no,’ she cooed. + +‘Then why the devil didn’t you go? _I_ don’t know----’ + +‘_Petit monstre_,’ murmured Miss Balbullier to Sainty. ‘_Est-il +insupportable! V’là longtemps que je l’aurais planté là si j’etais +Mabel._ ‘Oby, what is “planted there” in English?’ + +‘Chuck ‘im, give ‘im the mitten,’ promptly responded that gallant +officer. + +Sainty wondered just what kind of weird irregular regiment could once +have been commanded by this blue-nosed veteran, with his dyed moustache +and damp grizzled curls; his hands and eyes were so much older than +anything else about him, as to give an uncanny suggestion of magic, as +of some imperfectly transformed Faust. + +‘_Tiens! la mitaine?_ I ignore the phrase,’ said mademoiselle. + +Mr. Atides continued to growl into his plate with a very evil +expression, like a dog over a bone, and Agnes Baines, a very pretty fair +girl with a pronounced Cockney accent pursued an eager conversation +across him with Miss Bingham, as though he were an empty chair. + +‘’E’s given ’er a tiara,’ Sainty heard her say; ‘none of your little +‘undred-pounders, a real fine one with big stones in it.’ + +‘Isn’t Agnes vulgar?’ Cynthia murmured to him, very impressive and +supercilious from the heights of her superior gentility. ‘She’s had so +few advantages, poor girl! but she is pretty, don’t you think?’ + +‘They say he’s goin’ to marry ’er,’ Miss Baines continued. + +‘Your English girls are so kveer,’ the French lady remarked to Sainty; +‘zay sink of nozzing but gettin’ married. To me zat seem so sorrrdid,’ +As Mademoiselle Elise was credited with having already ruined three +young men during the brief period of her sojourn on these shores, +without any thought of ceremonial formalities, this sentiment was +perhaps not so disinterestedly high-minded as it sounded. + +Charley Hunter, who had been vainly trying to attract Miss Baines’ +attention--though perhaps more of her conversation was addressed to him +than he realised--and gnawing his beardless lips at the ill success of +his manœuvres, here turned his back squarely on her and addressed +himself to Arthur. + +‘They say they’re going to raise the standard; isn’t it beastly? as if +the damned exams. weren’t hard enough as it is.’ + +‘My little feller from Aldershot says they are going to make ’em so +stiff that none of you Johnnies will be able to pass unless you jolly +well buck up,’ remarked Miss Bingham cheerfully. + +‘I hope you will use your influence with my brother to make him work,’ +Sainty said, turning to Cynthia; ‘it’s very important he should pass.’ + +‘He’s a bad boy,’ said Miss de Vere playfully, ‘but I’m always at him +not to be so idle.’ + +This speech being greeted with derisive laughter by some of the company, +the lady indignantly demanded if they didn’t believe her. + +‘There were no exams. in my day,’ cried Colonel Hoby, ‘and damn me if I +think they turned out less good officers than the damned spindle-shanked +round-shouldered crew of short-sighted asses you have in the army +nowadays. They ought to be parsons.’ + +‘Hear, hear! Fieldmarshal,’ said Arthur. ‘I wish we had you in Pall +Mall; there’d be a lot more good fellows in the army than there are, if +you were Commander-in-chief.’ + +Sainty was growing weak with the effort of trying to find something +agreeable to say to either of his neighbours. He was oppressed with a +sense of the dreariness of the whole function. He had come prepared to +be a little shocked, but half hoping for a touch of reckless gaiety. If +this was the sort of entertainment Tannhäuser found in the Venusberg, he +thought the pilgrimage to Rome must have been an exhilarating change. He +found himself almost wishing for the young men who had poured champagne +into Miss de Vere’s piano, to lend some semblance of liveliness to the +proceedings. With its banal unimaginative luxury and sordid second-rate +chatter, this one excursion of his into Bohemia was as dull as one of +his mother’s religious dinner-parties. And to think that it was for the +privilege of frequenting this sort of society that dozens of young men +of Arthur’s stamp ruined themselves yearly, on the very threshold of +life! Uncle Cor might not be very exciting, but he surely was better +company than Atides or Colonel Hoby. But then Sainty was +constitutionally unfitted to give its due importance to love’s young +dream. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + + +Sainty rather expected a letter with some attempt at exculpation from +his cousin; but Claude was evidently aware that in many awkward +positions there is no course so expedient as silence. Had circumstances +made a meeting with Sainty seem imminent, he might have thought +otherwise; but, as things were, having nothing to say, he said nothing, +and trusted to time to take the edge off the situation. Sainty composed +several very withering answers to the possible letter, but as it never +came he had no occasion to send them. + +He had not contrived to get a word with Arthur after the memorable +supper. ‘Hope you won’t mind, old man, promised to see Miss de Vere +home; only civil,’ the boy had murmured, as he slipped into the little +hired _coupé_ that was waiting. Mademoiselle Balbullier had hinted that +a like attention would not be unwelcome from himself, but finding her +hints disregarded, had driven off in a hansom with Miss Bingham, +laughing very shrilly at some joke that seemed to tickle them hugely. + +Sainty returned to Cambridge more than ever persuaded that if anything +was to be done for Arthur it must be done quickly. He had for some time +had a scheme in his head, which had been germinating slowly, but for it +to come to blossom, let alone fruit, he needed above all things the +co-operation of Gerald Newby. He therefore made haste to seek his friend +and lay his plans before him. He found Newby for a wonder alone. + +‘So you’re back,’ Gerald said, pushing the papers together on his desk +and pulling the blotting-paper over them, a little trick of his which +always exasperated Sainty, who would rather have died than look at +anything not meant for him. + +‘Are you busy?’ he asked. ‘I’ve got something special to talk to you +about.’ + +‘I’m not too busy to be at the service of any one who wants me,’ said +Newby. ‘Mere college work never seems to me as important as real human +needs.’ + +‘Ah! I’m so glad to hear you say that; it gives me a better hope in what +I have to say to you.’ Sainty had thought so much over the scheme he had +to propose--it was so important to him--that now it was trembling on the +threshold of utterance he feared lest he should not put it before Newby +to the best advantage. + +There was so long a pause that the young don came round from his +writing-table to a position from which he faced and dominated his +interlocutor. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I’m all attention.’ + +‘First of all about my brother,’ Sainty began, with some hesitation. +‘You must know that I’ve found things even worse than I expected; it’s +not merely idleness and waste of time, as I feared; there’s a woman in +the case.’ + +Newby frowned. He had an almost feminine prudery. The fact was he knew +very little of such things, and what he did not know always seemed to +him dark and dangerous, a subject to be as much as possible avoided in +conversation. ‘I am very little qualified to advise----’ he began. + +‘Oh! that’s not what I wanted your help about,’ Sainty assured him; ‘at +least, not directly; but you know I’ve often told you how I wished I +could get rid of my most unsuitable part in life.’ + +Newby made an almost imperceptible gesture of impatience, as who should +say, ‘We are back to that old game, are we?’ + +‘It was not mere talk,’ Sainty went on. ‘I have thought and thought +about it, till I really have evolved something; I have once or twice +wanted to speak to you about it, but have been afraid. Why I mentioned +Arthur just now, was that a great factor in my desire for a change of +life was that I thought I saw my way to helping him, perhaps to _saving_ +him; and what I’ve seen in this visit to London convinces me that I’ve +no time to lose.’ + +‘You interest me,’ said Newby patronisingly. He went across and fastened +his outer door. ‘If what you have to say to me is so important,’ he +said, ‘we may as well secure ourselves against interruption.’ + +‘Ever since I was a child,’ Sainty began again, ‘it has been borne in on +me that my brother was as pre-eminently fitted for my place in the world +as I was _un_fitted for it. I used to think I was sure to die young, and +that so matters would adjust themselves naturally without my +intervention. Well--I’m nearly twenty-two, and I seem to get stronger +every year. I don’t say I’m a tower of strength, but I fancy I’m less +likely to die than many more robust men. For one thing, I do no +dangerous things. You can understand that the idea is not a pleasant one +to me that my one business in life is to keep my brother out of his +birthright.’ + +‘It isn’t his birthright; it’s yours.’ + +‘That’s as you happen to look at it; it’s not my view. I can’t feel as +if I had any right to what is only a hindrance and clog to me, and would +be such a help to him.’ + +‘But you can’t change places with him, however much you may wish to.’ + +‘Legally and physically, no; virtually, yes. For ever so long I’ve been +hatching a pet scheme, but I can’t carry it out without your help. I’ve +not the health, the will, nor the intellect necessary; but you would be +the ideal person to do it, and you would help and cheer me when I +failed.’ + +‘May I know what this wonderful idea of yours is?’ + +‘I can’t make him Lord Belchamber--I wish I could; but I can practically +give him the position, if I hand over the place and income to him. He +would be able to marry some nice girl; he is one of those who ought to +marry young. With a healthy, out-of-door life and plenty of innocent +congenial occupation, and the influence of a good woman at his side, all +that is kindly in him would have room to develop. He is not naturally +vicious, only weak and incurably headstrong and obstinate.’ + +‘And what do you propose to do with _yourself_?’ + +‘Ah! that is it; that’s where _you_ come in. The whole thing hangs on +you.’ Sainty looked appealingly in his friend’s face. ‘I’m half afraid +to put it to the touch,’ he said; ‘I have it so much at heart.’ + +‘I can’t give you my views on your Utopia unless you tell me what it +is.’ + +Sainty detected and grieved at the faint sneer in the use of the word +‘Utopia.’ + +‘You don’t encourage me,’ he said. + +‘How can I, till I know what you propose?’ + +‘I thought we might go, you and I, into one of those East End parishes +and start a place something on the lines of Toynbee Hall, a sort of +university for the poor, a centre of culture and light and civilisation +in the middle of all that dreariness and barbarity; I to find the money, +and you practically everything else, with me for your lieutenant to work +under your orders.’ + +Sainty brought it all out with a rush, when once he had come to the +point, and then paused breathless to hear how his idea would be +received. Newby sat silent for a moment or two; at least he took the +matter seriously. + +‘Have you thought at all what it will cost?’ he asked. + +‘Yes,’ cried Sainty eagerly, ‘I’ve gone into all that rather carefully. +Say that it costs £20,000 to build the place--it could be done for that, +very simple and plain; a big hall to begin with, and perhaps a cloister, +and a few sets of rooms like college rooms. After the initial expense I +don’t think it _could_ cost more than £2000 or £3000 a year. Of course +we should live in the simplest way--there would be no luxury; and +gradually I should hope the place would begin to help pay for itself; it +wouldn’t be a charity, you know.’ + +‘And the land?’ asked Newby; ‘is that included in your £20,000? You +would want a good big plot, for the heart of London, to put up such +buildings as you propose.’ + +‘Oh, that could be managed. I might pay for half and raise the other +half by mortgage on the property, or even the whole. There need be no +difficulty about the money part of it; _I_’d see to that. The question +is, will you help? All the rules, all the details of the working of the +thing would have to come from you. You would be absolute master. I +thought,’ he added a little piteously, ‘that it would appeal to you as +an opportunity of carrying out some of your ideals. It would, of course, +be entirely undenominational; people of all creeds should be invited to +explain their views. It might be the beginning, the nucleus of your idea +of universal belief and brotherhood.’ + +The pleading eyes fixed on his face seemed to make Newby vaguely ill at +ease. While Sainty was talking he had shifted his position, got up and +walked to the window, and sat down again at his desk, on which he +drummed a little with his fingers. Now he rose and came back to his +friend. There was a touch of embarrassment and something like +compunction, as he said-- + +‘My dear fellow, it’s impossible, simply impossible.’ + +Sainty, glancing round the charming room with its air of dignified calm +and severe luxury, saw suddenly how sham was its austerity, how real its +comfort. + +‘I am asking a great deal of you,’ he said; ‘too much, I’m afraid.’ + +‘Don’t say that,’ said Newby eagerly. ‘Don’t think I would hesitate at +any little personal sacrifice; that is indeed a low view of me. But, +believe me, I see the impracticability of the whole thing.’ + +For a few seconds there was an uneasy silence. The summer breeze from +the open windows faintly stirred the pictures on the wall. Voices +softened by distance and pleasant outdoor sounds came wafted to them +where they sat. It occurred to Sainty that it was not necessary for a +young man to ‘have great possessions’ ‘to go away sorrowful’ when +confronted by the opportunity of the supreme sacrifice for others. No +one knew better than he that Newby’s way of life would have been far +harder for him to give up than his own; and this knowledge lent a great +tenderness and humility to his voice as he asked, ‘Why impracticable if +we are both willing?’ + +‘Take yourself to begin with,’ Newby answered; ‘think of your people, +your mother, your uncle, the duke and duchess--what would they say to +such a scheme?’ + +‘Oh, they’d be horrified at first; but I don’t think they would offer +any very strenuous opposition to such a simple plan of disposing of me +in favour of Arthur.’ + +‘Then, think how _I_ should appear in the matter. What would they say of +me?--that I had acquired a great influence over you, and then used it to +make you devote yourself and your money to the support of myself and the +furtherance of my crack-brained schemes. It’s ten to one against their +even allowing me any sincerity; far more likely they would think my one +object was to advertise myself while living at your expense.’ + +‘And do you care so greatly what people say of you?’ + +‘Yes, I do. My dear boy, you are one of the great ones of the earth and +can afford to be thought eccentric if you please; but I am a poor +scholar--my good name is everything to me.’ + +‘You said once that we could never hope to do anything unless we were +prepared to be misunderstood; that no man could really be good for +anything of whom the commonplace respectable people spoke well.’ + +‘Good heavens!’ cried Newby, with not unnatural exasperation, ‘I wish +you wouldn’t cast snatches of things I may have said in some quite +different connection in my teeth.’ He made another excursion to the +window and stood looking out for a second or two. Presently he turned +and said in a much more chastened manner, ‘Then there’s what I’m doing +here. You yourself can bear witness that I am not without influence on +a number of young men, an influence you have told me was good. Have I a +right to give up my work here, my power of influencing unnumbered young +lives towards higher and purer ideals, for a quite problematical chance +of doing good to costermongers, and incidentally enabling your brother +to stand in your shoes?’ + +For a few moments neither spoke. + +‘Then you refuse?’ said Sainty almost under his breath. ‘Is it quite, +quite irrevocable?’ + +‘My dear boy, some day you will see the matter in its true light and +will thank me for having saved you from following the will-o’-the-wisp +of your own too precipitate philanthropy. The idea is purely fanciful; +believe me, it would never work. In the first place, the mortifications, +the disappointments, the roughness of the life, would kill you in a +year.’ + +‘And if meanwhile my money and my feeble efforts had served to start a +really useful work, to launch you on a career of helpfulness, what would +that matter? Would it not even be the simplest solution of all? Arthur +would then step into the place in which it is so much my object to +establish him.’ + +‘Quâ method of suicide the machinery is cumbrous and expensive,’ said +Newby, with dreary facetiousness; ‘and you can’t seriously expect me to +aid and abet you in committing the happy dispatch.’ + +They talked much longer, Sainty still pleading for his idea, though +without much hope of success, Newby, gaining assurance from the sound of +his own voice, pouring more and more cold water on the project and +abounding in excellent reason. Sainty could not but see the sense of +much that Gerald said; yet he came away from the interview not only +depressed and disappointed at the ruthless killing of his cherished +scheme, but with an uncomfortable sense of having caught a glimpse of +his idol’s clay feet, always one of the saddest experiences of life. He +felt too a certain closing in on him as of fate; his attempts to mould +events or to avert catastrophes had met with singularly little success. +Was all struggle useless, then? was it true that we were only puppets +in the iron grip of destiny? To a person of his temperament it was only +too easy to believe it, yet youth’s everlasting assertion of free-will +dies hard in our twenty-second year, and it was not without many +searchings of heart that Belchamber settled down to the conviction that +there was nothing to be done. To say that his brother was never out of +his thoughts would be an exaggeration. Happily for us, there is no such +thing as complete absorption in one idea. When we have lost all that +made life worth having, if we were honest we should own that at certain +moments the most trivial of daily preoccupations drove our grief +completely out of our minds. There is no evidence to show that the +inhabitants of Herculaneum were other than cheerfully busy; and we all +pursue a hundred frivolous objects, though lying every one of us +inexorably under sentence of death. + +In the year that followed Sainty thought much and anxiously of Arthur, +but he also thought of many other things. For one thing, the management +of his estate was beginning to interest him. Having originally turned +his attention that way purely to please his mother, he had gradually +come to some appreciation of what he could do for his fellow-creatures +over an area for which he was more or less responsible. Whatever his +views might be as to the position of the land-owning class, while he +held such a position it undoubtedly entailed many duties and +responsibilities. Whether his land were eventually to pass to the State +or be cut up into peasant properties, as long as it remained his it was +clearly better that the people on it should live in well-drained, +weathertight houses, than in insanitary hovels; that they should be as +far as possible provided with regular employment, educated, amused, kept +from the public-house. While Cambridge and his work for the tripos held +him, he had thought less of all these things, secure in the conviction +that his mother and uncle were giving them careful attention. To tell +the truth, he had a little feared to absorb himself in them while he +still cherished a hope that his work in life might lie in far other +fields, that all this might be Arthur’s business, not his. In his +immediate neighbourhood there was no very terrible distress to stir his +imagination; by the poor on the place Lady Charmington had scrupulously +done something more than her duty, and hard as were the lives of the +agricultural labourers, at least their lot had fallen to them in +pleasant places--their work was done in the pure air of heaven. It was +for the huddled degraded masses of the great cities, and especially of +London, that his soul felt the overwhelming sickening pity which had +threatened to drive him out into the wilderness. Now that he personally +seemed to be barred from effort in that direction, that his +long-cherished hopes of seating his brother in his place had proved +quite impracticable, and all the fabric raised by his dreams on that +foundation had fallen in ruins about his ears at the blast of Newby’s +inexorable common-sense, the plain duties that lay immediately around +him presented themselves as something to be clutched with an almost +despairing intensity. Here, at least, was work ready to his hand, and he +promised himself it should be done thoroughly. He absorbed himself in +his mother’s big ledgers, her detailed and carefully kept accounts of +all the workings of the great property, with the same student’s passion +for mastering his subject that he had brought to his Cambridge studies. +Had Lady Charmington been a less conscientious woman, the thought that +her power was passing from her might not have been without a sting; but +she had talked so much of ‘giving an account of her stewardship,’ and so +often lamented Sainty’s want of interest in his own possessions, that, +whatever slight pangs she may have had to stifle, she had not the face +to express anything but pleasure at his changed attitude. So far, too, +he was still her pupil, eagerly learning all she had to tell, and +accepting her word as final. It is possible that she took a genuine +pleasure in introducing him to his duties, and she may well have been +forgiven some moments of pride in displaying to him both the quantity +and quality of her work during his minority. Sainty, on his side, began +to understand all that his mother had done for him, and his wonder was +only equalled by his gratitude. + +Lady Charmington’s confidence in Arthur’s application to his studies +began to be shaken about this time by his ignominious failure to pass +his examination; and here it was she who turned to Sainty for +help--Sainty who, impossible as it seemed, had been right where she was +wrong. + +‘I can’t make it out at all,’ she would say; ‘he seemed to be working so +hard. You recollect he wouldn’t even come home last Easter; and then in +the summer he went off on that reading party.’ + +Arthur, in fact, after a fortnight at Belchamber--a fortnight during +which he had been moody, restless, unlike himself, and had carefully +shunned all possibilities of private or personal talk with either his +mother or brother--had left hurriedly on a mysterious ‘reading party.’ + +Sainty wrote often to the London lodgings, but seldom got any answers, +and doubted whether many of his letters ever reached the person to whom +they were written. It became increasingly difficult to pacify Lady +Charmington, who passed by a rapid transition from her serene optimism +to the depths of the gloomiest apprehension. Sometimes for days she +would hardly talk of anything else, expressing wonder, surprise, +disappointment, all of which Sainty had more or less to pretend to +share, with a sense of deceit when he reflected how little surprised he +really was, and how much he could have enlightened the poor lady. + +At Sainty’s earnest request Arthur came again to Belchamber in November +for the shooting, his last visit, as it proved, for many a long day. +Sainty argued, remonstrated, implored. ‘What was he doing? What did he +intend to do? Didn’t he _want_ to go into the army? He must know he +could never get in if he didn’t work or pass his exams.’ It was all to +no purpose. The boy took refuge in a surly silence. He had two such +terrible scenes with his mother that for the first time in his life he +spent Christmas away from home. ‘I’m going to the Hunters,’ he wrote. +‘If I come to Belchamber there will only be a repetition of the ghastly +rows I had with mother in November, and what’s the good? I hate rows; +jawing never did me any good yet.’ + +Lady Charmington appealed to her brother. Lord Firth saw Arthur when he +came up for the meeting of parliament. Sainty could never learn +accurately what passed between them, but his uncle, that most amiable +gentleman, said he would not willingly speak to the boy again. + +The spring wore away miserably in sickening suspense. Arthur was still +nominally working at ‘Monkton’s,’ but several letters had come from the +principal of the establishment, complaining of the slackness of his +attendance, which had not tended to soothe his mother’s feelings. + +It was getting on for a year after the supper at the Hotel Fritz, when +Sainty, seeing a number of letters, most of which had a bill-like look +about them, on the hall table for Arthur, took them to his room to +re-direct. He was just about to do so, when he noticed that they had all +originally been sent to Monkton’s, and had been forwarded from there. +The postmarks of some of them were several weeks old, from which it was +evident not only that Arthur had not been at the crammer’s at all for +some time past, but that the people there believed him to be at home. +The pen dropped from Sainty’s hand, and he sat staring at the envelopes, +shuffling them idly from behind one another, as though they were a hand +at cards. Finally, shutting them sharply together, he thrust them into +his pocket, and went in search of his mother. + +Since his defection at Christmas and the failure of Lord Firth to bring +the culprit to reason, Lady Charmington had talked much less of her +second son; for the most part she maintained a grim and offended +silence. Sainty wondered sometimes what this changed attitude might +mean. He was certain that she did not think less of Arthur, or worry +less about him. Was it possible that she had begun to distrust his +co-operation for any reason, and was trying to find out something for +herself without his help? Her manner, when he spoke to her on this +particular day, was stranger than ever, and she looked at him with a +sudden hard scrutiny which chilled him, when he asked if she did not +think it might be well for him to go to London and look Arthur up. + +‘He never writes, and we don’t know what he may be doing,’ he said. ‘I +can’t let things drift in this way any longer.’ + +He said nothing of the letters in his pocket. Lady Charmington looked as +if she were on the point of saying something, and then decided not to. + +‘Very well,’ she answered quietly; ‘how long shall you be gone?’ + +‘I don’t know; it will depend on what I find. Mother,’ he added, ‘don’t +you agree? don’t you think it will be well for me to go?’ + +Again his mother looked at him as if she would have read his soul; it +was the old glance that had made him stammer and look down as a child, +the look that said more clearly than words that she thought him a liar. +He had never been able to meet it. Instinctively he looked away. + +‘Go, by all means,’ he heard her say, and he knew that her eyes were +still upon his face, the eyes of a judge, almost an accuser. ‘Go and see +what you can do. You may have means of getting at the truth not open to +me.’ + + + + +CHAPTER XII + + +Without seeing any one at Monkton’s but the servant, or even disclosing +his identity, Sainty was able in a very few words to establish the +correctness of his surmises. Arthur had not been there for weeks. ‘I can +get you ‘is address, if you’ll wait a minute,’ the man said; ‘’e’s down +at ‘is own ‘ome; I forwarded some letters to him a day or two back.’ + +‘Oh, thanks; if he’s there, I know the address and need not trouble +you,’ and Sainty turned again to his hansom. He reflected that to find +Miss de Vere was to find his brother, and supposed, in his innocence, +that he had only to apply at the theatre to learn the young lady’s +address. But when he presented himself at the stage-door and blushingly +demanded it, he was informed that Miss de Vere was not acting at +present, and that, in any case, they were strictly forbidden to give the +private address of any of their ladies or gentlemen. A letter sent to +the theatre for Miss de Vere would be forwarded. + +This was an unlooked-for check, and he wondered blankly what he was to +do next. He sent away his cab and began to wander slowly westward again; +he could think better on foot. He was walking sadly along Pall Mall, +when he was passed by a young man with wonderfully broad shoulders and a +wonderfully small waist, who paused, looked at him, and finally held out +his hand. Sainty recognised Algy Montgomery. + +‘Hulloa!’ said the guardsman, with the smileless gloom of the +fashionable London young man. ‘Where are you off to? I’m just on my way +to call on my stepmother; I understand she says I never come near her. +Why don’t you come along and see your revered grandmother?’ + +Sainty had been trying to make himself go and ask Claude for the address +he wanted; he had not once set eyes on his cousin during the past year, +and to appeal to him again for help was a bitter pill. Think as he +would, he could evolve no other way of arriving at his end, and this +chance meeting and invitation to Sunborough House seemed like a leading. +He would go and see the duchess--what more natural? and if Claude +happened to be there, how could he help it? + +‘All right,’ he said; ‘I don’t mind if I do.’ + +The pair walked in silence for a few seconds, Lord Algernon trying to +accommodate his long stride to his companion’s limp. + +‘Come up to look after your young brother?’ he asked presently, through +the cigar which he held tightly between his teeth. ‘He’s making no end +of an ass of himself with Topsy de Vere; he never leaves her for a +minute----’ + +To talk casually to a comparative stranger of what was gnawing his +vitals was gall and wormwood to Sainty, but he grunted some sort of an +assent, and then asked as indifferently as he could, ‘You don’t happen +to know Miss de Vere’s address, do you?’ + +Lord Algy laughed. ‘No, for a wonder, I don’t,’ he said; ‘but I tell you +who ought to--your precious cousin Morland. I fancy he knew his way +there quite well at one time.’ + +‘Oh! did Claude----’ + +‘Got tired of the lady; or perhaps found her rather too expensive (I +suspect his grace don’t do his secretary particularly well), so passed +her on to the little cousin. Sharp fellow, Morland.’ + +The duchess, whom presently they found having tea in company with Lady +Rugby and Lady Eva, had also a word to say of her prodigal grandson. +‘Arthur _s’encanaille_,’ she remarked. ‘He is bad form; he lets himself +be seen everywhere with _cocottes_; the young men of to-day have no +_tenue_--none. Formerly, yes, I don’t say men were any better--they +have always been monsters; but they did not throw _ces demoiselles_ in +the face of the world.’ + +Lady Eva murmured something to the effect that Arthur was a dear, and +dropped a platitude about wild oats. + +‘Oh, I don’t want a boy to be a _merle blanc_,’ her mother rejoined.’ +Sainty would be all the better if he were just a little naughty, +wouldn’t you, my child? I don’t suppose Algy here, or your own boy, are +models of virtue, but there are ways of doing things. By the way, where +is Claude? Ring the bell, Algy, and we will see if he is in; he will +like to see his cousin.’ + +Sainty did not feel at all sure that he would, but when Morland +presently appeared in answer to the duchess’s message, he was as easy +and unembarrassed as usual; it was Belchamber who was awkward and ill at +ease. There was, perhaps, just a shade of reproachful tenderness in +Claude’s greeting, an eloquent glance, a silent pressure of the hand, as +who should say, ‘You may be as cantankerous and unreasonable as you +like, my patience with those I love is practically inexhaustible.’ At +the merest hint from Sainty that he had something to ask him, he carried +him off to his own room, and when the request for Miss de Vere’s address +had been stammered out, produced a little address-book from a locked +drawer, and began to search in it with a great appearance of assiduity. + +‘Here it is--no, let me see, she left there, that’s her old address; how +stupid of me. Ah! this is it, a flat she took; I remember now. But she’s +always moving, I don’t guarantee that you’ll find her there; but they’ll +be able to tell you if she’s flitted again.’ His voice was dry and +business-like; Sainty wanted an address, he was trying to help him to +it, as he would try to do anything he wanted. Why he had need of it was +no affair of his. Claude prided himself on his power of implying much +that his tongue never uttered. + +He wrung Sainty’s hand at parting. ‘Good luck to you,’ he whispered. +‘_I_ could do no good; may you be more fortunate! And oh! by the way, I +wouldn’t mention _me_ there; I’m not popular in that quarter. Cynthia +has taken one of those absurd unreasoning dislikes to me that +half-educated people do, and has set Arthur against me. I suppose she +was afraid I might try and get him away from her. It’s a bad business. +Well, _addio_, and best wishes.’ + +Oddly enough, Claude was right in his surmise that Miss de Vere might +have moved, but Sainty did at last discover her present abode, and +arriving there about noon of the following day, found that she had gone +to a rehearsal, ‘but the gentleman was in.’ Sainty was not sorry to find +Arthur alone. The boy was at first of course very much on the defensive; +the elder brother had to walk most warily among the eggshells of +suspicion and susceptibility, but he soon discovered that his coming was +not altogether unwelcome. Arthur did not attempt to disguise the fact +that he was living with Cynthia; ‘he had made her give up her flat, and +had taken these rooms for her; they had the whole house, and the people +of the house looked after them; it saved the bother of servants; he was +answerable for the rent and the housekeeping; naturally he couldn’t live +at her expense; otherwise she wouldn’t take a penny from him, she was +very high-minded; it was as much as ever she would let him give her a +little present now and then. Anything she made professionally was no +business of his; she had gone about a new engagement this morning.’ + +‘But how do you do it? Surely to take a whole house like this on the +footing of lodgings is the most expensive arrangement you can make.’ + +‘It ain’t done for nothing, I can tell you,’ Arthur said ruefully. He +was not sorry to unburthen himself a little to his brother. Sainty had +had no idea to what extent a young man of family could live on credit in +London, for a time at least. By carefully never paying ready money where +it was not absolutely necessary, it was astonishing what a lot you could +do. + +‘But what’s it all going to lead to?’ Sainty asked. ‘Do you propose to +give up the army, never do anything--just live on here with her from day +to day? Even supposing you were me, and had all the money you wanted, +would this life satisfy you?’ + +‘I believe you, my boy,’ said Arthur heartily. + +‘It may for a time; it won’t, it can’t, for long,’ Sainty said eagerly. +‘And mother? Don’t you care about her? Mother’s awfully cut up about +your not passing your exam. There’s another coming on in the autumn; +it’ll be your last chance. Don’t you mean to try?’ + +Arthur’s brow grew dark at the mention of his mother. ‘By Jove!’ he +said, ‘you don’t know the things she said to me. She _can_ let you have +it, when she isn’t pleased, the mater can.’ + +‘Well, you must admit she had some reason _not_ to be pleased,’ said +Sainty. + +‘Lots of fellows muff the first time,’ said Arthur lamely. ‘I’ve got +another try.’ + +‘But are you any more likely to pass the next time? Are you doing a +stroke of work for it?’ And he narrated to Arthur how it had come to his +knowledge that he had not been at Monkton’s for weeks. ‘I happened on +these,’ he said, producing the letters he had found in the hall at +Belchamber, ‘but mother might just as well have found them. She doesn’t +know yet that you’ve dropped work altogether, but she must find it out +soon. Monkton may write to her any day and ask when you are coming +back.’ + +‘Damn it all! I hadn’t thought of that.’ + +‘No. You never think of anything half an hour ahead, do you?’ + +Then Sainty told him how people were talking about him--his grandmother, +Aunt Eva, Algy Montgomery (he did not mention Claude). ‘Don’t you see +that in a dozen ways the whole thing may come out to mother at any +moment?’ + +Arthur was very stubborn, took refuge in the reiteration of his devotion +to Cynthia and his determination not to be parted from her. Once or +twice Sainty almost lost patience. + +‘You say you _won’t_ leave her, and you _won’t_ do this or that or +anything you don’t choose,’ he said with some warmth; ‘but what are you +going to live on? You own you’re up to your ears in debt, and that +people are getting impatient. What can you do if mother cuts off your +allowance?’ + +‘I’m of age; I’ve got my own money.’ + +‘Five hundred a year! You can keep up this sort of life so easily on +that, can’t you? You know you can’t touch the principal. I don’t suppose +the next two years’ income would begin to pay what you owe now.’ + +Arthur looked doubtful; he began to see the weakness of his position. He +tried a few platitudes about ‘working his fingers to the bone for +_her_,’ at which Sainty, miserable as he felt, couldn’t help laughing. + +‘You’ve never done a stroke of work in your life,’ he said, ‘and you +would find it so easy to get employment, wouldn’t you? You would be so +valuable in a house of business!’ + +He wisely refrained from any suggestion that the lady’s affection might +not be proof against the trials of poverty. + +Finally, after long argument and entreaty, Arthur was persuaded to say +he would go to a new crammer in the country till after the next +examination, and would do his best to pass. ‘It is no good my trying to +work at Monkton’s,’ he said candidly; ‘I should always be bolting back +to Cynthia. You can’t think how good she is; she’s always telling me I +ought to work and pass my exams, and please you. Don’t try and make me +give her up or say I won’t have anything more to do with her, or any rot +of that sort.’ + +Sainty, too glad to have carried his point about the work, was ready to +promise anything--payment of debts, help in the support of the lady, in +short, whatever Arthur liked to demand. ‘And first of all,’ he said +pleadingly, ‘you will come down home for a few days before you go to the +new place. Poor mother’s sore and wretched at the way you’ve treated +her. She doesn’t _show_ much, but she feels a lot, and you’ve always +been her favourite. Come and be nice to her for a bit before you take up +your work again.’ + +‘By Jove! you make me do everything you want,’ said Arthur tenderly. +Sainty could not help smiling at the thought of how very far this was +from being the case, but he was thankful for small mercies. He +reflected that he had been lucky in hitting on a propitious moment, when +the narrow matters of the house had begun to press rather importunately +on Miss de Vere’s lover. To grant a favour, accepting the money he +needed as a condition, was in every way pleasanter to Arthur than having +to sue for help. + +Sainty declined to stay and lunch and see Miss de Vere. ‘I want to get +home this afternoon,’ he said. ‘Mother’ll be so glad to know that you +are going to work and do your best to pass; and also that you’ll come +home for a bit. You haven’t been at Belchamber since November, and this +is May; I don’t think you’ve ever been away for so long at a stretch +before.’ + +He travelled down to the country that same afternoon with a lighter +heart than he had carried for many months, pleased to find he still had +some influence over his brother, glad to be reconciled to Claude, and +rejoicing in the pleasure he should be able to give his mother in the +announcement of Arthur’s visit and his promise of industry and +reformation. He pondered anxiously on the question how much he need say +of the temptations and distractions of London life, to explain Arthur’s +desire to leave Monkton’s and once more try a country crammer’s, and +concluded that there was no necessity to breathe a word of the nature of +the occupation that had kept his brother from working in town. He only +trusted other people might be equally reticent. He had telegraphed, +before leaving London, to his mother that he would be back to dinner, +and as soon as he arrived at Belchamber he was met by a message that she +would like to see him at once in her own room. It was in vain that he +told himself she was naturally impatient to hear what news he brought; +it was with an uneasy foreboding that he approached her door, and he had +to pause and brace himself before he summoned courage to turn the +handle. + +His first glance at his mother confirmed his worst anticipations. She +was walking up and down the room, so that her back was towards him as he +entered; but the white set face she turned on him as he closed the door +showed him at once that she knew everything. It was terrible to see this +silent, dignified woman so ravaged and shaken out of her habitual +self-control. Even at that moment he noticed with surprise the curious +staginess of her movements and method of speech. It was true, then, that +people in times of strong emotion did really behave in this way; and +these gestures and phrases which he had always supposed to be pure +literary and theatrical conventions derived from something in nature +after all. + +‘So,’ she cried, sweeping round upon him, ‘I find what I have long +suspected was true: my boy, who, if he was thoughtless and a little +idle, I thought was a pure-minded, healthy boy, has been degrading +himself with loose women; and this has been going on for a year past; it +has been common talk; every one has known it; every one but his poor +blind idiot of a mother. We must never know anything, of course; our +sons may be drifting to perdition, but there is no one who will come and +tell a poor woman. People stand by and laugh; I suppose they think it +funny; all the godless, indecent, modern books say so. No one, no one +will say a word till it’s too late, too late to do any good.’ + +She was in a white heat of rage, tearless, tragic, almost distraught, +all the mother and the puritan in her crying out in revolt against the +eternal mystery of the flesh, the triumph of the senses in the young +male. Yes, in the abstract she knew of it, recognised that men were +sinners and full of carnal appetites; but that _her_ boy, her child whom +she had nursed and tended, whom but a few years back she had held upon +her knee, that this pure, bright young creature should voluntarily turn +from her to smirch its white raiment in the slough of sensuality--it was +not to be believed. If sacred art represented the mother of the one +sinless son with seven swords in her heart, what symbol can adequately +depict the woes of the mothers of men? + +Sainty, with his quick sympathy, divined something of all this in the +awful moments that he stood for the first time face to face with his +mother. His curious, guarded, sheltered youth, his unhealthy, abnormal +perception of other people’s feelings, as well as the something feminine +and maternal in his relation to his robuster brother, combined to give +him a vision of an agony vouchsafed to few of his sex. He saw his +mother, his cold, chaste, proud mother, stricken at once in her +motherhood, her pride, her chastity, and yet he understood the situation +as she could never understand it, as it could never be possible for him +to make her understand. His whole heart yearned over her with a pity he +seemed to have been specially created to feel in its full force. He made +a step towards her with his arms held out, but she turned on him as if +she would have struck him. + +‘And _you_,’ she cried, blazing with denunciation, ‘_you_ come to me +with a lying pretence of sympathy; you who have talked to me a dozen +times of your anxiety about your brother, and seemed at one with me, so +unselfishly, nobly distressed about him. You have known of this all +along, have aided and abetted him in his infamy. You, who are too +sexless and poor a creature to have known his temptations, have helped +him in cold blood to his undoing, and with this in your heart have come +to me to consult what was best to be done for him. Oh! you were always +subtle and sly when you were hardly more than a baby.’ + +‘Mother, mother! for God’s sake stop; you don’t know what you’re saying. +What do you mean?’ + +‘Oh! you don’t know, do you? Do you deny that you have known this all +along? A year ago, didn’t you go up and sup and carouse in this +creature’s company and that of her vile companions? Answer me that. Yes +or no? Did you, or did you not? You see, you can’t deny it. For all I +know, you have been with them often. Is it from her house you have come +to me now? to me, the mother of you both!’ + +‘Perhaps I have been wrong, mother, but I don’t deserve this at your +hands. I have done what I could. I have just come from Arthur. You know +he is not very manageable; I have not had an easy part to play. And I +have got him to promise to come away; he will come home and----’ + +‘Has he said he won’t go back?’ She flashed it at him like a whiplash, +and her gesture spoke impatient contempt as he answered-- + +‘No, I can’t make him say that, but I hope much from home influences; +when we get him here, surrounded by all that will speak to him of his +childhood, of all he owes to you----’ + +She cut him short. ‘You temporise with evil. Your arguments are those of +the worldly wise.’ She was regaining her calm; argument was steadying +her, and the old habit of rebuke brought back the judicial tone to her +voice. ‘There are only two ways,’ she said, ‘right and wrong. You cannot +palter and hold diplomatic parleys with vice. I am willing--I should +_like_--to believe that your motives have been good, but I hope you see +the harm you have done by your attempts at compromise. Why, oh why,’ she +broke out again, ‘knowing all this, haven’t you told _me_? Surely _I_ +was the person to know, to be consulted on the subject.’ + +‘I wanted to spare you, to save you pain. I may have been mistaken; I +haven’t seen very clearly what was best, but I hoped to get him away, +and that perhaps you might never have the sorrow of knowing. I knew how +bitter it would be to you.’ + +‘Oh! this eternal deceit! When will you learn that there can be no +question of “not seeing what was best”? My early training of you must +have been strangely defective, if at your age you can’t tell good from +evil. How can it ever be anything but right to tell the truth?’ + +‘It is no new burthen I’ve had to bear,’ Sainty answered, ‘to be alone +in my knowledge of what was going on. For years I’ve stood between +Arthur and your knowledge of the scrapes he was in.’ + +‘You have, have you! So there has been a conspiracy between you to keep +me in the dark. I don’t want to be unjust to you; you have not a strong +or courageous character; you may have honestly believed you were being +kind; but see what has come of your duplicity. Had I known, I might +have said a word in season. Arthur would always listen to _me_.’ + +Sainty thought of the tempests that had raged when Lady Charmington had +said a word in season in the autumn on a much less ticklish subject, but +he forebore to press this home. + +‘Well,’ his mother resumed, with a certain grim ferocity, ‘I’ve written +now. _I_ am not subtle or diplomatic, I have borne my testimony quite +simply and faithfully.’ + +Sainty’s heart sank. He thought of his long and anxious contest, of how +hardly at length he had prevailed. Of his mother’s methods of plain +dealing he had just had a specimen; he knew, none better, Arthur’s +impatience of the smallest interference, and the spirit in which he +would receive even the tenderest animadversion on Cynthia. + +‘Mother!’ he cried, ‘what _have_ you said?’ + +‘Said! What should I say? _I_ haven’t temporised and beat about the +bush. I have said plainly that he was living in mortal sin, and +imperilling his soul; and I’ve bidden him leave that woman at once, or +never see me again.’ + +Sainty sank into a chair and covered his face with his hands. He saw all +he had striven for, all he had effected, swept away at a touch; he saw +too that the mischief was done, and irrecoverable; there was no good in +saying a word. The despair his attitude expressed must have touched some +tenderer chord in his mother. She came across to him, and laid her hand, +not unkindly, on his shoulder. + +‘Pray,’ she said sternly. ‘Pray to God for help; He alone can turn this +wretched boy from his evil courses. Vain is the help of man.’ + +Sainty never knew how he got through the next two days. He had put a +strain upon himself far beyond his feeble strength; the two railway +journeys would in themselves have told on him, but the unresting +hurrying hither and thither in London, the emotion of meeting Claude +again, the terrible nervous excitement of his long argument with his +brother, and then, on the top of all, when he was worn out in body and +mind, the shock of seeing his mother as he had never seen her, the +bitter disappointment of finding all he had done rendered useless at a +blow, crushed him utterly. He was glad to take refuge in physical stupor +and exhaustion from the bitterness of his own reflections. + +In the morning of the third day, when he was gradually coming back to a +sense of what had happened, his mother came to his room with an open +letter in her hand. Her face was grey and drawn, and she seemed suddenly +to have become an old woman. Her voice was hollow and unnaturally quiet. +‘Read that,’ she said, and tossed the letter on to his bed. Then raising +her hand, which shook as she held it up, ‘I curse him,’ she said, still +in that same even, horrible tone. ‘Remember that you have heard me curse +my son’; and she went slowly out of the room. + +With trembling hand Sainty drew the paper to him; he recognised Arthur’s +schoolboy scrawl. The letter was meant to be very dignified. + +‘My dear mother,’ the boy wrote, ‘I have received your letter; I will +not notice your insults to a woman I love. You say I am living in sin. +Very well, then--so be it. I will do so no longer. I came of age last +week and am my own master, and curse me if I’ll take it from you or any +one. I have to announce to you that I was married yesterday at the +registry office in Mount Street to Miss Cynthia de Vere.’ He had begun +another sentence, ‘Till you are prepared,’ but apparently thinking +anything more would weaken the effect of what he had said, he had run +his pen through the words. The letter wound up, ‘I am your son, + + ‘ARTHUR WELLESLEY CHAMBERS.’ + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + + +No one can live at the height of great crises. After the storm, when the +wind has sobbed itself to sleep, the sun comes peeping shyly to count +the damage done, the draggled, flattened flowers begin to lift +themselves and look about, the fallen trees are sawn up and carted away. + +Sainty might take to his bed, and lie there groaning at the wreck of all +his hopes and plans for his brother. Lady Charmington might say dreadful +violent things, and indulge in the cheap gratification of cursing her +son. But sooner or later Sainty must get up and dress, must come +downstairs and see the agent and the butler, and his mother must wash +her hot eyes and flatten down her hair, must order dinner, and scold the +maids, and sit at the head of the table as though nothing were amiss. +And it is just this that saves us from madness; the more we have to do, +the less time we can afford for sitting down with our sorrow in darkened +rooms, the better for us. Kings and business men, and the labouring +classes generally, whose work must be done no matter what happens, have +a great advantage over leisured mourners. Sainty crept out, battered and +disheartened, to face a new world which yet had a great deal in common +with the old one. He had to provide himself with a new set of motives, +desires, objects in life. But outwardly nothing was changed. The very +book he had put down when he left the library to find the letters for +Arthur in crossing the hall, was still on the same table with his +paperknife laid between the leaves to mark the place. + +He never knew how his mother had come by her information. Sometimes he +thought of Lady Eccleston, sometimes of the duchess. Her reference to +the supper and his own presence at it had suggested a sickening +suspicion of a new treachery on the part of Claude, but he finally +decided that this was unlikely. A dozen other people might have seen him +going in, and gossiped about his presence. Claude had mentioned that he +was supping with Johnny Trafford; it might have come round through his +aunt Susie. He did not want to think any worse of his cousin than he +need, and he did Claude the justice to recollect that if he never shrank +from doing a mean action when he had anything to gain by it, mere +purposeless mischief was not in his traditions; indeed, he would rather +take trouble to keep things straight. He was not one of those who turned +explosive truths loose in the world--who ‘thought people ought to know’; +on the contrary, on general principles he was all for people _not_ +knowing, especially awkward facts about their own relatives. On the +whole, the causes of the catastrophe seemed to Sainty far less important +than the consideration of what, under the circumstances, was left for +him to do for his brother. + +Lady Charmington, on his screwing up courage to ask if she had any views +on the subject, forbade him peremptorily to mention Arthur’s name to +her. + +Lord Firth said the young ass had done for himself irretrievably, but +agreed that he couldn’t be left to starve. He was much inclined to +think, however, that the younger brother’s £500 a year, which was all to +which he had a legal claim under his grandfather’s will, was quite +enough for him. ‘If you give him any more, he’ll only chuck it away.’ + +‘Uncle Cor,’ Sainty said, ‘what’s the good of talking like that? You +know as well as I do that Arthur will never live on £500 a year. I see +nothing to be gained by pretending that he will. _I_ could easily, but +_he_ never will. And do you suppose I could serenely sit in this huge +house, and spend £50,000 a year, and know my brother was in want?’ + +‘Whatever you give him, you may be sure he’ll spend double,’ said Lord +Firth; ‘so I should recommend your not beginning with too large a sum; +you had better keep something for the debts you will assuredly be +called on to pay from time to time.’ + +‘I’d so much rather give him a decent allowance to start with, one that +he _could_ live on and _not_ get into debt.’ + +‘You rebuked me just now,’ his uncle replied blandly, ‘for not looking +facts in the face. Might I suggest that the aspiration you have just put +forward is based on a hypothesis quite as visionary as my proposal that +Arthur should live on £500 a year.’ + +Sainty was forced to admit the contention. He wrote, therefore, a letter +from which he tried as far as possible to banish all useless +recrimination, offering to pay his brother’s debts if he would send him +the bills, and to allow him a thousand a year; to which Arthur in due +course returned a most characteristic reply, beginning with a +magnificent declaration that he wanted nothing of people who were not +prepared to recognise or receive his wife, and repetitions of his +readiness to ‘work his fingers to the bone for her,’ and ending with a +bitter complaint of his brother’s meanness in not making him a larger +allowance. In due course, however, the bills arrived, and made Sainty +gasp; nor did he find when he placed the first quarter’s allowance to +his brother’s credit that it was returned to his own. + +There is a certain repose in the fact that the worst which one has +dreaded has happened. To some temperaments anxiety is far harder to bear +than sorrow, and the mother who killed her baby because she was so +dreadfully afraid that it would die, presented only an extreme case of a +not uncommon frame of mind. + +The sun shone, the birds sang, the early and late summer were not less +glorious than usual on the great well-kept lawns and terraces of +Belchamber. The places that have known us do not put on mourning for our +departure unless it withdraws from them some fostering care, and +Arthur’s effect upon a garden was mostly written in broken branches and +footprints on the flower-beds. When people have been more than usually +disappointing, we turn with an added tenderness to things, and Sainty, +whose regard for his beautiful inheritance had always been sentimentally +great, began to take a more intelligent interest in the possessions he +had been so anxious to renounce. Since it seemed that he could not shake +off his responsibilities, he would embrace them with fervour. He found +himself wandering about the great historic house and eagerly learning +all he could of the treasures it contained; and he started to rearrange +and catalogue the huge library, which had been much neglected and had +got sadly out of order. Soon finding this a task utterly beyond him +without expert help, he imported as librarian a young _protégé_ of +Gerald Newby from the library of his college, with whom he spent long +mornings exploring chests and closets where dusty folios had been +ruthlessly heaped together and left to rats and spiders. They made the +most wonderful finds of whole boxes of manuscripts, family papers, +parchments, letters. Among other things, they discovered one day the +original plans on which the grounds had been laid out, signed by +Perrault, and though there had been many subsequent alterations, Sainty +was delighted to find how much the main lines had remained intact. The +orangery with its enclosed garden, the bowling-green by the canal with +its formal pleached alleys, and the whole system of waterworks, ponds, +cascades, and fountains, were all more or less as the great Frenchman +had designed them. Here and there his long sweeping vistas across the +park had been cut by stupid little plantations of conifers, coverts for +game, and these Sainty was eager to remove, reopening the grand +perspectives. He planned, too, to restore the dignified simplicity of +the forecourt, with its great oval expanse of turf and five statues of +Flora and the Seasons, according to the original drawing. The statues +had been removed and dotted without method up and down the long +shrubbery, the great wrought-iron grille and gates carried away to one +of the lodges, the turf broken up with flower-beds and terracotta +baskets. It would be delightful to put everything back in its proper +place. + +To these and many other schemes his mother lent an indulgent ear. She +had that curious instinctive taste in gardens and houses which so many +of her countrywomen combine with an utter absence of the æsthetic sense +in all that concerns the fine arts or their own personal adornment; she +was quite incapable of real sympathy with his joy in musty old documents +and letters, but alterations in the garden were more in her line, and if +she did not always think what he proposed an improvement, at least it +was natural and normal that a man should take pleasure in his own +possessions, instead of wishing to give them away and live in the East +End. Sainty consulted her about everything, not merely from long habit +of deference, but from real respect for her judgment. + +A more powerful bond of union than any alterations in house or garden +were certain schemes for the benefit of their fellow-creatures. In their +more radical youth Lady Charmington and her brother had started many +such, a co-operative dairy-farm, settlements of model cottages, schools, +benefit clubs, and a system of old-age pensions that should not lessen +the self-respect of the recipients. Sainty’s interest in all these +matters was no new thing, though he had formerly rather carefully +repressed it. Now he took them up with a zeal not even second to Lady +Charmington’s own. It was not to be expected that he and she should be +always in absolute agreement, but on the whole they worked surprisingly +well together. There were concessions on both sides. On his they had the +ease of long habit, and he was astonished by a quite new tendency in his +mother to consult his wishes and defer to his opinions. + +Though she never mentioned his brother’s name, Sainty had a conviction +that she knew by some means or other what he had done for Arthur, and +was silently grateful to him for defying her resentment. She helped him +to establish himself in the west pavilion, now become uninterruptedly +his own, and to arrange his few personal possessions that had come from +Cambridge. The old schoolroom became his study; he turned Claude’s room +into a workroom and place for extra books, with a writing-table for the +librarian if he wanted him near him; but Arthur’s chamber was left by a +tacit agreement as it had always been, and sometimes Sainty would wander +in there and look disconsolately on the sporting prints, the school +groups, the faded blue cap dangling from a nail, the old Eton bureau +decorated by a red-hot poker with its owner’s name, a very large ‘Chamb’ +and a very small ’ers,’ owing to the artist’s miscalculation of the +space at his command. Sainty did not want Claude in the old schoolboy +quarters, and explained to that accommodating person that he needed more +space for his books, and thought his cousin would be more comfortable in +one of the many guest-rooms. + +By and by other people besides Claude began to occupy these apartments +again. There were no regular parties during the year after Arthur’s +marriage, but gradually Lady Charmington took to asking a few people at +a time; his Aunt Susan and her sons, the Rugbies, the Ecclestons, Alice +de Lissac and her step-daughters. His mother even suggested that Sainty +should invite some of his own friends, and Newby came several times and +was satisfactorily interested in his many undertakings. + +‘I like to see you taking your proper place,’ he said complacently, with +the air of an artist contemplating his own work; but the old spring of +grateful devotion no longer gushed responsive to Newby’s lightest word +of commendation. To begin to grow away from a friend is a terrible +experience, and few things are harder than to keep up the pretence that +no such change is taking place; but when the friend in question has been +less the equal comrade than the Gamaliel at whose feet one has sat, the +strain of preserving the old attitude is increased to infinity. There is +no furniture so encumbering as a fallen idol; we trip over it a dozen +times a day. Already the blush of shame had tinged the corner of +Sainty’s smile at Parsons’ lampoon, and now he was constantly to +experience similar compunctions. Gerald took a great fancy to Claude +and held forth to him unsparingly on many subjects. + +‘Your cousin is a real Prince Charming,’ he would say to Sainty; ‘very +refreshing, and such quaint views of things, without the university +flavour one gets so sick of; he is of immense use to me.’ + +Morland listened to Newby’s lucubrations with an air of grave sympathy, +but made fun of him behind his back. Sainty was exasperated all round; +he hated Gerald’s making an ass of himself, hated Claude’s gibes at his +expense, hated himself for being amused by them against his will. Cissy +Eccleston, on the contrary, was always ecstatically giggling at the +young man’s witticisms. + +The Ecclestons had begun to be a great deal at Belchamber; Lady +Charmington seemed to have endless philanthropic projects to discuss +with her friend, which needed the latter’s constant presence. + +‘I have asked Lady Eccleston to run down for a few days,’ became a +recognised formula; ‘I want to ask her about the G.F.S. meeting’; or, +‘She has got to consult me about the concert at Middlesex House for Lady +Stepney’s Home for Inebriates; she wants the duchess to be a patroness.’ +And Lady Eccleston ‘ran down,’ always taking care to thank Sainty +effusively for ‘letting her come’; ‘I had heaps to talk over with your +mother, and it saves such a lot of tiresome letter-writing; it _is_ good +of you to have us.’ In Lady Eccleston’s train came Lady Eccleston’s +daughter, and sometimes a son or two. Sainty had come to have quite a +friendly feeling for Tommy; he was such a good soul, so reposefully +commonplace, and so unfeignedly happy and grateful at Belchamber. + +‘You don’t know what it is to a chap to get out of that damned London,’ +he said fervently. Poor Tommy, not being very good at examinations, had +had to bow his neck under the yoke of a house of business, for which, +after the manner of English boys, his whole previous training had most +elaborately unfitted him. Sainty was glad to give him the pleasures +which would be no pleasures to himself, and Tommy responded with a sort +of wondering gratitude made up in about equal parts of admiration and +contempt. Once he rather tactlessly tried to express his regret over +Arthur. The Ecclestons were at the moment the only guests, and Sainty +said something about its being very dull for him having to go out +shooting alone. + +‘Oh, that’s all right,’ said Thomas; ‘though, of course, I miss your +brother. Awfully good chap, your brother. I was deuced sorry he went and +muckered the whole show like that. Hard luck on all of you.’ + +Sainty winced, but he liked the boy for liking Arthur, and silently +pressed his arm. + +‘Beg pardon,’ said Tommy, getting very red.’ Stupid of me to say that. +The mater would comb my hair if she knew.’ + +Lady Eccleston indeed was almost distressingly tactful on the subject, +stepping round it on elaborate tiptoe, as some people go about a +death-chamber. + +She and Cissy were full of interest in all Sainty’s undertakings. They +watched with breathless excitement the works for reinstating the grille +and the statues, and allowed themselves to be patiently bored by long +readings from some of the old documents which Sainty was editing for +publication by the Historical Society. + +When there were no other young people in the house, Sainty felt it no +less than his duty as host to try and entertain the young lady, and she +was always ready to accompany him on his drives about the place and +visits to the outlying farms and cottages. He thought of himself so +little in the light of a young man for whom a girl could possibly +entertain a warmer feeling than friendship, that it never occurred to +him to imagine any possibility of objection to these long expeditions, +practically _tête-à-tête_ with only a stolid little groom as chaperon; +and indeed the two mammas smiled very indulgently on them as they drove +off. He showed Cissy all over the co-operative dairy-farm and explained +the system of its working, and if her remarks did not display a very +thorough grasp of its aims, she listened with the politest attention to +his explanations. Whether the two widowed mothers, when left alone, +confined their conversation exclusively to topics of external +benevolence may be doubted; but anyway they always seemed to have plenty +to talk about, and to be quite able to spare their children; and +meanwhile Sainty drove along the avenues of the park, or the roads and +lanes of the countryside, with Cissy tucked in beside him and chattering +like a sparrow. The girl had a certain sense of humour, strictly limited +in scope, but diverting as far as it went. It is true that it mostly +took the form of personal ridicule, and Sainty was rather scandalised at +the frequency with which it was turned upon her mother, but he couldn’t +help laughing at some of the revelations. ‘And, after all,’ he thought, +‘she would not make fun of her if she did not love her; it is the +light-hearted thoughtlessness of a child.’ + +‘Mamma is very low to-day,’ Cissy said, bursting with laughter. ‘You +know, she takes the _Exchange and Mart_ and is always swopping something +or other. I don’t think she does very good business, but she likes the +fun of writing to people she don’t know, and the bargaining. Well, she’s +got an old black silk gown, quite good still, it was a good silk; she +bought it at Woolland’s at a sale (she goes to all the sales), but she’s +worn it three seasons and it’s old fashioned, and every creature we know +is sick of the sight of it, so she has been trying to get rid of it in +the _Exchange_, and what do you think she was offered for it this +morning? A goat! Think of us in Chester Square with a goat! Tommy says +we can keep it in the back-yard and he’ll milk it, and it will save the +dairy bill; but mamma is not amused.’ And Cissy went off into peals of +laughter in which Sainty could not help joining. + +This power of making him laugh was the great secret of his pleasure in +her society. At most times they might not have had much in common, but +after all he had been through, her irresponsible frivolity was very +restful. His morbid conscientiousness seemed overstrained and absurd by +comparison, and he was ashamed to be frightened by life in the presence +of a creature who took it so lightly, displaying such a careless front +to the slings and arrows of a quite insufficient fortune. With more +humour than delicacy she gave him glimpses of many of her parent’s +little economies and contrivances. ‘I’ve got to be turned out smart, you +know, and we give awfully nice teas, lots of teas--even the little +Sunday dinners ain’t badly done; but no one dropping in unexpectedly to +lunch--no thank you! and if she and I dine out it’s cold mutton for the +boys and none too much of it. You’re awfully good to Tommy; it’s just +heaven for him being here, poor boy!’ + +‘It’s delightful being able to give any pleasure to any one. I have +never been able to make any one happy though I’ve tried.’ + +‘Oh, come, cheer up! I assure you, you are giving a lot of pleasure to +the Eccleston family at this moment; it really is ripping of you asking +the whole family. Did you know, by the way, that your mother has said +the two boys could come next week when Harrow breaks up, and that we +might all stay over Christmas?’ + +‘Yes, of course I knew, seeing that it was I who suggested it. I thought +if you had your little brothers here it would not be so dull for you, +and my friend Newby will be here, and Claude----’ The vivid colour came +and went so quickly under the fair skin that Sainty could not be sure if +it were Claude’s name that called up the faint flush. It might have been +caused by the pleasure Cissy’s next words expressed. + +‘Oh, it was you! How angelic of you! As for me, I don’t think my young +brothers add much to my enjoyment of life, nor I to theirs; besides, I +am quite happy in this dear, beautiful place, and going all about your +improvements and things with you is so jolly; but I’m awfully grateful +to you all the same, and you will be more in mamma’s good books than +ever; and with mamma, you must know, “good books” is not a mere phrase. +She has a red book in which she enters all her friends according to +what they have done for her; not an ordinary visitor’s-list. She puts +down “Lady So-and-So--asked us to her squash, but gave a dance and did +not ask us”; or “Mrs. Snooks--dined with us, but didn’t ask us back: +Mem.--not again till she does,” and so on. It’s capital reading; if I +can get hold of it some day I’ll show it to you.’ + +‘Do you mind if we get out at the end of the shrubbery and walk home?’ +Sainty asked; ‘I want to see how they are getting on with moving one of +the statues.’ + +‘Oh, do let’s! I should love to see Spring (isn’t she Spring, the fat +woman with the sort of trumpet with the apples? Oh no, of course, +Autumn) swinging in mid-air. They had just got the thing rigged up +yesterday afternoon when I walked my parent round there. I do hope they +haven’t got her into the cart yet.’ + +They visited poor Autumn, whose head was reposing in rather a ghastly +manner in a heap of straw on a trolly, while her trunk and cornucopia +hung perilously from the pulleys, and her legs still graced a florid +Dutch pedestal. + +‘Isn’t she sweet?’ Cissy said. ‘I do think it’s so clever of you putting +them all back where they belong. I should never have had the energy to +take all this trouble once they were here and established.’ + +‘The worst of it is,’ Sainty admitted, ‘that now the thing is decreed, I +feel almost sacrilegious tearing them from the places where I have +always known them. If I had known what a business it was going to be, +and what a lot it would cost, I should never have had the courage to +undertake it.’ + +‘It must be lovely to have lots of money to spend,’ Cissy interjected +almost under her breath. + +‘What I can’t understand,’ Sainty went on, ‘is the frame of mind of the +person who spent such sums on _destroying_ a good design; he must have +disturbed his own early associations as much as I am doing, yet without +the same reason for doing so. + +‘I suppose he thought he was improving things, just as you do,’ said +Cissy cheerfully. ‘All the things people give such heaps for nowadays +are what our grandmothers put in the garrets. Probably the people who +come after you will think Faith, Hope, and Charity, or whoever the +ladies are, would look much nicer in the park, or on the roof, or at the +bottom of the big pond.’ + +‘The people who came after him!’ The phrase struck cold upon his ear. +Who was there to ‘come after’ him? Lady Arthur? Good heavens! Sainty +shuddered to think what _her_ notions of the æsthetic might involve. He +had a fleeting vision of Belchamber rearranged according to the standard +of taste suggested by the plush piano drapery so fatally baptized in +champagne. + +This question of who was to enter into his labours and gather the fruits +of all that he was doing contained within itself the germ of paralysis. +The works for the outward beautifying of the place were the smallest of +his preoccupations; but what would his successor care for all his other +hopes, his projects for bettering the condition of the ‘poor about his +lands’? The thought that whatever he might effect would pass with his +own feeble and precarious life, and leave no trace behind it, was one of +the sharpest darts in the quiver of his familiar fiend. + +They walked back to the house almost in silence, Sainty revolving these +unhappy thoughts, Cissy, for once, not chattering. Sainty stole an +occasional glance at his companion, wondering at her unusual quiet. Her +eyes had a far-away look, which gave a great sweetness to her face; he +feared to intrude on some tender maiden thoughts which he felt tolerably +sure had little to do with him or his concerns. As they came out upon +the lawn they saw Lady Charmington approaching from the village, bearing +a small tin-lined basket in which she conveyed cold slabs of pudding to +some of her dependants. Cissy waved her muff and ran forward, insisting +on relieving her from the burthen which she was perfectly capable of +carrying on one stalwart finger. Miss Eccleston’s manner to her hostess +was the perfection of pretty girlish deference and service, and Lady +Charmington’s grim countenance relaxed at sight of her. + +‘Have you had a pleasant drive?’ she asked. ‘I hope Sainty has taken +good care of you.’ + +‘Lord Belchamber has been delightful,’ Cissy answered, ‘and shown me all +sorts of interesting things. We came back by the shrubbery, to look at +one of the poor ladies who has had her head cut off. Now I must go and +tell mamma we are back. I will leave your basket in the little hall for +you, dear Lady Charmington, I know just where it lives.’ + +Lady Charmington turned to Sainty as the girl skipped away. ‘Give me +your arm, my son, I am a little tired,’ she said. Now Sainty was well +aware that his mother was never tired, and would rather have died than +own it if she had been. ‘Good heavens, mother, aren’t you well?’ he +asked in alarm. + +‘Oh yes, dear, quite well; but I am getting an old woman. It is a good +thing that you have begun to look after things yourself. What you ought +to do for me now is to give me a nice young daughter-in-law to look +after _me_, and some dear little grandchildren to pet and spoil.’ + +Sainty was startled; it seemed almost as if Lady Charmington were +answering the thoughts that had oppressed him on the way home. He smiled +parenthetically at the vision of his capable energetic mother in the +character of the feeble old lady cared for by pious children; nor did he +see her ‘petting and spoiling’ any one. + +‘I am not likely to marry,’ he said. ‘With the best will in the world, I +might find it difficult. Fairy princesses do not marry the yellow +dwarf!’ + +Lady Charmington’s unwonted mildness fell from her miraculously. ‘You +are almost bound to marry--_now_,’ she said, the last word pronounced +with a sudden sharp inspiration that told how much the reference cost +her. + +‘Dear mother,’ Sainty said gently, ‘who could possibly fill your place +here? Who would do all that you do, or do it nearly as well?’ + +‘I can’t live for ever. As I tell you, I am getting old; already I +can’t do all that I could. The thought of that woman in my place gives +me fever. Do you want her to succeed me--do you?’ And Sainty felt the +hand on his arm tighten to a clutch. + +‘We have both got to die before that happens, mother. If you are not in +your first youth, you are very strong, and if I am not a tower of +strength, at least I have youth on my side; we may both have more +vitality than many younger or stronger people.’ Alas! that his chances +of long life, once so fiercely resented, should have come to be the +buckler on which he counted to interpose against the speedy succession +of his brother, which in those days he had so ardently desired! + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + + +It was natural that with other people in the house Sainty should see +less of Cissy; he told himself so several times a day, yet the thought +was not altogether a pleasant one that she only welcomed his society as +a refuge from solitude or Lady Eccleston. The frost had put a stop to +the works in front of the house, and a bad chill and sharp attack of +neuralgia warned Sainty to discontinue his drives until milder weather. +Skating on the big pond became the amusement of the moment, a pastime in +which his lameness prevented his joining. Gerald Newby, in a straw hat, +spent hours upon the ice, and fell down with Spartan perseverance in his +determination to accomplish figures of eight. + +‘Why is it a necessary part of the make-up of the good young man to wear +a straw hat in the winter?’ Claude asked; ‘I notice that serious youths +always do, curates and schoolmasters. Is it a mark of asceticism, as +being obviously not the comfortable thing to do, or to give the +impression that their brains are overheated with excess of thought?’ + +Claude, who skated, as he did everything else that he attempted, with +elegance and precision, had undertaken to instruct Cissy in the art, and +Sainty had to watch them gliding about together, both her hands tightly +clasped in his, and even a sustaining arm occasionally flung out when +the maiden was more than usually wobbly. It was all perfectly natural; +there was not the smallest ground for objecting. Lady Susan Trafford and +her sons, Claude’s mother, Newby, and Cissy’s three brothers were all on +the ice the whole time; the pond, though a good-sized sheet of water, +was visible from end to end; there were no corners or islands behind +which the flirtatiously-inclined could disappear; yet the sight of +those perpetually clasped hands became a constant irritation to +Belchamber, and it was quite vain for him to reiterate that with her +mother and brothers in the house, it was less than no business of his +how Miss Eccleston amused herself. ‘Had it been any one else but +Claude,’ he thought, ‘he should not have minded.’ + +It soon became evident to him that he was not alone in the apprehension +with which he watched the growing intimacy between Cissy and his cousin. +Lady Eccleston, it was plain, viewed it with quite as little favour as +he did. Swathed in furs, and with a blue nose, the poor lady fluttered +on the bank, in a manner strongly suggestive of a hen whose ducklings +have taken to the water. One day, having invited him to take her for a +walk, while the hoar frost crackled under their feet in the winding +mazes of the shrubbery, she quite unexpectedly unburthened herself to +him on the subject. + +‘I can talk to you, dear Lord Belchamber,’ she said, ‘as I would to an +older man; you are so good, so pure, so unlike the others, and I am so +sorely in need of advice.’ + +‘Good gracious! Lady Eccleston,’ said Sainty, with hypocritical +surprise, ‘what’s the matter? How can I help you?’ + +‘I’m so afraid you’ll think it strange of me to talk to you on such a +subject, but, as I say, you are not like an ordinary young man; you have +always been so serious for your age, and then, you know your cousin +better than any one; you have been boys together.’ + +‘Claude?’ + +‘Yes, Mr. Morland. How kind of you to understand and help me out; but +you _are_ so sympathetic, more like a woman in some ways, I always say.’ + +Sainty was only partially pleased by this equivocal compliment. ‘What +about Claude?’ he asked. + +‘I will be quite frank with you; you won’t misunderstand me, I know. A +mother’s solicitude; and, after all, what can be more natural? Left so +early a widow, and with these young ones to guide and bring up. If my +dear husband had lived it would all have been so different; but I have +no one to turn to. Tom is a mere boy, really no more help than the young +ones. Ah! Lord Belchamber, children are a sad responsibility.’ + +‘Yours seem to be very good ones,’ said Sainty. + +‘You _do_ think so? I _am_ so glad. Yes, I think they are, but of course +I feel a mother is not a judge--her great love blinds her; but they +_are_ good children, I must say they give me very little trouble. Only +the high spirits of youth are always a pitfall. And Cissy--she’s a dear, +good girl, and we haven’t a secret from one another; we are more like +sisters. Yet it is for her that I sometimes feel the greatest anxiety.’ + +‘Yes?’ + +‘Some people think her pretty; again, of course, my partiality prevents +my judging; but lots of people have told me she was pretty. _Do_ you +think her pretty?’ + +‘I should think no one could help admiring Miss Eccleston,’ said Sainty. + +‘Ah! that’s it. There’s no denying it. I can’t help seeing it; why +should I pretend I don’t? The girl does have a lot of admiration; I _do_ +hope it won’t turn her head. She’s as good as gold, but London’s an +awful place. I’ve done all I can to keep her from all knowledge of evil, +and so far, thank God! the child is a thoroughly healthy-minded, pure +girl. Doesn’t she strike you so?’ + +‘Oh, certainly; but what----’ + +‘You were going to say “What has all this to do with Mr. Morland?” You +won’t mind my talking to you quite frankly? it _is_ such a comfort. +Well--any one can see your cousin admires Cissy immensely. And of course +she’s pleased by his attentions. I must admit he is charming; but _is_ +he the kind of young man a mother would like to give her daughter to?’ + +‘Have you any reason to suppose your daughter cares at all for Claude?’ + +‘Oh no, no, no! don’t misunderstand me; I’m quite _sure_ she doesn’t. +But girls are so thoughtless; the more innocent they are, the more +imprudent. If I so much as try to venture a hint to her to be a little +more circumspect, she says, “I don’t know what you _mean_, mother,” and +she looks at me in such a way I’m quite ashamed, I really am.’ + +‘Of course Miss Eccleston is all that is delicate and refined, but if +you are certain she does not at all return my cousin’s partiality----’ + +‘Oh, of that I’m _sure_; she’s such a mirror of candour--if she had the +very smallest feeling she would have told me--but your cousin is most +fascinating, that I must admit, and she _might_ get to think she cared. +Now, I ask you, who know him so well, _is_ he just the sort of man in +whose hands a very pure-minded girl with high ideals would be happy? I +know my child so well; if she were ever to find out that the man she +married had been at all fast, it would simply kill her. And the young +men of the day _are_ so wicked, or so they tell me. One can’t help +hearing things _de temps en temps_ in London, no matter how much one +hates gossip, and _no_ one hates it as I do.’ + +Sainty thought he knew some one who hated it at least as much as her +ladyship. He was wondering what Claude really felt for Cissy. In the +light of their conversation about Miss Winston, he found it difficult to +believe that his cousin was courting a portionless girl with a view to +marriage; but he could not catechise him as to his intentions towards +every young woman with whom he ever saw him, especially after the scanty +encouragement he had met with on that occasion. Were he to answer Lady +Eccleston truthfully, there could be little doubt of what he must say; +but the thought of acting secret police in this fashion was not +agreeable to him. + +‘You must see----’ he began. + +‘Oh! I do, I do,’ cried the lady; ‘I see _just_ how unpleasant it would +be for you to have to say a word against your cousin, and, dear Lord +Belchamber, do let me say how much it makes me like you, though, to be +sure, that wasn’t necessary, for I’ve always said you were my ideal +young man. Cissy and I have so often agreed in talking over some of the +young men we know, Tom’s friends, and the men we see at balls, and +others, that there is _no_ one quite like you.’ + +‘No, I’m well aware that I am not like other young men----’ + +‘Ah! be thankful you’re not, dear Lord Belchamber; the young men of the +day, I’m _sorry_ to say, are not nice. And thank you so much for +listening to me so patiently, and telling me _just_ what I wanted to +know. I can’t tell you the comfort this little talk has been to me. You +see, I have no one to turn to, and I do think it so sweet of you not to +want to say a word against Mr. Morland.’ + +Sainty wondered a little afterwards just what the information was for +which Lady Eccleston was so grateful, for though the interview was +nominally sought with a view to consulting him, while he had received a +number of interesting confidences, he could not recollect having +expressed any opinion at all. Lady Eccleston, however, had apparently +found him a satisfactory counsellor, for the next day she returned to +the subject. + +‘You remember what I said to you yesterday about Cissy and Mr. Morland,’ +she whispered, dropping down beside him on one of the seats in the +winter-garden after lunch. ‘I’m more than ever convinced she doesn’t +care for him; it is foolish of me to take fright as I do, but there is +just one point I _do_ want to put myself right with you about. I was so +afraid afterwards you might think--and yet--no, come to think of it, I’m +sure you wouldn’t; but I should like just to say that I hope you +_didn’t_ think what I said had _any_thing to do with Mr. Morland being +poor, or what the world would call not a good match. As long as he was a +good man, and a man of principle, and some one in her own _monde_, I’ve +always said I didn’t care who my girl married. No one can say I’m +mercenary. My poor dear husband and I married on next to nothing, and +there never was a happier marriage. I wish you had known Sir Thomas, +you would have loved him,’ + +Sainty expressed a suitable regret at having missed the pleasure of Sir +Thomas’s acquaintance. ‘Some people,’ Lady Eccleston continued +pensively, ‘some people think I’m wrong. Only last week a dear friend of +mine said to me that it was all very well to despise money, but that +other things being equal, it was a great power, and that in this age of +the world it was impossible to get on without it. I said “You may be +right, dear, and I don’t deny that for my children’s sake I’ve sometimes +wished I had a little more of it, but money isn’t everything. It can’t +give happiness.”’ And her ladyship raised her eyes to a statuette of +Venus in a cluster of palms, with the expression of a dying martyr +regarding a crucifix. + +‘No, Lord Belchamber, if a man’s a gentleman and a good man, for me, he +may be as poor as--as he pleases--_that_ isn’t what I fear; but though +Cissy seems such a child, she has a very strongly marked character, and +intensely deep feelings, and were she to marry a man she could not +respect, she would never know a moment’s happiness. What she needs above +all is a man of strict principles, of high ideals, and with a pure mind +and life, and where is such a man to be found? But forgive me for boring +you with all this; it can’t interest you. George, dear,’ to her second +son, who passed at the moment, ‘are you going skating? Do you know where +Cissy is? Is she going with you? I want to speak to her’; and with a +little nod of good understanding to her host, Lady Eccleston skipped +with her usual amazing agility off the ottoman, and departed with her +arm twined about the boy’s waist. + +Belchamber pondered much on these conversations. ‘The ordinary clever +man,’ he thought, ‘who prides himself on knowledge of human nature, +would be sure that Lady Eccleston was trying to “hook him” for her +daughter, and would, as usual, be wrong. If the lady is not, a monument +of wisdom, at least I give her credit for not being so obvious as +_that_. No; she is treating me, as women always do, as a creature +removed from all thoughts and hopes of love, a sexless being set apart +like the priest in Catholic countries to be the safe recipient of tender +confidences in which he can have no personal concern.’ Still he +sometimes dreamed (as who may not at twenty-three?) of what life might +come to mean if Love should breathe on its dry bones and bid them live; +if it were possible that some maid more discerning than her fellows +should see with the eye of the soul, beneath his dreary, unattractive +exterior, the wealth of love that was waiting like the sleeping princess +for the awakening kiss! ‘Perhaps I might even have the luck of the +unhappy monster in _L’Homme qui rit_, and meet with a blind girl!’ +Hideousness, even deformity, was no bar to the love of woman, that he +knew. He thought of Wilkes, of Mirabeau, of many others who had been +more passionately loved than your pretty fellows. Deep in his heart he +knew his real disability; it was not his lack of personal beauty, nor +even his lameness that was the bar, but his miserable inherent +effeminacy. A man might be never so uncouth, so that the manhood in him +cried imperiously to the other sex and commanded surrender. ‘More like a +woman in some ways.’ Had not Lady Eccleston said it? There lay the +sting. And yet--who could tell? Might not a miracle be worked? Might he +not some day find himself face to face with this stupendous, unhoped-for +happiness? + +He wrote many poems at this time, poems not addressed to any concrete +personality, but to that ‘not impossible she,’ the divine abstraction +who should recognise and respond to what lay hidden in his heart. He +felt very sure that Cissy Eccleston, with her frank pagan enjoyment of +life and the moment, was not the lady of his dreams. Those little curved +lips of hers might seek the red mouth of a lover, but would never bestow +the heroic salute that should cleanse the leper, or restore his true +form to the enchanted beast. Yet, forasmuch as he had seen so few girls, +his Beatrice sometimes came to him clad in something of the outward +semblance, the virginal candour and freshness of this sojourner within +his gates. He found himself wondering if Lady Eccleston’s account of her +daughter’s ermine-like recoil from all contact with moral impurity had +any foundation in fact, or whether this fancy portrait of the girl dying +of a stain on the premarital robe of her husband were not as purely +fallacious as some of his mother’s theories about Arthur. It had been +borne in on him that mothers were not always infallible in what +concerned their children’s characters; he was farther rendered a little +sceptical as to the young lady’s excessive innocence by some of her own +conversation, and notably a certain curiosity displayed with what seemed +to him a lack of delicacy on more than one occasion as to his +unfortunate sister-in-law. + +‘Of course one knew all those girls by sight,’ she remarked, with +engaging candour, ‘but I’m not sure just _which_ was Cynthia de Vere; it +_was_ the tall one with the beautiful legs and the rather big mouth, +wasn’t it? I told Tom so, and he said it wasn’t; but I’m sure I’m right, +ain’t I?’ + +On another occasion she startled him by the plainest possible reference +to the relations of Charley Hunter and Miss Baynes. + +‘I didn’t know young ladies knew anything about such things,’ Sainty +said rather severely. + +‘They do now,’ said Cissy, ‘whatever they used to; but I suspect they +always knew more than they let on. There was a friend of mine who +married Teddie Hersham last season; I was one of her bridesmaids; she +was awfully proud of taking him away from Totty Seymour; she used to +boast of it to all her friends.’ + +‘I can’t bear to hear you talk like that,’ Sainty answered. ‘It would +give people who didn’t know you such a wrong idea of you.’ + +‘I’ll try not to, if you don’t like it; but it isn’t easy for me to +pretend to be different to what I am.’ + +‘I don’t want you to. I only ask you to be true to yourself, and not say +things that I am sure are quite foreign to you for the sake of startling +people.’ + +‘Well, I must own I do enjoy shocking _you_. You are so awfully proper, +you know; but why should you care what I do or say?’ she added, with a +little arch glance. + +‘I don’t know, I’m sure, but I do. I suppose I--I like you too well not +to mind your behaving in a way I don’t think worthy of you.’ + +What wonder if Miss Eccleston found Claude Morland a more amusing +companion than his cousin? Sainty was the first to admit the likelihood. +He was well aware that Claude would not have offended her by championing +her innocence against herself, or have made any difficulties about +gratifying her girlish curiosity as to that other world of which she +knew so little. The thought of Morland’s long, deft fingers delicately +removing the bloom from this young creature irritated him unaccountably. +Oh no! it was not jealousy; that, again, was what the stupid, knowing +people would think; he could never care for this empty-headed little +thing in that way, and knew only too well how much more impossible it +was that _she_ should care for _him_. Only, he did not want her to +suffer, nor to coarsen and deteriorate. + +He was revolving some such thoughts as these as he walked by himself one +day, perhaps a week after his conversation with Lady Eccleston, when he +was startled by loud cries from the neighbourhood of the pond, and made +all the haste he was able in that direction. The air was certainly +milder; there had been unmistakable premonitions of a thaw. He +remembered the discussion at breakfast as to whether the ice would still +bear, and the eager affirmations of the young Traffords and Ecclestons +that it was as sound as ever. Bertie Trafford and Randolph Eccleston had +been sliding all over it, and had even stamped in places to see if it +would give way; but Mr. Danford, the agent, had come in in the course of +the morning to say that it had a damp look about the edges he did not +like, and to advise them to keep off it. Sainty had not been greatly +interested; the pond, though large, was mostly artificial, and nowhere +more than three or four feet deep, and if the boys liked to risk a +wetting, it did not seem to him to matter much. Now his thoughts flew +to Cissy; he wondered he had not thought of her before, and the next +moment he turned a corner, and found himself one of an excited group, +the centre of which was Claude, hatless, dishevelled, and very wet, +bearing in his arms the inanimate form of Miss Eccleston. Her eyes were +closed, and every trace of colour was gone from her face; her lips were +blue, and the water ran in streams from her clothing. The boys crowded +round, all talking at once, and making a number of foolish suggestions. + +‘Is she drowned? Is she dead?’ wailed little Randolph, and was sternly +bidden by George not to be an ass unless he wanted to get kicked. + +‘What is the matter? What has happened?’ asked Sainty, and was conscious +of saying the silly thing even before Claude answered with studied +politeness, ‘Don’t you see? Miss Eccleston has caught fire, but we have +luckily extinguished the flames.’ + +Claude was seldom cross, but he hated scenes and emotions and spoilt +clothes. ‘If some one would help me to get her up to the house it would +be some use,’ he added; ‘and can’t any one lend a dry coat to wrap round +her? Mine’s no good, it’s as wet as a sponge. Oh! not _you_, Sainty, +_you_’ll catch cold.’ + +A little way from the house they encountered Lady Eccleston, who had got +wind of the catastrophe, and was hurrying to meet them; and Sainty was +struck by the change in her manner in face of emergency. Her foolish +flightiness seemed to have dropped from her like a garment that an +athlete throws off. She had all her wits about her, and gave the most +sensible directions. She had her daughter upstairs and in bed between +warm blankets in less time than it takes to write it down, and by the +afternoon she was able to report to them that Cissy was quite +comfortable, only a little feverish and upset by the shock; but she did +not think she would be much the worse for her wetting. + +Cissy, however, was a most unaccountable time in getting over that +shock. Lady Eccleston expressed herself as amazed that her daughter +should take so long to recover from so small a thing. + +‘Really, Lord Belchamber, I’m ashamed; you’ll think you are never going +to get rid of us; but the doctor says positively that the child mustn’t +come down yet. I can’t understand it at all, for the chill she has +_quite_ got over. Of course she had a dreadful feverish cold, and at +first we thought it would settle on her lungs, but, thank God! all +danger of that seems at an end. Then I ask _what_ is the matter? and Dr. +Lane says, “It’s the shock to the nervous system.” But I’m mortified. I +really am. Do you know how long we’ve been here?’ + +‘I don’t want to know, Lady Eccleston. I only know we are too glad to +keep you as long as you can stay, and I am sure my mother feels as I do +about it.’ + +‘Oh! you are too kind about it, both of you! But one has _some_ +compunctions, you know. And after all your goodness about the boys and +all!’ + +George and Randolph had returned to Harrow, and Tom to his hated office +in Throgmorton Avenue, Claude’s presence had been once more required by +his respected chief, and the rest of the party had melted like the snow +that had followed the long frost; but still Cissy lay in a most becoming +pink dressing-gown in a small boudoir that had been arranged for her +next her bedroom. It took Lady Eccleston days of modest trepidation to +bring herself to admit Sainty to these sacred precincts. ‘Was she very +unconventional? Well, she supposed she was--people always said so--but +she was weak where her children were concerned, and Cissy had said, “Why +_shouldn’t_ Lord Belchamber come to see me, mamma?” Not for worlds would +she have introduced the ordinary young man’; and then Sainty was once +more assured of his ‘difference,’ his purity, the perfect confidence an +anxious mother could repose in him. + +‘Her brothers are gone, you see, and she misses them so, poor child. And +though we are _such_ friends, an old woman is dull company _pour tout +potage_; and then my wretched throat gives out; I am no good for reading +aloud. Now it would be _angelic_ of you, if you would read to her a +little; _would_ you? Oh! _how_ kind! She is a perfect baby about being +read to; and you are so clever; you will know just what to read; you +have such literary taste; everybody says so.’ + +Thus Sainty found himself installed as reader to the invalid, and spent +many hours a day by her sofa. At first Lady Eccleston was always there; +then, when they were deep in their book, she would sometimes slip away +to her voluminous correspondence or long consultations with her maid +over the endless transmutations of her wardrobe. Sometimes Lady +Charmington would look in, with a few words of grim tenderness, and lay +a large cool hand on Cissy’s hair. Gradually the young people came to be +left alone for longer and longer intervals. Belchamber rather wondered, +himself, at the relaxation of all watchfulness on the part of their +chaperons. ‘It is the old story,’ he told himself gloomily; ‘I am +certainly not considered dangerous.’ + +One day Lady Eccleston was much perturbed at breakfast over her letters. + +‘I don’t know what to do,’ she cried, ‘it is most unfortunate; do advise +me, dear Lady Charmington. There are a dozen things I ought to be in +London for. I have a committee on Tuesday; they say they can’t do +without me; and things seem to be all at sixes and sevens at home: poor +Tommy writes that he is most uncomfortable; he says the maids are always +out, and he believes the cook gives parties; that there are--what is it? +Oh! yes, here--“sounds of revelry by night”; he is always so absurd, +poor dear; but it _is_ hard on him. I really feel we ought to go, and +Cissy is just beginning at last to be a little better.’ + +‘Why don’t you run up for a day or two, and do what you have to, attend +to your committee, and give an eye to things in Chester Square?’ said +Lady Charmington. ‘Leave Cissy to us, if you will trust us; we will take +every care of her.’ + +‘O dear Lady Charmington, I _couldn’t_; that _would_ be an imposition. +Of course she would be ever so much better here, and she is so happy, +poor child; Chester Square is so noisy, and of course directly she gets +back to London, people will begin to want her to do things, and I shall +never keep her quiet. But I simply couldn’t; it would be monstrous to +put on you to such an extent.’ + +‘Nonsense,’ said Lady Charmington. ‘It is a thousand pities to take her +back to town just when she is getting on so well; a few weeks more of +good air and rest will do everything for her; she must come downstairs +first, go out for a few drives, before she thinks of a journey. Don’t +you agree with me, Sainty?’ + +‘Of course we shall be only too glad, if you think Miss Eccleston would +not be dull----’ Sainty began. + +‘Ah! dear Lord Belchamber! dear Lady Charmington! how good you both +are!’ cried the tender mother. ‘I am ashamed, positively ashamed, but +what can I say? She will be overjoyed. She had to gulp down a big lump +in her throat when I told her we must go home; she was so good, she +wouldn’t say anything, but _I_ could see; love sharpens our wits when it +is a question of our children’s happiness, doesn’t it, dear?’ + +‘It is generally not difficult to see through young people,’ said Lady +Charmington. Sainty was wondering if the necessity for Lady Eccleston’s +presence in London had arisen out of the letters she had received since +she came downstairs, when she could have had the conversation on the +subject which had brought the lump into her daughter’s throat, but he +was too polite to inquire. + +The conclusion of the whole matter, as might have been foreseen, was +that Lady Eccleston departed to London, leaving Cissy at Belchamber, and +the readings were continued with even less supervision than before. + +Cissy’s literary taste was decidedly undeveloped, and it may be doubted +if some of her host’s finest reading was not merely an accompaniment to +the thinking out of new hats; but Sainty enjoyed immensely introducing +a novice to his best beloved authors, and the new sensation of being +able to minister to a sufferer, and lighten the long hours of some of +their dullness and depression. He wasted an immense amount of care and +thought on the selection of suitable gems, passages that should be +characteristic and of the highest beauty, and yet milk to the +intellectual babe. Sometimes he almost forgot his listener in the +pleasure of voicing things long dear to himself, especially poetry, and +he read a good deal of poetry. Cissy displayed but little enthusiasm; +she always thanked him very prettily when he finished, if she was not +asleep, and ‘hoped it didn’t bore him awfully,’ but she made few +comments, and listened for the most part in silence and often with her +eyes closed. Sainty put down her apparent indifference to the languor of +convalescence. Once, indeed, she startled him by the energy of her +appreciation. He was reading _Maud_ to her, and she had several times +disappointed him with a calm ‘very pretty’ when he had paused after some +exquisite lyric that left him vibrating like a harpstring. When, +however, he came to-- + + ‘Oh that ‘twere possible + After long grief and pain + To find the arms of my true love + Round me once again!’ + +her quickened respiration showed her interest; and at the stanza +beginning ‘When I was wont to meet her,’ she half raised herself, saying +eagerly, ‘I like that; read that bit again, please; do you mind?’ and on +Sainty’s complying, she repeated dreamily to herself, as though the +words called up some image that gave her pleasure, + + ‘We stood tranced in long embraces, + Mixt with kisses sweeter, sweeter + Than anything on earth.’ + +‘Who did you say wrote that?’ she asked. ‘Oh! of course, yes, Tennyson,’ +and with a great sigh she sank back on her cushions. Then she looked +suddenly at him, as though she feared she had betrayed something, and +flushed crimson. ‘Go on,’ she murmured; ‘beg pardon,’ and relapsed into +her habitual expression of polite endurance. Next day she asked him to +lend her the book, as she wanted to copy some of it out. + +Sainty was delighted, but surprised. + + + + +CHAPTER XV + + +Lady Eccleston’s business kept her in London longer than she expected. +Each day brought hurried notes from her, full of regrets and apologies, +compunction for all the trouble they were giving, but joy that her dear +child was in such good, kind hands, and a plentiful supply of a mother’s +blessings. She was a swift and copious letter-writer, economising time +by the ruthless excision of articles, pronouns, and other short words. +Tommy always declared that his mother could write two letters at once, +one with each hand, and interview the cook at the same time. + +Breakfast in bed was the last lingering trace of Cissy’s mysterious +ailment, by the time her parent reappeared upon the scene. + +‘What have you done to my little girl?’ cried Lady Eccleston in a +transport of gratitude; ‘she is a different child.’ And truly it would +have been hard to find a more blooming specimen of girlhood. Indeed, +when you come to think of it, six weeks is a liberal allowance of time +for a perfectly healthy young woman to get over the effects of a +momentary immersion in cold water. + +‘You have been so kind to my darling,’ Lady Eccleston said to Sainty. +‘She has been telling me of all your delightful talks and readings; it +is just what she needed, a little intercourse with a really cultivated +mind. She has always felt the dissatisfaction of the frivolous life of +society; there has been the desire to improve herself, the love of +reading, but no one to guide her taste, or put her in the right way. +Now, if you would draw up a little table of reading for her, tell her +_what_ to read, and in what order and connection, it would be just +everything for her; and perhaps even her ignorant old mother might find +a little leisure now and then to profit by your help. One is never too +old to learn, you know.’ + +So Sainty drew up tables, lent books, and marked passages, like the +simple little pedant that he was, but without producing any very marked +impression on Cissy’s fundamental ignorance. Sometimes he wondered if +the girl were not very dull at Belchamber, and how it was that people +who had always seemed to have so many engagements could spare so much +time to one house. It is true that Lady Eccleston was perpetually +threatening departure, but she was as often persuaded to remain by the +very mildest expostulation that civility demanded. + +At last a date was definitely fixed, and Sainty had to acknowledge to +himself that he would miss the charming companion of his walks and +drives. He felt tolerably sure that he was not in the least in love with +Cissy, but he had come to feel a sort of tender protecting friendship +for her, an interest in her welfare, and a desire to shield her from +evil and unhappiness. Thus, one day, when he had heard raised voices and +rather excited talking as he passed Lady Eccleston’s door, and Cissy had +appeared at lunch with red eyes, he burned to know what was wrong, and +if possible to help and comfort her. Sorrow seemed so inappropriate to +this bright young creature; yet, during the last few days of the +Ecclestons’ stay, the air was heavy with suppressed tears. It was like +the weather when people look each evening at the clearing heavens and +say, ‘There must have been a storm somewhere’; an actual shower would +have been a relief. To a person of Sainty’s temperament such a state of +things was unendurable. He could not ask Cissy what was wrong; she who +had been so ready to walk, or drive, or read, seemed suddenly to have +become unapproachable. + +One day he watched the mother and daughter returning from a walk. They +were talking excitedly in low hurried voices and with a good deal of +gesture; it was obvious even at a distance that they were discussing no +ordinary topics, and what is more that they were having a decided +difference of opinion. Lady Eccleston seemed to be appealing urgently +about something. Sainty saw her lay her hand not too gently on her +daughter’s arm, but the girl threw it off with an impatient gesture, +broke from her, and fairly ran towards the house. + +So swift and unexpected was her coming that Sainty had no time to +withdraw, and they met in the hall. Cissy’s face was working, her eyes +dry and burning. + +‘Miss Eccleston--Cissy,’ said Belchamber, ‘what is wrong? Can I do +anything----’ + +At sight of him she started away like a shying horse. + +‘Oh, let me alone!’ she cried, and hurried upstairs, and Sainty could +hear her sobbing as she went. At that moment Lady Eccleston appeared +upon the scene, with heightened colour and decidedly out of breath. An +indefinable change came over her expression as she saw the young man, a +certain exultation seemed to leap in her eyes, to be immediately +extinguished in a confusion which had every appearance of being genuine. + +‘Lady Eccleston,’ said Sainty, moving eagerly to meet her, ‘what is the +matter with Cissy?’ He did not notice that in his excitement he had +twice called the girl by her Christian name. + +‘O Lord Belchamber, how unfortunate! I would have given worlds not to +have met you just now. Give me a minute or two, I’m all upset.’ + +Sainty opened the door of the morning-room and ushered the agitated lady +in there. His heart was beating uncomfortably; he felt something +decisive was going to happen. Lady Eccleston sank into a chair and +struggled with emotion, giving vent to a series of little sniffs and +hiccoughs, and dabbing her eyes and mouth with her pocket-handkerchief. + +‘To-morrow we should have gone, and you need never have known,’ she said +at last in broken accents. + +‘Known what? I don’t understand.’ + +‘I blame myself,’ Lady Eccleston went on, not heeding the interruption. +‘It was my fault; I ought to have had more foresight and discretion; I +see it all now. If Sir Thomas had only been spared it would never have +happened; he had such sterling sense.’ + +‘Won’t you tell me what’s wrong?’ Sainty asked. + +‘I alone am to blame,’ Lady Eccleston repeated tragically. ‘Of course I +see it now. You are both so young, so pure-minded, so unsophisticated; +and dear Lady Charmington has lived so long out of the world; but _I_ +ought to have seen. Oh! I am inexcusable. But I did hope at least _you_ +would never know’; and like Agamemnon she once more veiled her grief. + +‘I might have known, I might have been sure,’ she continued after a +pause. ‘Heaven knows I have enough reason to know how malicious people +are, but my belief in my fellow-creatures is incurable. I can _not_ +bring myself to realise the love of scandal in evil-minded people.’ + +‘Good heavens!’ said Sainty, now thoroughly alarmed. ‘What can you mean? +Surely no one has presumed----’ + +‘People have talked,’ Lady Eccleston mourned. ‘Cissy being here so long, +and my leaving her here, and all. It seems people have drawn all sorts +of silly conclusions. I have been asked---- I can’t say it; you can +guess what; and the poor child has had letters, hints, and +congratulations, and all that; you can fancy it has upset her terribly; +she is almost beside herself; I can do nothing with her; you saw her +just now’; and Lady Eccleston took a little side-glance at Sainty behind +her pocket-handkerchief. ‘Of course, _I_ understand perfectly, and so +does she; but I see how it would strike outsiders. Oh! why is one always +wise after the event? Now you see why I am so angry with myself.’ + +Sainty was much perturbed. ‘This is monstrous, monstrous!’ he cried; +‘that she should be annoyed, distressed in this way, is horrible. I +hope, Lady Eccleston, you don’t think that I have behaved badly, that I +have taken any advantage of the confidence with which you have honoured +me.’ + +‘Oh dear no, Lord Belchamber; you have been kindness itself, and so has +your dear mother. I never can forget all your goodness. I knew how +absolutely I could trust _you_; but I ought to have thought, to have +remembered. Well, I had hoped and meant that at least we alone should +bear the burthen. This is an ill return to make to you for all your +sweetness and hospitality. You will wish you had never heard our name.’ + +‘Believe me, I am not thinking at all about myself. The one question is, +how is Miss Eccleston to be shielded from any annoyance in the matter? +It is intolerable that she should have to suffer.’ + +‘How like you! always so noble and unselfish,’ said Lady Eccleston +fervently. ‘I shall always remember how splendidly you have behaved. I +don’t blame _you_ for a single instant, but I can never forgive +_myself_. It is so like me; I am so impulsive. I thought only of the +immense benefit it would be to her intellectually, the intercourse with +such a mind as yours. I should have recollected there were dangers; that +at her age the intellect plays but a very small part beside the +heart----’ + +‘Good gracious! you don’t mean that she has thought me capable of +pestering her with my attentions? I knew well enough that I was only +allowed such liberty because--because I was different from other men.’ + +‘No, no; I don’t _think_ she thought anything of it. _I_ should have +known that it was only your kindness to a poor little invalid, your +desire to instruct a little ignoramus. But Cissy is very young; she may +have fancied---- Oh! I don’t know what I’m saying.’ + +Sainty had grown very pale; he had to hold on to a table for support. + +‘Lady Eccleston,’ he said in a low voice, ‘you can’t mean to imply that +Miss Eccleston could possibly care for _me_ in that way.’ + +‘Lord Belchamber, this is unfair,’ cried Lady Eccleston, starting up. +‘You have no right to try and force the child’s poor little secret from +me. You found me all unstrung after a terrible talk with her, and I have +let out far more than I should. I have told you I entirely exonerate you +from all blame; I appreciate that your motive was pure kindness. Is not +that enough for you? If people have been tiresome and tactless it is not +your fault, still less hers, poor girl. I blame _myself_, as I say, more +than I can tell you, but that has nothing to do with you. If I have been +foolish I am more than punished; but I only regret that I cannot bear +_all_ the punishment; we never can. The fault or folly, call it what you +will, was mine, but much of the price must be paid by my poor innocent +child--that is the thought that unnerves me’; and her ladyship once more +had recourse to her pocket-handkerchief. ‘She has no father,’ she +wailed; ‘her brothers are mere children in knowledge of the world; and +I, her mother, who should have shielded her from trouble, in my blind, +foolish desire to procure her a little intellectual advantage, have +brought on her the bitterest trial of her life.’ + +Sainty was twisting his stick in his fingers in great agitation. ‘It is +too bad, too bad,’ he said, ‘that she should be pestered like this and +made unhappy. I would do anything in my power to repair the harm of +which I have been the unwitting cause. But if the trouble is, as I +suppose, only what stupid people have been saying or writing to her, I +don’t see what I can do. Poor child! I can well understand how her pride +and delicacy must have been hurt.’ + +‘No, no; there is nothing to be done, nothing,’ said Lady Eccleston. ‘I +never meant that you should know; and, Lord Belchamber, promise me one +thing: never refer to this to Cissy; she would die of shame, if she +thought I had told you. We are going to-morrow; try and forget what I +have said, especially--especially----’ and she broke off abruptly, and +made a stumbling grope at the door-handle, as though she would leave the +room. + +‘Stop a minute, please,’ Sainty cried, interposing. ‘Don’t go. I don’t +want to be indiscreet, but you said something just now which seemed to +hint---- Oh! I know it’s incredible; but don’t you see, it would make +all the difference whether her distress came _only_ from the +mortification of people having coupled our names, or if it was possible +that she could look on me as--as----’ + +‘Say no more, say no more. I understand you perfectly,’ interrupted Lady +Eccleston. ‘You are the soul of punctilious honour. You are capable of +any sacrifice, if you thought that even, as you said just now, +_unwittingly_ you had made a poor girl care for you; but I have not said +it, and I will not say it. I have pride for her, as I should have it for +myself. I would _never_ admit it. You are perfectly justified in +believing that her distress arises _solely_ from what people have said,’ +and this time the lady, with a magnificent gesture of renunciation, +really did get to the door, and left Sainty in a whirl of conflicting +emotions. Was it possible that he had touched the heart of this +beautiful young creature? It was inconceivable that _she_ should be in +love with _him_, and he turned with a pathetic smile to the long glass +between the two tall windows. Yet her mother had seemed to hint it. If +it were so, then there was nothing simpler than saving her from trouble. +A word would do it. But it could not be; the thing was unthinkable. And +he fell to wondering if he wished to think it, or not. What was his +feeling towards her? Was this protecting, pitying tenderness, this +longing to interpose between her and sorrow, was this love? It was very +unlike what he had dreamed it to be. But was not everything in life +strangely unlike our young idea of it? And ought he to consider his own +feelings in the matter at all? If, however innocently, he had led her to +think he cared for her, if in her youth and inexperience she had +mistaken his friendship, his interest in her studies, for a warmer +feeling; above all, if the inscrutable workings of the female heart had +led her for some mysterious reason to return it, was he not in honour +bound to think only of her happiness in the matter? If a young and +beautiful woman had done him this honour, was it for him, him of all +people, to feel anything but humblest gratitude? The thought was not +without a certain sweetness that a woman had recognised the qualities of +his head and heart, to the extent of forgetting his lack of all that +women most prized in man, strength, courage, virility. He acknowledged +that a man could not have done so, that had the positions been reversed, +had he been handsome, vigorous, physically attractive, she ugly, +misshapen, unhealthy, no beauties of the soul would have stirred in him +the wish to make her his wife. He bowed his head in awe before the +greater spirituality of woman; even a thoughtless London girl brought up +among worldly surroundings and low ideals was capable of higher flights +than the most refined and least carnal of men. And he had presumed to +patronise, almost to look down on her, because she had not dulled the +edge of her originality with much reading. After all, why did he +hesitate? Had he not dreamed of some such possibility as this, yet +hardly dared to hope for it? Was it likely that two women would be found +willing to overlook his many deficiencies? was not this precisely the +one chance of his life? His mother had said she wished him to marry. His +mother! Strange that he had not thought of her sooner! He would go and +consult his mother; _she_ would know better than any one how to advise +him. + +Lady Charmington listened indulgently to his recital. She did not seem +surprised. + +‘I thought all that poetry reading would come to something of the sort,’ +she said. + +‘I can’t make out now,’ said Sainty, ‘whether what is troubling her is +anything more than resentment of idle gossip, the natural repulsion of a +delicate-minded girl from having her name coupled with a man’s.’ + +‘Oh, I suspect it is more,’ said his mother. ‘But you? Are you fond of +the girl on your side?’ + +‘I don’t know that I am in love with her, even now, and I certainly +never dreamed of the possibility of _her_ being in love with _me_.’ + +‘Well, her mother certainly gave you to understand that she was; it is +unfortunate if you have made the poor girl care for you, and don’t feel +you can return it.’ + +‘Good heavens, mother! If it were possible that such a creature had +really stooped to love me, I ought to thank her on my knees.’ + +‘I don’t quite see _that_; but I should be sorry to have any one able to +say that you had trifled with her. You see, her mother left her in my +charge; and I suppose I ought not to have let you be so much alone +together.’ + +‘But surely,’ cried Sainty, ‘you don’t think I am capable of taking +advantage of the confidence reposed in me, to--to---- Oh! the idea is +ludicrous; you must see its absurdity.’ + +‘I must say you have given the girl every reason to think you liked +her,’ said his mother judicially. ‘I have never seen you show the same +desire for anybody’s society before; it is not surprising if she mistook +the nature of your attentions. Pretty girls are not in the habit of +having young men so devoted to the improvement of their minds.’ + +‘I would not “behave badly,” as people call it, for worlds,’ said +Sainty. ‘I only can’t get over the extreme grotesqueness of its being +possible for me to do so. In spite of both you and Lady Eccleston, it +still seems to me quite incredible that I should rouse any such feeling +in her.’ + +‘There is a very simple way of finding out,’ said Lady Charmington. + +‘But how if in her kindness and inexperience she is mistaking pity, +gratitude, affection--call it what you will--for Love? It is possible +even (God forgive me for thinking of such a thing!) that the +surroundings, the place, the name, the whole business may have acted on +her almost unconsciously, and helped her to mistake her own heart.’ + +‘Judge not,’ said Lady Charmington, with all the air of one who had +never done such a thing in her life; ‘I should be sorry to think so +badly of the poor child as that.’ + +‘Oh, I didn’t mean to blame her. I am sure she would not _consciously_ +have let such considerations weigh with her; but it seems so abnormal +that any woman should feel anything like love for me, that I am still +trying to find some explanation to fit the facts.’ + +Lady Charmington laid her hand on his shoulder. ‘My dear boy,’ she said, +‘you are not called upon to understand _her_ feelings; what you have got +to do is to try and understand your own. It has been the dearest wish of +my heart to see you happily married; especially since your brother’s +behaviour has brought such bitter sorrow and disgrace upon us all. Here +is a nice, good girl, well brought up, and I think she loves you. The +question is whether you like her well enough to make her your wife.’ + +Sainty shook his head. ‘The question is whether I could make her happy,’ +he said; ‘what have I to give her in exchange for the priceless treasure +of a good woman’s love?’ + +Dinner that evening was a cheerless meal. Lady Charmington, never a +great talker, was more than ordinarily silent. Belchamber made several +attempts to start a conversation on indifferent subjects, and Lady +Eccleston chattered feverishly, with one eye on him and one on her +daughter, who sat sullen and defiant and ate nothing. Sainty’s heart +smote him as he looked on her. Whether their two mothers were right or +not, he would speak to her after dinner. If she took him, he would +consecrate his life to her happiness. If, as he still thought far more +likely, their wishes had misled them, and she did not care for him, she +had only to refuse him, and her pride was healed. Then, when her friends +said, ‘We thought you were going to marry Lord Belchamber,’ she would +only have to say, ‘He wanted me to, poor man, but I couldn’t do it.’ +That he was thinking entirely of _her_ happiness showed how little he +was really in love with her, but that neither affected his decision nor +seemed to him to matter in the least. + +Lady Charmington was a skilled and experienced knitter, and Lady +Eccleston, who kept a bit of property crochet to hook at when she was +with other women who worked, became surprisingly interested in the +intricacies of the garment on which her friend was engaged. Her voluble +inquiries and apologies for her own stupidity kept up a running +accompaniment to the click-clack of the needles and Lady Charmington’s +occasional terse explanations. Cissy had withdrawn to the extreme other +end of the long room in which they sat, and pretended to immerse herself +in a book. Sainty drew a chair up to hers, so as to interpose the view +of his own back between her and the two older women. + +‘Miss Eccleston,’ he said, ‘I have got something I want to say to you.’ + +Cissy looked up from her book. ‘Yes?’ was all she said. Her attitude +expressed only weariness; she did not appear to be at all fluttered. + +‘You are worried, unhappy,’ Sainty went on. ‘I am afraid you have been +annoyed by people gossiping about your stay here, about the relations +between you and me.’ He spoke in a low voice, for her ear alone; he was +looking into her eyes, trying to surprise some indication of what effect +his words had on her. Cissy did not look down or betray any +embarrassment. + +‘I suppose mamma told you that?’ she said. + +‘I can’t bear to see you like this, and to know that, however +unintentionally, I am the cause.’ + +‘Oh! that’s all right; I am sure you meant nothing but what was kind.’ + +‘Miss Eccleston--Cissy, I want to tell you I am quite well aware of the +extreme unlikelihood of your being able to care for me. I understand +that you should be angry and sore at vulgar people’s mistaking the +nature of our friendship. I am not silly or vain enough to suppose that +you would be willing to marry me; but remember if any one ever says +anything more to you about this, your position is quite simple; you have +only to say you have refused me----’ + +Cissy never shifted her calm, level gaze. ‘Lord Belchamber,’ she said +quietly, ‘am I to understand that you are proposing to me?’ + +‘I don’t for a moment expect you to accept me; I just want you to know, +and other people to know, that if you don’t it is entirely because you +don’t wish to.’ + +‘I see; you mean you will make me a sham proposal, on the distinct +understanding that I say “no,” so that I may have the satisfaction of +telling my friends that I might have been a marchioness if I’d liked; +but you’d be awfully sold if I said “yes.”’ + +‘You know I don’t mean anything of the sort,’ said Sainty. ‘But I know +how hopeless it is that a girl like you should care for a man like me, +and I wouldn’t insult you by supposing that anything I have to offer +could make any difference. I don’t want to add to your troubles the pain +of thinking I had hoped you might accept me and that you have got to +disappoint me.’ + +‘Then it _is_ a _bonâ fide_ offer that you are making me?’ said Cissy +sardonically; her tone expressed anything but exultation, and though she +still looked at him her eyes seemed to be looking at some one else a +long way off. ‘It’s the queerest proposal, I should think, any one ever +made,’ and she gave a little dry laugh. ‘Take care I don’t accept it. +Whatever you may think, a little pauper like me might well be tempted by +what you have to offer, as you call it.’ + +‘I don’t like to hear you talk like that,’ Sainty said. ‘I know it is +only a joke, but there are things I don’t like joked about. That’s the +way you used to talk, but you’ve been so different lately.’ + +‘Lord Belchamber,’ said Cissy, ‘let’s understand one another. If you are +making me an offer out of chivalry, that I may have an answer to +people’s malicious chatter, I can only say I’m very much obliged to you; +but if you really want me to marry you, I’m quite ready to do so. I +can’t say fairer than that, can I? After all,’ she added in a softer +tone, ‘quite apart from worldly considerations, I think I might do much +worse for myself; you’ve been very good to me, and you’re a much better +sort than--than most of the men I’ve met,’ and for the first time she +looked away, and gave a little sigh. + +Sainty was much moved. ‘Cissy,’ he said, ‘do you really mean that in +spite of everything you think you could love me a little?’ and he tried +to take her hand; but at the touch of him the girl flung herself back +into the furthest corner of the big chair in which she sat, and her +glance once more crossed his, steel-bright like a rapier. ‘Do I +understand,’ she asked, ‘that I have your authority to announce our +engagement to our respective parents?’ + +Sainty stared blankly; he could only nod. Cissy wheeled her chair +sharply back, and called out, ‘Mamma! Lord Belchamber has proposed to +me, and I have accepted him.’ + +Lady Eccleston was across the room in two bounds. ‘My darling, what a +way to tell me such a thing! You really are the strangest child. What +can Lord Belchamber and Lady Charmington think of you? Dear Lady +Charmington, you must forgive my Cissy; she’s so excitable, I think +happiness has turned her head a little; and mine too, for that matter, +for it would be useless to pretend I’m not delighted, only it is all so +sudden, so unexpected,’ and she clasped her daughter to her heart, and +kissed and wept over her in the most approved fashion. Cecilia did not +return her mother’s kisses; she looked at her with a very queer eye +indeed, before which Lady Eccleston’s effusiveness drooped a little. She +turned to her future son-in-law and held out both her hands. ‘Dear +Sainty (I may call you Sainty?), I must kiss you too,’ she cried. + +As Sainty submitted to the threatened salute, it struck him as grimly +humorous that it should not be his intended who kissed him, but her +mother. + +Cissy crossed the room, and picked up the ball of wool which Lady +Eccleston had shed in her rapid transit, and by which she was still +fastened like a spider to the place where she had been sitting. ‘Lady +Charmington,’ she said, ‘mamma has adopted your son with great +readiness; have you nothing to say to me? Are you not pleased?’ + +Lady Charmington had risen and laid aside her work. ‘Of course I am +pleased,’ she said; ‘I have wished, of all things, to see Sainty +married; but, my dear,’ she added, something in the girl’s manner +seeming to strike her as peculiar, ‘I hope you are not taking this +solemn step lightly; have you examined your heart, and asked God’s +blessing on what you are doing? Are you sure you love my son enough to +be happy with him, and to make him happy?’ + +But Lady Eccleston was a whirlwind of tears, protestations, laughter, +and congratulation; she caught them all up, and swept them away in the +current of her rejoicing. No one else was allowed to say anything. + +Sainty also had drawn near, and now stood before his mother. She took a +hand of each of the young people in hers, and said solemnly ‘God bless +you, my children.’ + +At the moment Sainty had a vision of the intensity with which she had +cursed her other son, on a like occasion, and thought irresistibly of +the fountain that ‘sent forth sweet water and bitter.’ The context rang +in his head like a knell: ‘My brethren, these things ought not to be.’ + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + + +The wedding was fixed for the first week in June. As Lady Charmington +said, there was no reason for delay, though it must be owned that +neither of the young people seemed very eager to press on the date. Lady +Eccleston could not have borne a wedding in Lent, and Lady Charmington +had a lingering old Scottish superstition, of which she was heartily +ashamed, against May marriages. All things considered, the beginning of +June seemed plainly indicated. Everybody would be in town then, and it +was to be a London wedding. Cissy grumbled a good deal at having to miss +the season; but her mother affected to treat her lamentations as a joke. + +‘Of _course_ she doesn’t mean it,’ she said, in answer to Sainty’s +expression of his willingness to consult Cissy’s wishes in everything. +‘You know how absurd my children are; they always must make a joke of +everything, but it doesn’t mean that their hearts are not in the right +place; under all their nonsense, which I never check, for I do so love +to see them merry, they have very serious feelings about all the big +things of life.’ + +A cousin of Lady Eccleston’s, who was married to a newly-made peer with +a large income, and who had never before shown the slightest inclination +to do much for her poorer kinsfolk, expressed her approval of Cissy’s +brilliant match by offering the use of her house for the occasion. + +‘It is very good of dear Louisa,’ said Lady Eccleston, ‘and I must own +we should have been sadly squashed in our little _bicoque_. Still, if we +hadn’t always been _as_ sisters, I couldn’t have taken it from her. Poor +dear! It is such a bitter regret to her having no children of her own. +Naturally, mine are a great deal to her; and I can quite understand her +pleasure in having Cissy married from her house. Don’t think I’m +ungrateful to the dear creature, Sainty, but I own in my heart I would +rather have had the girl go to her bridal from her own and her mother’s +little home; but that is _entre nous_, my dear boy; I wouldn’t hurt poor +Louisa’s feelings for worlds.’ + +Sainty found being engaged very different from anything he had read of +it. Things seemed so little changed with him, that he wondered at times +if it could really be he who was to be married in a few weeks. Was it +possible that at a date definitely fixed, and not very far distant, his +whole being was to undergo this tremendous transformation, was +henceforth to be linked in closest union with a creature of whom he knew +practically nothing, and that not for a season, like any other +circumstance in life, but as long ‘as they both should live,’ ‘till +death did them part’? The prospect terrified rather than attracted him. + +Sometimes he tried to feel elated at the thought that he was to join the +ranks of normal happy people who love and are loved, was to lead about a +wife like other men, and hold up his head among his fellows. He told +himself that this supremest gift was far beyond anything he had dared to +hope. It was to no purpose. He might be flattered, grateful, touched, +but he was conscious of none of that blissful thrill that is said to +transfigure existence and make a heaven on earth. Sometimes he wondered +how it had all come about so suddenly. Everything he had done had seemed +not only natural, but inevitable at the time. He had walked into the +situation as simply as going in to dinner; yet now there were moments +when the thought of what they had both undertaken appalled him. He was +as frightened for Cissy as for himself. Did she know what she was doing, +what it meant? A dozen times a day he recalled the scene in the library, +her hard, unflinching gaze, the mocking tones of her voice. Was that the +way that a woman made the ‘irrevocable sweet surrender’ to a man who had +won her heart? If she had made a mistake, if she did not love him, +ought she not still to be saved from the fate she had accepted, even at +the eleventh hour? + +He saw extremely little of his betrothed. He had never had much to do +with engaged couples, but he had an impression that they were generally +left a good deal alone together, that people and things combined to +respect the privacy of mutual love; yet from the day of his engagement +it was no exaggeration to say that he had hardly seen Cissy alone for +five minutes. It is true that she had not actually left Belchamber next +morning; but after their surprising freedom from other claims, both she +and her mother seemed now all impatience to be gone, and during the time +that they remained, they were mostly shut up in their own rooms +announcing the event to a hundred correspondents, or dashing off their +thanks for the congratulations that arrived by every post. ‘She must +really get home, and begin to see about clothes; there was none too much +time, and this was such a bad time of year; just when every one was +busy.’ Cissy was sure, if she delayed another day, she ‘shouldn’t have a +decent rag to her back, and should have to be married in her +petticoats.’ + +From the day they went to town there began a round of shoppings and +tryings-on, of scribbling notes, unpacking, cataloguing, and rapturously +thanking for wedding-presents, which, as Cissy was marrying a rich man +with a house full of beautiful things, were, of course, far more +numerous and costly than if she had married a curate, or a captain in a +marching regiment. Then the list of people to be invited to the wedding +had to be discussed _ad infinitum_, at first with regard to the size of +the house in Chester Square, and after the cousin’s offer, to be +enlarged, amended, and corrected. With every fresh batch of presents, +the number swelled of those whom it was deemed indispensable to ask, +till it seemed to Sainty that there was not a stranger in the whole +great indifferent city who had not been called in to assist at his +nuptials. + +He also had come to town, as in duty bound, and was staying with his +uncle Firth, but though he spent several hours a day in Chester Square, +he found himself horribly in the way there. Lady Eccleston and Cissy sat +squashed sideways by the open drawers of their respective +writing-tables, like people playing a perpetual duet on two organs with +all the stops pulled out. The absurdly inadequate pieces of furniture on +which women transact business became so littered with lists, letters, +acceptances, refusals, the drawers so bulged with stacks of +silver-printed invitations and stamped envelopes, that the little hands +with the scratching pens seemed by their perpetual movement to be +feverishly preserving an ever narrowing space for themselves, as ducks +keep a hole open in a rapidly freezing pond. + +Of happy interchange of rapturous feelings, murmured talks in quiet +corners, or those long palpitating silences that lovers know, too +blissful to be marred by talk, our engaged couple had no experience. +Though Sainty was far too delicate-minded for the mere physical aspects +of courtship to appeal strongly to his imagination, it did occur to him +that an occasional embrace was not inappropriate between people about to +be married; but on the one occasion when he attempted anything of the +sort, he had been repulsed with such energy and decision that he had +immediately desisted. He had a conviction that Cissy thought him a fool +for accepting defeat so easily, but to struggle for a kiss like an +enamoured costermonger was repugnant to all his ideas. So he continued +to meet and greet his promised bride as though she were the most +indifferent of strangers. + +One morning at breakfast he asked his uncle if he ought not to make his +betrothed a present. Lord Firth came out from behind the morning paper +with a bound. + +‘My dear boy! do you mean to say you haven’t done so?’ + +‘Not yet,’ said Sainty; ‘but I supposed, of course, I should have to.’ + +‘Not even a ring?’ asked Lord Firth. Sainty was forced to admit it. + +‘Why, the very day she accepted you, you ought to have given her a ring; +if you hadn’t got one fit to offer her, you should have telegraphed to +town at once for some. You must get one at once and take it to her; and, +of course, you must give her other things too, a tiara or necklace or +something really handsome, and a bag or dressing-case. You know the kind +of thing. Find out from her mother what she’s got, and which she would +like, and get the duchess to help you choose things; _she_ knows what’s +what. They must think it very odd that you haven’t done it already.’ + +‘There are the emeralds,’ said Sainty. + +‘Of course she’ll have them to wear,’ said his uncle, ‘but you can’t +_give_ them to her, because they are heirlooms. As it happens, the one +thing you are rather poor in is jewellery. Your grandmother had a lot, +but it was her own, and you may believe she didn’t leave any behind her; +your mother never cared for it, and never had much. She will probably +give your wife, or leave her, what she has; but of course you must see +that she has the proper things, and do the thing well. Don’t be stingy +about it.’ + +The duchess was delighted to help, and echoed Lord Firth’s astonishment +at Sainty’s dilatoriness in the matter. + +‘You really are the most extraordinary boy,’ she said. ‘I’m just going +for my walk; we’ll go round to Rumond’s at once and see what he’s got.’ + +‘We’ve been expecting a visit from your lordship,’ said the great +jeweller unctuously, ‘ever since we heard the happy news. May I be +permitted to offer my congratulations on the event? We have always had +the honour of supplying your family, and hoped that on such an occasion +you would not desert us. I was remarking to Mr. Diby only the other day +that I had been wondering we did not get a telegram to go down to +Belchamber--either he or I would have been delighted; but you preferred +to wait till you came to town: quite right, quite right.’ + +They were ushered into a little sanctum, where presently on a mat of +dark blue velvet were displayed treasures which made Sainty blink, and +of which the prices gave him cold shivers down his back. The duchess +handled and appraised the gems with the sangfroid of long habit; but her +grandson had never in his life had occasion to buy any jewellery, and +had not the faintest idea of what such things were worth. To deck the +bright curls of a woman with the cost of a hospital, or hang the price +of a working-men’s college round her neck, seemed to him absolutely +vicious; it had a horrible flavour of that life into which he had +obtained his only glimpse at Arthur’s supper-party--poor Arthur, whom +almost alone he would have cared to have near him on his wedding-day, +and who he knew would not be there, because his wife could not be asked. + +He left the shop with a horrible sense of guilt, and a feeling that the +act which in him would be applauded as a fitting generosity was very +much in the same category with his brother’s prodigalities, not +differing in kind, but only so much more blameworthy as it was so much +greater in degree. Arthur, he felt sure, would not have hesitated to +hang the girl of his heart in jewels, nor have wasted a thought on what +it cost, and again he wondered whether his qualms were the result of his +well-known parsimony, or one more proof that he was not really in love +with her who was to be his wife. + +It was soon clear that Cissy did not share his views on these subjects; +the evening on which his presents arrived in Chester Square was the only +occasion since their betrothal on which she expressed anything +resembling affection for him. Her eyes sparkled like the diamonds in her +little crown as she tried the things on, and pirouetted about the room +with them. She waltzed up to Sainty and dropped him a deep curtsey. ‘How +does my lord and master think I look?’ she said coquettishly; and then +in a sudden gust of gratitude she caught his hands in hers, and for the +first time bent forward and kissed him. Sainty blushed hotly; this kiss, +which spontaneously given would have meant so much to him, was like the +stamp on a receipt for cash value received; and it was the last, as it +had been the first, of their singular courtship. + +As the weeks passed, Cissy grew stranger and more unlike herself. The +intervals of feverish gaiety, which had marked the earlier stages of her +engagement, became rarer, and were succeeded by fits of gloom and +depression that seemed utterly foreign to her nature. Whatever she might +be at other times, that came to be the mood in which she invariably +received Belchamber. She never willingly addressed him, and there were +days when it seemed beyond her power to speak peaceably to him. +Sometimes she was so rude that Lady Eccleston would playfully +remonstrate, or Tommy would burst out with, ‘Hang it all, Cissy, you’ve +no right to speak to Sainty like that. If I was him, I’m jiggered if I’d +stand it.’ + +They had never from the first been allowed many unwitnessed interviews, +but now it seemed to Sainty that it was Cissy herself who carefully +avoided any occasion of finding herself alone with him, and if ever she +could by no means escape, she would take refuge from his attempts at +conversation in sullen monosyllables, and sometimes even in absolute +silence. + +One day he asked her in desperation if she felt she had made a +mistake--if she wanted to be released. ‘It is not too late,’ he said, +‘but it soon will be; if you repent of what you have done, if you want +me to give you back your freedom, in mercy to yourself, to me, speak +while there is yet time.’ + +‘Cissy,’ he pleaded, after waiting in vain for any answer, ‘if you don’t +feel that you love me enough, don’t do a thing that will ruin both our +lives.’ + +‘Do I seem as if I loved you?’ she asked brutally. + +‘So little, that I can’t help feeling that the idea of marrying me is +repugnant to you. If so, never mind me; have the courage to put a stop +to the whole thing; a word from you will do it.’ + +‘Oh! will it? It is not as simple as all that.’ + +‘I will help you in any way I can; I will do anything you want.’ + +Cissy continued to stare into the fire in silence; she had never once +looked at him. ‘I don’t know what I do want,’ she said at last, +hopelessly. + +Sainty was about to say more, but at that moment, with a great +admonitory rattling of the door-handle, Lady Eccleston hurried in, with +her arms full of parcels. + +‘More presents, children,’ she cried gaily; ‘here, Sainty, come and take +this top one off, or I shall drop it. That makes three hundred and +seventy-nine. Ouf! I’m glad I’ve no more daughters to marry.’ + +‘Listening! I thought so,’ cried Cissy, starting up, and without a +glance at the gifts from which her mother was beginning to remove the +wrappings she left the room. At No. 379, fans and smelling-bottles, and +even small articles of jewellery, were becoming a drug in the market. +Lady Eccleston got very red, but took no notice, affecting to be +absorbed in undoing a bit of ribbon that had got into a knot. ‘“With +best wishes, Mr. and Mrs. Bonham Trotter,”’ she read; ‘really very good +of them. We hardly know them, and I hadn’t meant to ask them. It is the +seventeenth pair of paste buckles, but they are pretty though not old, +and they come in for shoes. Who’s this? “Every good wish, Mr. Austin +Pryor.” What a beauty! It is the prettiest fan she has had; really +charming! What _can_ this be? A pincushion! “Fondest love from Miss +Henrietta Massinger.” What rubbish. I wish people wouldn’t send all this +trash. Give me the green book on my writing-table, Sainty, and let’s +enter them before I forget it. Three more notes for that poor child to +write, and she’s tired out; any one can see it.’ + +‘Lady Eccleston,’ said Sainty, ‘do you think Cissy’s _only_ tired? To me +she seems very unhappy----’ + +‘Tired, my dear boy, worn out; her nerves are in fiddle-strings; I shall +be thankful for her sake when it’s all over,’ and she murmured as she +wrote, ‘Pair of paste buckles, Mr. and Mrs. Bonham Trotter, 377. +Tortoiseshell fan, Watteau subject, Mr. Austin Pryor, 378. Embroidered +velvet horseshoe pincush----’ + +‘Do stop writing a minute, and listen to me,’ said Sainty. ‘It’s your +daughter’s happiness that is at stake. Tell me, truly, do you think she +loves me?’ + +‘Loves you! My dear Sainty, what a question! _Of course_ she loves you,’ +cried Lady Eccleston. ‘Miss H. Massinger, No. 379,’ and she looked up +with a bright smile, as she rubbed energetically on the blotting-paper. +‘Have you been having a lovers’ quarrel?’ she asked. + +‘No, no, nothing of that sort; but you yourself must have seen how oddly +she behaves. She never will be alone with me for a minute if she can +help it; she hardly ever speaks to me, and if I speak to _her_, as often +as not she doesn’t answer me. It is the queerest way of showing love.’ + +Lady Eccleston smiled again, a little indulgent smile full of _finesse_. + +‘My dear child,’ she said, ‘is _that_ all? How little you know girls. +Can’t you understand that to a girl of Cissy’s temperament, so +absolutely pure and modest, marriage represents the unknown, the +terrible; the prospect of it fills her with a thousand tremors and +apprehensions. Believe me, a girl who can approach her wedding-day with +calm nerves and a cheerful, smiling face, is either a cow, and has no +sensibilities, or else she knows a great deal too much.’ + +‘But she looks at me really as if she _hated_ me,’ Sainty persisted. ‘If +she has mistaken her feelings, if the idea is repugnant to her, if she +feels that, having once given her word, she is bound, either out of +consideration for me, or fear of all the talk, to go through with +things, is it not our duty, yours and mine before all others, to save +her from herself while there is yet time?’ + +‘Dear modest fellow! Every word you say makes me love you more, and +convinces me how exactly you are suited to such a nature as Cissy’s; I +see how well you will understand her; how patient, how gentle you will +be with her. As to her behaviour to _you_, I know; I feel for you a +dozen times a day; but you must not doubt her affection. Good gracious! +I treated my poor dear husband a thousand times worse when we were +engaged. My mother used to say she didn’t see how he stood it; but the +dear man had endless patience; he never doubted; and he soon succeeded +in reconciling me to my fate,’ added the lady, with a modest simper, +‘when once we were married.’ + +‘Maidenly tremors are all very well,’ said Sainty, ‘but Cissy’s +behaviour gives me the impression of a much deeper seated repugnance. +Don’t, for pity’s sake, let her wreck her life if she isn’t sure she +cares enough for me to marry me.’ + +‘You are generous, considerate, unselfish as ever,’ cried Lady +Eccleston. ‘But trust _me_ who know her so well. My dear Sainty, do you +suppose if I were not absolutely sure this marriage was for my child’s +happiness, that I, her mother, who must have her welfare at heart, +should not be the first to oppose it?’ + +After that there seemed nothing more to be said. Still Sainty was not +satisfied, and he determined to carry his perplexities to his uncle, on +whose sterling commonsense he had often leaned comfortably in boyhood. + +Lord Firth looked grave, and pursed up his mouth judicially. + +‘This is awkward,’ he said, ‘infernally awkward. Do you mean to say you +want to get out of it?’ + +‘Oh no! not for myself at all. I don’t say I’m desperately in love; but +I don’t know that I ever should be. As long as I thought Cissy cared for +me, I was very much honoured, and ready to devote my life to making her +happy; but as the time comes nearer, I am more and more convinced that +she does not love me. She may have felt sorry for me; she may have let +herself be dazzled by what she would gain in a worldly way. I don’t +pretend to understand why she took me; but I am sure that she repents +what she has done, that, if it could be managed for her, she would be +glad to be released.’ + +‘Have you told her so? Have you offered to release her?’ + +‘Yes.’ + +‘Well, what did she say?’ + +‘She said nothing. When I pressed her she said she didn’t know what she +wanted. Then her mother came in, and Cissy went out of the room.’ + +‘Did you say anything about it to the old woman?’ + +‘Yes; I said what I’ve just told you.’ + +‘And what did _she_ say?’ + +‘Oh, she said girls were always like that, that I didn’t understand +them--which God knows I don’t--that a modest girl was always in a funk +before marriage, and that she would be all right afterwards.’ + +‘Hm,’ said Lord Firth. ‘Well, I’m an old bachelor, and don’t know much +about them either; they’re queer creatures. I always vaguely distrust +that Eccleston woman; but I’ve no reason for supposing she would sell +her daughter, and I must say the girl never struck me as being +particularly under her mother’s thumb. On the contrary, she’s always +been rather pert to her when I’ve seen her.’ + +‘I can’t make it out; it all seems a hopeless tangle,’ said poor Sainty. + +‘The whole business struck me, when I heard of it, as being rather rash +and ill-advised,’ said his uncle. ‘If I had been consulted, I should +have suggested you had better both have been a little surer of your own +feelings before announcing the engagement. I suspected your mother and +Lady Eccleston of cooking up the affair when I heard of the Ecclestons +being so much at Belchamber, but I didn’t feel called upon to interfere. +It was obviously desirable that you should marry, and if you fancied +Miss Cissy, I knew nothing against the girl, though I don’t much care +for the mother. Besides, you are of age, and capable of arranging your +own life without the interference of a guardian.’ + +‘Then you think there is nothing to be done?’ + +‘I don’t see what. You say you’ve offered the girl to break it off, and +she didn’t seem to wish it, or at least wasn’t sure, and that her mother +assured you she was only shy. What more can you do? If _you_ want to +back out, it’s another matter. Though it would look very bad so near the +time, I suppose it might be done.’ + +As a last resort, Sainty wrote to his mother, though he felt sure what +her answer would be; and sure enough Lady Charmington wrote with no +uncertain pen. ‘If you had any misgivings you had better not have been +in such a hurry to propose. Now it is altogether too late to go back on +your word. I consider that you are bound in honour almost as if you were +already married. It would be abominable to throw the girl over at the +eleventh hour, when she has got her things, and all the invitations are +out for the wedding. Think of the mortification to her, of the scandal +it would cause. People might even say you had found out something +against her. It would be enough to prevent her making another match, for +every one would know of it, and talk about it.’ + +Sainty was struck for the hundredth time with the inevitability of his +mother’s misapprehension. She passed over in silence all question of +Cissy not caring for him, which was the one point on which he had +insisted, and instantly assumed that his misgivings arose from nothing +but the fatal weakness of his character, which made flight his one +impulse in face of any decisive act. + +Sainty had made his last effort, and proceeded to drift resignedly with +the stream. There was just one other person to whom he had momentarily +thought of applying for counsel and help, and that was his old friend +Mrs. de Lissac; but Alice had behaved rather strangely, he thought, +about the whole matter. On first coming to London, he had gone to see +her as a matter of course; but though she had made a grand dinner for +him and Cissy in honour of the engagement, and had showered magnificent +presents on them both, the old cordial welcome was somehow lacking. She +seemed ill at ease with him, and had fluttered hastily away from all +attempts on his part to talk about Cissy, displaying positive terror if +he showed any disposition to become confidential. + +Nothing was easier than to discourage Sainty from talking about +himself. If his confidences were not met, as Alice de Lissac had always +hitherto met them, more than half-way, they died a natural death. + +The day of Belchamber’s nuptials dawned inevitably in its turn. No +convulsion of nature destroyed Lord Firth’s comfortable bachelor +quarters, or buried the north side of Chester Square in ruins. Sainty +got through the morning somehow, in a sort of waking dream, listening +abstractedly to Gerald Newby, who had come up from Cambridge at his +request to act as his ‘best man,’ and had much to say on many subjects, +from the marriage-service of the Church of England--of some parts of +which he strongly disapproved--to the tyranny of custom which imposed +the high hat and frock coat, garments neither comfortable, convenient, +nor æsthetically beautiful. + +Lady Charmington, who was staying at Roehampton with old Lady Firth, +brought her mother in for an early lunch as the wedding was fixed for +half-past two. + +At the appointed time Sainty found himself planted by a great bank of +palms and heavy-scented white flowers that made him feel sick. From +where he stood the whole great church was visible. Dimly, as through a +mist, he could descry his mother, straight and stern, in puritanical +drab, beside the huddled white chuddah and nodding plumes of his +grandmother, the duchess strapped into a petunia velvet, with a silver +bonnet whose aigrette seemed to sweep the skies, his Aunt Eva in a +Gainsborough hat, taking rapid notes for the _Looking-glass_, and +Claude, slim, cool, and elegant, his beautifully gloved, pearl-grey +hands crossed upon his cane, which he had rested on the seat beside him +as he stood sideways looking for the bride. Behind them a sea of faces, +mostly unknown, of light colours and black coats, of feathers, flowers, +and laces, stretched back to where, in a cloud of pink and white, the +bridesmaids clustered round the door, holding the great bouquets of +roses he had so nearly forgotten to order for them. + +The organ boomed, and the knowing-looking little choristers in their +stiff surplices went clattering down the aisle followed by a perfect +procession of smug ecclesiastics, among whom Sainty caught a fleeting +glimpse of dear old Meakins from Great Charmington. Lady Eccleston, +emotional, devotional, and gorgeous as the morning, rustled hastily to +her place in the front pew where George and Randolph were already +nudging each other and giggling. Then the little white-robed boys began +to come back, shrilly chanting, and as the choir separated to right and +left Sainty could see Tommy, very solemn and as red as the carnation in +his buttonhole, and on his arm a vision of soft shrouded loveliness, +coming slowly towards him. All the riddle of the future was hid in that +veiled figure. How little he really knew what was in the little head and +heart under all that whiteness; was it happiness or misery she was +bringing him? an honoured, dignified married life, an equal share of +joys and sorrows, ‘the children like the olive branches round about +their table’? or a loveless existence, the straining bonds of those +unequally yoked, the little sordid daily squabbles that eat the heart, +perhaps even shame, dishonour ...? What thoughts for a bridegroom +stepping forward to meet his bride at the altar! But who is master of +his thoughts? + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + + +The Duke of Sunborough having only a castle in Scotland, a palace in the +Midlands, a detached house with a garden in the centre of London, a +shooting-lodge in the north of England, and an old manor-house on the +border of Wales, had acquired in his stormy youth a little place in +Surrey some twelve or fifteen miles from town, a villa with terraces and +cedar-trees and hothouses and shady lawns sloping to the river, where, +if Rumour may be credited, there had sometimes been fine goings-on, but +which was now only used on rare occasions for what it has become the +fashion to call ‘week-end parties.’ + +This modest retreat, which would have seemed to most people a good-sized +country-house, had been lent to the young couple for their honeymoon, +and thither they repaired, for greater state and privacy, in a large +closed carriage with four horses and postillions, their two new +dressing-bags sitting solemnly opposite to them on the back seat, while +the servants and luggage went by train. + +Cissy, attired in the latest fashion and the palest hues, with a very +white face and very red eyes and nose, sat huddled in one corner and +stared out of the window, occasionally dabbing her features with a +little damp ball of a pocket-handkerchief. From the other end of the +long seat, on which a third person could easily have found room between +the little bride and bridegroom, Sainty watched her compassionately. He +contrasted the woebegone aspect and silent aloofness of his companion +with the cheerful garrulity of the same young lady when she had driven +about the country with him only a few months before. Then, had she +seemed depressed or unhappy, he would not have hesitated to ask the +cause of her melancholy, to offer help or at least consolation. Why, +now, was he afraid to attempt to comfort or even to make a movement +towards her? The explanation seemed a strange one: then she had been an +acquaintance, now she was his wife. His wife! The words struck with a +certain irony on his startled consciousness. It was that half-hour in +church which was to make them ‘one flesh’ which had thrust them so far +asunder. + +At last the silence became unendurable. + +‘Cissy,’ he said suddenly, ‘are you very miserable?’ + +His voice breaking in on the monotonous sounds of their progress +startled himself hardly less than his companion. + +Cissy shook herself and raised her head. + +‘Yes,’ she said defiantly, without looking round. + +‘Because of me?’ + +‘Yes--because of you.’ + +‘Why, what have I done?’ There was a relief in speech. If she would only +talk, no matter what she said; she might abuse him, accuse him--anything +was better than that horrible mute damp woe. But Cissy would not answer. + +‘Won’t you tell me how I have offended you? What have I done that you +don’t like?’ + +‘You’ve married me,’ she snapped at him. + +‘Isn’t that a little unjust?’ + +‘Most likely it is, horribly unjust. I don’t care if it is. I hate +myself and you and everybody, and I wish I was dead.’ + +‘Cissy, Cissy,’ cried Sainty, dreadfully pained, ‘don’t say such +things.’ + +‘Then why did you ask me?’ she retorted; ‘why can’t you let me alone?’ + +Sainty told himself that if there was ever a moment for patience it was +now; so much might depend on what he said next. He made a motion as +though he would take her hand, but at that there flashed out of her face +a look so evil, such a genuine naked horror as civilisation seldom lets +us show. Sainty fell back appalled; he felt that he had seen in her eyes +the very bottom of her feeling towards him, and viewed in the light of +that revelation the whole hopelessness of their future relations stood +momentarily clear before him. He lay back dazed and frightened, thankful +as a man to whom lightning has shown the danger of his surroundings for +the friendly darkness that once more veils them from his sight; and for +the rest of the drive neither occupant of the carriage said a word. + +When at last they drew up at their destination the house was on Cissy’s +side, and as soon as a bowing servant had opened the carriage-door she +jumped out before Sainty could offer her any assistance. A little shower +of rice that had lodged in the folds of her gown fell pattering from her +in the precipitancy of her flight, which caused a discreet grin on the +damp, red faces of the postillions and of the duke’s under-butler, who +had been sent down to help Sainty’s valet with the service. + +Belchamber caught a glimpse of an inscription framed in laurel leaves +stretched across the lintel, of which all that was clear to him were the +words ‘happy pair,’ as he followed his bride into the hall. Here the +women who had charge of the house were drawn up together with Cissy’s +new maid and his own valet. + +The housekeeper had embarked on a little speech, evidently prepared with +care. ‘May I be permitted,’ she was saying, ‘on behalf of myself and +fellow-servants, to welcome your ladyship on this auspicious occasion, +and to wish you and the marquis every happiness, and I am sure we shall +do our very best to make you comfortable, and his lordship too.’ Seeing +that Cissy stared at the woman with a dull eye, Sainty came to the +rescue. + +‘I am sure we are both very much obliged to you all,’ he said, ‘but Lady +Belchamber is very tired, and would be glad to see her room, if you will +show it to her.’ Cissy started at the sound of her new name in the mouth +of her husband, but moved off in the wake of the housekeeper, who had +dropped from the monumental tone of her welcome into a more comfortable +colloquialism. ‘I am sure your ladyship _must_ be tired--it’s a most +trying day; and you’ll like to see your room, and would you like a cup +of tea or anything after your long drive? Dinner isn’t ordered till +eight, and it’s only half-past six. Tea is set out in the morning-room, +but it will be quite easy to bring it up to you. I have tried to think +of everything, but, of course, anything your ladyship wishes +altered....’ Sainty heard her voice growing fainter down the corridor as +Cissy and the maid followed her to the staircase. He watched the little +procession out of sight and then turned wearily into the first room he +came to and dropped with a long sigh upon the gaudy chintz flowers of a +comfortable easy-chair. For him, too, the day had been ‘trying’ in more +ways than one. + +His man brought him a cup of tea and said that ‘her ladyship’ was having +hers in her room and was going to rest till dinner-time. He had not yet +been four hours wedded, and he noted with shocked surprise the distinct +relief with which he hailed the prospect of being free for a little from +the strain of his wife’s presence. Four hours! The morning seemed a +hundred years ago! For the rest of his natural life had he got always to +face this mute resentment? And for what? He had not forced her to marry +him; indeed he had adjured her not to. It was unheard of that she should +treat him as a criminal; he examined his conscience and found that so +far from having anything with which to reproach himself, he had behaved +to her throughout with the most scrupulous consideration. Could Lady +Eccleston be right, and might Cissy’s behaviour be nothing but the +natural nervousness of a modest young woman? Were girls always so +terrified in presence of the bridal mysteries? If that were all, she +might count on his perfect sympathy. No girl could be more of a stranger +to all that side of life than he, or approach it with more invincible +shyness. In all their talks it had seemed to him that the balance of +true modesty had been rather on his side than hers; he had often been +shocked by things she had said, but he could recollect no occasion on +which any remark of his had appeared to embarrass her in the least. + +Tired nature must have come to rescue him from his many perplexities, +for he was recalled to consciousness from a doze by the clock striking a +half-hour, and finding it was half-past seven, he decided to go upstairs +and get ready for dinner. He had no difficulty in finding his room. +Through almost the first door on the upper landing he saw his new +brushes adorning the dressing-table, his clothes laid out upon the bed. +As he turned in, he noticed the sharp click of a key in another door +from that by which he had entered, and which evidently communicated with +the next room, for behind it he could hear sounds of people moving +about, the opening and shutting of drawers and cupboards, and +occasionally Cissy’s voice speaking to her maid. That he heard all these +sounds but indistinctly was presently explained to him. Having changed +his clothes he tapped discreetly, and receiving no answer proceeded to +turn the handle; to his pleasure it yielded; he had been mistaken then; +she had not the distrust of him he had fancied. But his gratification +was shortlived; there were double doors between the rooms, and the inner +one was quite securely fastened. + +‘Who’s there?’ cried Cissy sharply. + +‘I hope you’re rested,’ Sainty called in a voice which he tried to make +pleasantly indifferent; ‘I’m going down, shall I tell them to get +dinner, or are you not ready?’ + +‘I’ll be down in a minute. Don’t wait for me,’ she called back, but made +no offer to undo the door. + +Dinner was not a cheerful meal, when presently Cissy appeared in a smart +new tea-gown, and took her place opposite to him. She crumpled her bread +and drank a great deal of water, and played with the wine-glasses and +her rings and the lace upon her dress. The meal passed almost in +silence, the two men gliding softly about and handing the dishes. Cissy +ate nothing, and Sainty felt obliged to break and taste a long +succession of undesired meats. + +‘They have given us much too much,’ he said. ‘We must tell that good +lady to-morrow that we don’t want all these things.’ + +Cissy assented indifferently. + +‘You’re not eating anything,’ Sainty said, after a pause. + +‘I’m not hungry. I had tea so late.’ + +Sainty found himself talking to the servants, and asking for things he +did not want, to break the oppressiveness of the atmosphere. + +If Cissy ate nothing while the servants were present, she made up for it +when they had left the room, by piling a whole dish of strawberries on +her plate, covering them with cream, and eating them voraciously. Sainty +watched her uneasily, with a sudden dread that she might be going mad. + +Things were not much more lively after dinner. The smiling housekeeper +had explained that she had not had the drawing-room lit up as she +thought they would be more ‘cosy’ in the ‘boodwar.’ Cissy sank deep in a +big armchair, and appeared to be immersed in a novel she had brought +with her. Sainty tried to read too, but his attention wandered; his eyes +fell first on his companion, the swirl of diaphanous drapery that +escaped from the arms of her chair and flowed out upon the floor like +water between the piers of a bridge, the little foot in its bead-wrought +slipper, the hands flashing with new rings that held the gaudy +book-cover like a shield between her face and him. From her they roved +to her surroundings. The room in which they sat had been decorated about +the year 1860 by Italian artists. Trellised grape vines were painted on +the walls, mixed with roses and large blue flowers of the convolvulus +family. Birds of gay plumage and highly imaginative butterflies were +sprinkled about them, and here and there a plump cupid in a pink +loincloth stood poised on one foot among the foliage, swinging a basket +of flowers. Cupids, indeed, were everywhere; several of them floated +round a hook in the sky-coloured ceiling, and made believe that it was +not it, but they, who supported the glass chandelier. They crawled in +white marble all over the bulging sides of the low flamboyant +mantelpiece. On the French clock above it, a gilt Eros perpetually +clasped his Psyche, while from the console between the elaborately +draped windows, a biscuit representation of the same divinity held his +finger discreetly to his lips. + +The note of old-fashioned gaiety which is somehow lacking in our more +correct modern apartments seemed specially to fit the place to be the +frame of love. Its amoretti and impossible flowers, its white marble and +gilding and pale silks, suggested accustomed complicity. In presence of +what human kisses had those little ormolu lovers continued their +indifferent embraces? What scenes of passion had been multiplied in +endless reproduction by those tall opposing mirrors? Perhaps in that +very room, Sainty thought, his grandmother might have been tempted +towards the breaking of those same vows he had that day taken on +himself. He came on her portrait presently in a book of beauty, bound +with much tooling in faded crimson calf, which he was idly turning over +on the red velvet centre-table. He took it over and showed it to Cissy. + +‘Look at grandmamma,’ he said; ‘wasn’t she beautiful?’ + +Cissy took the picture and stared at it with no answering smile. It +seemed to have a curious fascination for her. ‘How like!’ she murmured. +‘How very like!’ + +‘Oh! come,’ said Sainty, glad to get her to talk about anything. ‘I +can’t say I think her grace looks much like that nowadays.’ + +‘I didn’t mean that it was like the duchess,’ said Cissy with a +hysterical gulp. ‘But don’t you see the extraordinary likeness to Cl---- +to your cousin Mr. Morland?’ + +Sainty could not have explained why the sudden mention of Claude was +displeasing to him. + +‘He is thought like our grandmother,’ he said shortly, ‘but he is not +nearly so good-looking; the duchess was a great beauty in her youth.’ + +Cissy did not discuss the question, but she kept the book absently in +her lap, and when Sainty had returned to his reading, he could see her +turning the pages. + +As the long hours wore away, Belchamber became intolerably weary, and he +suspected Cissy of being not less so; but when taxed with fatigue, she +eagerly repudiated the idea, and professed a tremendous interest in her +book. ‘I _must_ see how it is going to come out,’ she said; ‘it’s +awfully exciting.’ + +Sainty ached all over, but he could not insist. He returned to his own +reading, which he found less stimulating than Cissy seemed to find hers. +After a while he noticed that she had moved into a harder and more +upright chair. She was struggling against sleep; in half an hour she had +not turned a page of the work she found so enthralling. Finally, towards +midnight, he saw the book waving to and fro, the fair head bowed almost +down on it. He went softly over to her, and touched her. With a cry she +started to her feet; the book fell on the floor with a bang. + +‘You must go to bed, Cissy,’ Sainty said kindly; ‘you’re dropping with +sleep.’ + +‘I’m not tired; I’m not sleepy,’ she cried. ‘I must finish this--it’s so +interesting.’ + +‘Nonsense. I’ve been watching you; you haven’t read a page in half an +hour; you can’t keep your eyes open.’ + +Her eyes were open enough now, wide and strange, like those of a hunted +animal. She made a gesture with her hands as though to thrust him back. +‘I can’t--I won’t,’ she panted. ‘You shan’t make me. Keep away. Don’t +touch me.’ + +‘My poor child,’ Sainty said, ‘what are you afraid of? Do you think I +would do anything you don’t like? You can’t sit up all night. You are +dead tired, and must have rest. I won’t come near you, if you don’t wish +it.’ + +She looked at him but half reassured. ‘Do you mean it?’ she said +doubtfully. ‘Can I trust you?’ + +‘I am not accustomed to lie,’ Sainty answered. ‘Do you think I would +take advantage of you by a shabby trick?’ + +She sighed, and half turned away, then suddenly faced him again. ‘It is +not enough,’ she cried. ‘It is not only to-night. You may as well know +it first as last. You are odious to me--horrible. I can +never--never----’ + +‘Hush, hush!’ Sainty interrupted her. ‘Take care what you say. You are +tired, excited, overwrought. So am I. Go to bed now, in God’s name. You +know you have nothing to fear. We will talk of this some other time, +calmly if we can, but not to-night, not to-night.’ + +‘Yes, now, to-night,’ she insisted. ‘Why put it off? It’s got to be +faced, and why not at once? I tell you you are repulsive to me. I can +never be your wife in anything but name. I thought I could, but when it +comes to the point, I can’t do it. It’s stronger than me. It’s no use.’ +She spread her hands with the gesture of one who renounces a struggle. +On her finger blazed the ring he had given her, and below it shone the +plain gold hoop which he had placed there that morning, the outward and +visible sign of the obligation she was repudiating. + +Sainty staggered as though she had struck him in the face. ‘I don’t +understand,’ he whispered. ‘If you feel like this towards me, if I am +repulsive, loathsome to you, why did you marry me?’ + +‘Oh, it’s simple enough,’ she answered, with a little cruel laugh. ‘You +had so many things that I have always wanted, money, position, rank, +everything I have been brought up to think desirable. Since I can +remember, not a girl has been married among our friends that the first +question has not been, was she making a “good” marriage? which meant, +was she getting a big enough share of all these things in exchange for +herself? No one could say I wasn’t. I’ve made the match of the season. +There isn’t a girl I know, or a mother, who isn’t green with envy of me. +You can’t say it wasn’t a temptation.’ And she laughed again +hysterically. + +‘But feeling as you did about me, as you must before the end have known +you felt, why in heaven’s name didn’t you turn back, when I gave you the +chance, before it was too late?’ + +‘Do you think I was allowed a minute to think? Wasn’t my mother there +every minute of the day? At the very time you speak of, wasn’t she +listening at the door, and didn’t she come hurrying in before I’d time +to answer? If for a moment I ever forgot the title, and the money, and +the jewels, the big house, all the things I’d set my heart on, she was +always ready to talk about them, to dangle them before me. If I ever +wavered, she would tell me what a slur it was on a girl whose engagement +was broken off, how no one would ever believe I had given up all these +things of my own free will, how people would say there was something +against me, and how I should never marry. There wasn’t an oldish poor +girl we knew, losing her looks, and still tagging about to balls, and +trying to pretend she was cheerful, that she didn’t remind me of. Never +directly, mind you. They were just casually mentioned. O Lord! if I so +much as suggested to her that she wanted me to marry for money, she was +all virtuous indignation.’ + +‘How ghastly!’ Sainty whispered in horror. ‘I’ve read of such things, of +mothers selling their daughters, bullying them into marrying men they +couldn’t love for the sake of an establishment; but I’ve always thought +it was exaggerated, not true to life. I didn’t think a mother _could_ +condemn her own child to lifelong misery.’ + +‘Oh, you mustn’t be too hard on mamma,’ Cissy said. ‘She thought she was +doing the best thing for me. Remember she has the very highest opinion +of you, and was quite sure you would make an excellent husband; and she +knew how much I wanted all the other things. If marriage were nothing +but that, nothing but living in the house with a person who was +good-natured and never interfered with one, and provided all the good +things of life for one, it would be well enough. That is what every one +in England always talks to girls as if it were. Mamma would have thought +it most indelicate to suggest there was another side. You are made to +forget that as much as possible. Oh, of course I _knew_, because I’m not +a fool, and girls are not such ninnies as people think them; but I tried +to forget, and when I didn’t see you, I _did_ forget. That was why, when +I did see you, I was always so beastly to you; for I’m quite ready to +admit I _was_ beastly to you.’ + +As Cissy’s terror abated, her engaging frankness began to return to her. +Sainty couldn’t help liking her for it. He began to be so full of +sympathy with her point of view, so sorry for all she must have +suffered, that he almost forgot the cruel wrong she had done him. + +‘Mamma knew I should never be happy with a poor man,’ she went on. ‘She +knew how I cared for all the things you could give me. She was quite +right, I _did_ want them; I wanted them awfully; I want them still as +much as ever: only when it comes to the point I can’t give the price. I +thought I could, but I can’t. Mamma was so far honester than me. She +never supposed that once the bargain was made I should hesitate to pay. +It’s so like me to want things dreadfully, and not to have the courage +to do what’s necessary to get them.’ + +Sainty was appalled by her cynicism, even while he admired her +straightforwardness. What became of his dreams of romance, of the eye +that had seen beneath his unattractive exterior, and loved him for the +beauties of his soul? The blue eyes had seen nothing but the sparkling +of diamonds. In her vision of married life he had been only the +necessary evil, the odious, inevitable condition to which she must +submit, if she would have his name and money, as the princess in the +story had to kiss the swineherd to get possession of the toys she +coveted. Still the princess _had_ kissed the herd, and even after all +that she had said he thought he would make one last appeal to her. If +she realised how much he felt for her, how entirely he understood her +unwillingness, how patient, how gentle he was ready to be, perhaps she +might be touched, might learn to think of him with something less of +horror. To him who had all his life wished for nothing but to make other +people happy, it was intolerable to think of himself as the brutal +gaoler, the tyrant before whom this young thing paled with terror. + +In the eagerness of her explanation, Cissy had come nearer to him. They +were standing quite close together, face to face. ‘Cissy,’ he said +gently, ‘is it quite, quite impossible? Do you think that if we lived +together for a long time, you might in the end get used to me, even come +to care for me a little?’ But at that she sprang back from him again +with an unmistakable gesture of repugnance that said more than words. +‘No, no, no--never,’ she cried hurriedly. ‘I’ve told you it’s no good. I +can’t help it, my mind’s made up. I’d rather give up everything, face +anything, for of course I can’t expect you to keep me. You can send me +back to my mother. Life’ll be hell upon earth, but it’ll be better than +_that_.’ + +With all his desire to be fair to her, Sainty could not but be struck by +her intense egotism, her inability to appreciate any point of view but +her own. She was evidently unaware of the brutality of her attitude +towards him. To his morbid self-depreciation her undisguised horror of +him appeared only too natural. Still, no one likes to be told these +things quite so bluntly. + +‘You have nothing to fear,’ he said a little loftily. ‘After what you +have said, you may be sure I shall never ask the smallest thing of you. +It is a little unfortunate that you didn’t make up your mind rather +earlier, as you have made it up so irrevocably now. Had you but been as +sure of your feelings a month, a week, even twenty-four hours ago, you +might have saved us both from what I hardly dare look forward to.’ + +‘I can go home; I had better go home,’ Cissy whimpered. Of course the +sight of distress melted Sainty at once. + +‘Don’t you see,’ he said, ‘that to go home now would make just five +hundred times the talk and scandal that you felt you couldn’t face if +you had broken off your engagement?’ + +‘It can’t be helped,’ Cissy sobbed. + +‘You have brought us both into a horrible situation,’ Sainty answered, +‘and I frankly don’t see just now what is best to be done; but I’m sure +that further talk will do no good just now. It is long past twelve +o’clock, and we are both tired out; you can’t go back to Chester Square +to-night, if you want to ever so much. If I were you I shouldn’t get up +to breakfast. Good-night.’ + +Some compunction seemed to seize Cissy as she got to the door. She +turned. ‘I’m awfully sorry, you know,’ she said. ‘I suppose, when you +come to think of it, I haven’t treated you any too well; and--and--of +course what I said wasn’t very civil, but I thought it best to be +honest----’ + +‘All right, all right,’ Sainty answered hastily; ‘please don’t say any +more about it.’ + +As he lay sleepless and uncomfortable on his lonely bed, he wished that +the necessity for honest dealing had impressed itself on his wife a +little sooner. He thought of the night three years before, when he had +lain awake (as he lay now) listening to the sounds that celebrated his +coming of age. Somehow the great festal days of his life did not seem to +bring him personally much enjoyment. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + + +The Belchambers took possession of their new town-house just in time for +the opening of Parliament in the ensuing year. It was only partially +furnished as yet, and most uncomfortable; but, as Lady Eccleston +remarked with great originality, ‘the only way to get the workmen out of +a house was to move in yourself.’ The first-floor rooms still echoed +with shouts and hammerings, but the upper part of the house was more or +less ready, and so were the dining-room and some back rooms on the +ground-floor, which Cissy had reluctantly decided should eventually be +given up to Sainty. It was astonishing how swiftly she had + + ‘Shaped her heart with woman’s meekness + To all duties of her rank,’ + +except the vulgar and obvious one which she would have shared with the +humblest of wives. Having once made it quite clear that she was to +receive everything and give nothing, she soon ceased to talk of +returning to her mother, and Sainty was amazed at the ease with which +she adapted herself to the awkwardness of the situation. In her place, +he felt sure, he would not have rung a bell, or asked for a postage +stamp, but it never seemed to occur to Cissy that there was anything +curious in the arrangement; she annexed all her husband’s possessions +without scruple or hesitation as soon as she discovered that no +embarrassing condition attached to doing so. + +In spite of her son’s entreaties that she would stay with them, Lady +Charmington had retired to the dower-house immediately after the +marriage, and they had barely returned from their brief and dismal +honeymoon in the duke’s villa before Cissy began to dispose of +everything at Belchamber as if it had all been hers from earliest +childhood. There had been some talk of a wedding-journey on the +Continent, but Cissy had no desire to prolong the _tête-à-tête_ with +Sainty, which she did not enjoy. It was England, which she knew and +understood, that was to be the scene of her triumphs; and the sight of +strange lands had no charms for her compared to the fun of swooping down +as mistress on the great house, where she had been an unconsidered +little guest, settling which should be her own rooms, having them +redecorated according to the taste of the latest fashionable +upholsterer, and moving into them whatever took her fancy in other parts +of the house. + +She was so happily busy that she almost forgot to regret the Season, and +gave up Ascot without a sigh, contenting herself with Cowes and +Goodwood, which she did with great _éclat_ from a friend’s yacht, while +Sainty enjoyed a fortnight of peace and seclusion. + +Congenial as she found the task of establishing herself in her husband’s +ancestral home, it was nothing to the delirious enjoyment of selecting, +decorating, and furnishing a big London house, regardless of expense; +and all the time she could spare from entertaining shooting parties in +the autumn was devoted to the feverish prosecution of this new delight. + +Of course every one agreed that they must have a town-house. The duke +and Lord Firth were not less convinced of its necessity than the large +circle of acquaintances who hoped to be entertained in it. Even Lady +Charmington, while she winced at the recklessness of the expenditure, +was partly consoled by the sight of her son taking what she considered +‘his proper position in the world.’ She consoled herself with the +thought that it was her long years of careful management that made all +this profusion possible. Sainty must attend the debates in the House of +Lords, and though she was rather scandalised by his Radicalism, she +reflected that the limited number of peers on that side, since the Home +Rule split, made some small office not improbable for him, when the +Liberals came in again. + +And Sainty, though he cared for none of these things, had no heart to +refuse them to the girl whom he had married. The fact was that the more +he thought about the matter the sorrier he felt for his wife. For his +part, he told himself, he was not made for love, had never expected it +to play any part in his life, and was no worse off than he was before. +The disadvantage of taking a consistently humble view of one’s own +attractions is not without its compensations; thus the wound to his +self-love, of which a vain man would almost have bled to death, was to +Sainty, who had no vanity and very little self-love, only in the nature +of those scratches which smart and feel sore, but rob us of no drop of +heart’s blood. Life was not perceptibly more unpleasant to him than it +had been before, and he had still the same substitutes for a more active +happiness with which he had been accustomed to fill it, his studies, his +schemes of beneficence, the management of his property. But this poor +child, so well fitted by nature to love and be loved, whose one chance +of rising above the empty frivolity of her surroundings might have lain +in the ennobling influence of a great passion, for something how much +less satisfying than a mess of pottage had she bartered her birthright, +a handful of tin counters, a paper crown! In spite of what he considered +her generosity in taking the blame on herself, he was more and more +inclined to regard her as the victim of her mother’s worldliness, +enmeshed like himself in the toils of that careful schemer. It was not +in nature that a creature so young and fresh should be so greatly +influenced by considerations of wealth or rank; he could not think it. +These things had been dangled before her eyes till she had been dazzled +by their false lustre. She was too innocent, he reflected, to realise to +what extent she had sacrificed all chances of woman’s best happiness to +gain them. The question was how to shield her from the consequences of +her own act, to save her from the bitter repentance only too likely to +follow. To do so might not be permanently in his power; but meanwhile, +if she so keenly desired the undesirable as to be ready to risk the ruin +of her life for it, what was simpler than to give it to her? Jewels, +clothes, a house in town, the means to feed the thankless rich, the +power to walk out of the room before older women--if these things could +make her happy, as far as they were his to give, let her take them in +full measure. They were freely hers. He had no particular use for them +himself. + +Perhaps the spectacle of the ease and gusto with which she flung herself +into her new _rôle_ of the great lady was not without a certain satiric +amusement for him. + +One day he would find her on the pavement before the house, attended by +Algy Montgomery and a grave professional gentleman who looked the ideal +of a racing duke, while a pair of high-stepping bays were driven up and +down for her inspection. ‘Haven’t we more horses than we know what to do +with?’ Sainty would ask. + +‘My dear boy!’ Cissy cried, ‘a parcel of old screws. Jane Rugby was +saying only the other day that we hadn’t a decent pair o’ horses in the +stable.’ + +On another, she would be busy comparing designs for carriages. ‘Those +old bathing-machines at Belchamber,’ she remarked loftily, ‘are all very +well for the country; but in my position it would be too grotesque for +me to be seen driving about London in them. The duchess has been awfully +kind about advising me. It was her idea to send for the old chariot and +see if it can’t be done up for drawing-rooms. She says unless it has got +dry-rot or anything, that a couple of hundreds spent on it ought to make +it as good as new; and of course I don’t want to waste money on a +tiresome thing one would never use on other occasions, if by spending a +little on the old one it can be made to do. But I _must_ have a decent +brougham and open carriage at once; you must see yourself there are no +two ways about it. And, come to think of it, you ought to have a +brougham of your own. We are sure to clash and want it at the same time, +if we try and do with one.’ + +‘Perhaps one of the bathing-machines from Belchamber might do for _me_,’ +suggested Sainty, not without malice. + +‘Well,’ said Cissy quite gravely, ‘I don’t know that it mightn’t.’ + +‘Who told you of these people?’ Sainty asked, examining the neatly +painted little pictures. + +‘Oh, they make all the duke’s carriages, and _they_ are always smartly +turned out. Your cousin Claude told them to send me these sketches, and +he has promised to go with me to Longacre to see what they have in the +shop.’ + +Since she married, Cissy had ceased to mention Claude as ‘Mr. Morland,’ +and the prefix ‘your cousin’ was bridging the narrow chasm between that +and calling him ‘Claude.’ Morland was able to be uncommonly useful to +the pretty new cousin; not only at the coachbuilder’s were his taste and +knowledge invaluable, but at the upholsterer’s, the _bric-à-brac_ shops, +the sales at Christy’s, and he had even been called on to give his views +(and very sound views too) in the more intimate province of the modiste +and the dressmaker. Sainty was obviously of no assistance. What could be +more natural, if the lady needed counsel in such matters, than to turn +to a near kinsman of her husband, and one so well qualified to help? It +is true that Lady Eccleston was more than ready to assist her daughter +in mounting her establishment on a suitable scale, and would very +willingly have accompanied her to the shops, not, perhaps, without a +hope of gleaning a few scattered ears on her own account from the +harvest Cecilia was reaping with so large a hook; but that unnatural +young person seemed to prefer almost any advice or companionship to her +mamma’s. Ill as he thought of her, for the manœuvres with which she had +compassed his union with her daughter, Sainty could not help a secret +sympathy with the poor lady, who bore her pitiless relegation to a back +place with a smiling stoicism worthy of a Red Indian. The old fiction of +the perfect confidence and sisterlike relation between herself and her +daughter was still gallantly maintained even to him, and when he +reflected what potentialities of tearful complainings she had +heroically foregone, he came near to feeling actual gratitude. But he +need have been under no apprehension of plaintive confidences; anything +natural or direct had long ceased to be possible to Lady Eccleston. + +‘I cannot have mamma dropping in to lunch whenever it suits her,’ Cissy +remarked ruthlessly. ‘I have told her she must not come more than once a +week, unless she’s asked.’ + +‘But I thought you said you meant to let people know you were always at +home for lunch?’ + +‘So I do; it is a very convenient way of seeing my friends. That’s just +why I’ve had to speak to mamma. I should have her here every day if I +didn’t. And it would bore a lot of younger women, who don’t know her +particularly well, like Vere Deans or Ella Dalsany, to find her here +perpetually--not to speak of the men.’ + +Sainty did not retort that Lady Deans and Lady Dalsany were not so very +much younger that Lady Eccleston. It was no affair of his; and it soon +became evident that Cissy’s mother was not the only relation whom it +bored her friends to meet at her luncheon-table. Sainty had been brought +up in a certain old-fashioned code of manners. His mother, seeing that +he was shy and awkward in company, and being not less so herself, had +insisted rather unduly on the ceremonial side of social life. He had +been taught that hospitality demanded that he should receive and take +leave of guests with some form, accompanying them to their carriages, +and putting on their cloaks, which the groom of the chambers, who was +much taller and unencumbered with a stick, would have done much better. +But he was not long in discovering that these attentions were by no +means demanded by the ladies of the set into which the duchess and +Claude had made haste to introduce his wife. + +If Cissy’s friends found Sainty tiresome, it must be admitted that he +found them no less so. The repulsion was certainly mutual. He wondered +sometimes what had become of all the people she had known and liked, and +from whom she had received kindness, during the three or four seasons +that had preceded her marriage; they seemed to have vanished like smoke. +She was absorbed in a little knot of married women, for the most part +considerably her seniors, much in the world’s eye, and none of them +exactly qualified for the _rôle_ of Cæsar’s wife. Their conversation was +extremely esoteric, and the minute fragments of it which were +intelligible to him shocked him profoundly. Occasional paragraphs in the +papers assured him that ‘young Lady Belchamber,’ or ‘pretty little Lady +Belchamber, who was among the most attractive of last season’s brides,’ +was ‘very smart’ or ‘quite in the innermost set’; from which he was fain +to derive such comfort as he might. He once ventured to ask Cissy why +she never saw anything of the de Lissacs; he had hoped something for her +from Alice’s influence. ‘I thought you and the girls were very +intimate,’ he said. + +‘Oh! girls bore me,’ she answered; ‘and besides, they are not the least +in it; they wouldn’t have anything in common with the people they’d meet +here. Of course with their money they _might_ have done anything, but +poor dear Mrs. de Lissac has no _flair_, don’t you know; she simply +doesn’t take any trouble. I’ll ask them, if you like, some day when I’m +having a duty dinner.’ And she did. + +‘Why do we never see anything of you?’ Sainty asked of his old friend on +that occasion. ‘I had hoped that when we came to town we should be much +together.’ + +‘Well--here we are!’ said Alice, with rather frosty playfulness. ‘And +you know,’ she added more gently, ‘how welcome you always are in +Grosvenor Square.’ + +‘Cissy is always at home at lunch, you know,’ Sainty persisted. ‘Why +don’t you come in sometimes?’ + +‘Lady Belchamber has never told either the girls or me that she was at +home at lunch,’ said Alice, freezing again, and went on hurriedly to +praise the beauty of the house and the taste of its mistress. Sainty +looked round him. ‘Cissy has a genius for spending money,’ he said +gloomily. ‘Wait till you see the drawing-rooms; these rooms are nothing +to the plunges she is making upstairs.’ Before Mrs. de Lissac could +answer, they were swooped upon by Lady Eccleston bringing Lady Deans +with her. + +‘Dear Alice,’ she cried, ‘Lady Deans fears you don’t remember her; you +met at Belchamber. She is going to have a stall at the World’s Bazaar, +and this is such an opportunity to have a little quiet talk about it. I +have been telling Lady Deans that you are one of our _very_ kindest +helpers, and that you have given the most superb things; a few _really_ +good things that can be raffled for are such a help, and one can always +raffle the same things two or three times over--no one ever knows.’ + +‘Why shouldn’t we have a lottery?’ asked Lady Deans. ‘I mean a _real_ +lottery, not for sofa-cushions and things, but for money prizes like +they have abroad. I’m sure it’ld catch on.’ + +‘But I thought lotteries were illegal,’ Sainty objected. + +‘Oh! not at bazaars, or for a charity,’ cried Lady Eccleston. ‘I know +dear Father Stephen of St. Rhadegund’s, Houndsditch, told me they had a +most successful one for their parish room and made heaps of money. I +think Lady Deans’s is a lovely idea.’ + +‘Well--it’s gambling, you know,’ said Sainty. ‘I suppose you wouldn’t +allow a roulette table----’ + +‘Why don’t you have a Derby sweep while you’re about it?’ suggested Algy +Montgomery. ‘You could sell the tickets at the bazaar, and as the Derby +won’t be for a good couple o’ months later you could forget to draw it +at all. People would only suppose some other fellow had won, don’t yer +know.’ + +Lady Eccleston was enchanted with the notion. ‘Dear Lord Algy! _Could_ +you work it for us?’ But Mrs. de Lissac, inured as she was to bazaar +morality, was, as a clergyman’s daughter, a little alarmed at any +connection with the turf. ‘How are you getting on with the people for +the Café Chantant?’ she asked, to change the subject. + +Lady Eccleston rattled off a list that seemed to contain every one of +any celebrity in the theatrical or musical world. + +‘And have you got them all?’ asked Lady Deans. + +‘Well, I’ve written to a good many of them, and one or two have +answered,’ said Lady Eccleston; ‘but I shall pop them all down--their +names will look splendid on the programme.’ + +‘But will they come?’ asked Sainty. + +‘Oh _dear_ no, they won’t come; very few of them will _come_. But some +will; I shall make sure of one or two, and we can get some really good +amateurs; and every now and then some one can get up and say that Ellen +Terry regrets she couldn’t manage it at the last moment, or something. +We shall let people in for ten minutes at a time in batches; they’ll +think they just missed some of the best people----’ + +‘Seems to me you _will_ “let ’em in,”’ chuckled Lord Algy. + +‘Do you think,’ asked Lady Deans, ‘there would be any chance of getting +Lady Arthur to sing or dance, or anything? I suppose, Lord Belchamber, +_you_ couldn’t ask her for us?’ + +‘But she never _could_ sing or dance, or do anything,’ interposed Lord +Algernon. + +‘Oh! that wouldn’t matter, as long as she would appear. You see, all the +story of her marriage and everything made her a celebrity.’ + +‘But it was all two years ago,’ Lady Eccleston interrupted. ‘People have +forgotten all about it,’ and she deftly piloted the discussion to other +projects, so that Sainty was spared the necessity of making any answer +to this astounding proposition. + +The bazaar in connection with which so many happy suggestions had been +offered was one of Society’s periodic sacrifices to philanthropy. +Certain fair ones, to whom no form of self-advertisement came amiss, +were ready to dress up in the cause of charity and display themselves to +a wider public than that which usually had the opportunity of admiring +them, on the understanding that none of the trouble of organisation +should fall upon them, and that the date should be fixed for before +Easter, when there wasn’t much else going on. On these conditions, Lady +Eccleston and a little band of zealous fellow-workers had secured a most +imposing list of stall-holders. It was calculated that the suburbs and +the Stock Exchange would come in their thousands to see and converse +with the ladies whose names and doings Lady Eva Morland made weekly +familiar to them in the pages of ‘Maidie’s Tea Table’ in the +_Looking-glass_. The proceeds were to be handed to a charity in which a +very great personage was interested, and the bazaar was to be opened on +at least two of its three days by different members of the royal family. +Lady Eccleston was in her element, and running the whole concern. If it +was not she who had the brilliant inspiration of making the various +stalls represent the countries of the earth and dressing the fair +vendors in national costume, at least she took the credit for it. In +spite of his mother-in-law’s repeated injunctions to him to attend the +opening, Sainty had not the slightest intention of doing so. Indeed, he +had hoped, by liberal contributions, to get off altogether, but Alice de +Lissac had reinforced Lady Eccleston with gentle persistence. + +‘I think you should put in an appearance,’ she said, ‘just to support +your wife, you know; it will look queer if you don’t, when she and her +mother are so much interested. _I_ should have thought you would come to +the opening’; and finally Sainty was fain to buy immunity from being +present at this ceremony with a promise to visit his wife’s stall in the +course of one afternoon. It was not till somewhat late on the last day +of the three that he brought himself to redeem his given word. + +By the time he arrived, the whole show, though brilliantly lighted and +to his perception still disagreeably crowded, had become a little the +worse for wear. The stalls were denuded of half their contents, the air +had a vitiated second-hand taste, and a fine impalpable dust, raised by +the passing of so many feet, hung like a light haze over everything. +Tired dishevelled girls, looking curiously sham in their fancy dresses +by the side of people in everyday garb, and flushed under the rouge that +had been thought a necessary part of their costume, moved among the +crowd making a last effort to dispose of the remainder of their wares, +excited by competition to perilous lengths of flirtation with unknown +and rather common young men, with whom on no other occasion they would +have thought of exchanging a word. + +Sainty was patiently elbowing his way like Parsifal among the +flower-maidens, and meditating on the mystery of what was and was not +permitted to the London girl, when he was suddenly confronted by Mr. +Austin Pryor. Every buttonhole of the young stockbroker’s neat +frock-coat was decorated with faded vegetation and his arms loaded with +a number of quite useless purchases. + +‘Well, Belchamber,’ he began, ‘I’ve got a bone to pick with your wife; +too bad of her, I call it. I’d an awful good time here yesterday with +her, and she made me promise to come again to-day and bring a lot of our +fellows from the city. I told ’em all how ripping she looked in her +Polish get-up, and now they’ve all come and she isn’t here; she’s gone +and given us all the slip. Most unprincipled of her, I call it.’ + +Sainty, while expressing suitable distress at the faithless behaviour of +his spouse, was secretly not sorry to be spared her encounter with the +gallant Lotharios of Throgmorton Street, when he thought of the +fragments of conversation he had already overheard in passing. + +‘I don’t know what has happened to her, I’m sure,’ he said politely; ‘I +expected to find her here myself.’ + +When at last he arrived at the lath and canvas pavillion, much bedraped +with liberty muslin and flags, across the front of which a scroll +displayed the legend, ‘Poland--Marchioness of Belchamber,’ he found only +the de Lissac girls and another maiden, clad in little hussar caps and +dolmans hung coquettishly on one shoulder, resentfully eyeing the ebbing +tide of custom, while Alice and Lady Eccleston, aided by her obedient +son Thomas, were feverishly tying parcels in the background. + +‘Have you written on that one, Tommy,’ Lady Eccleston was saying, ‘Mrs. +Brown, Elm Lodge, Streatham? Oh dear, _which_ parcel is the big yellow +cushion? I am sure that was the one she bought. Well, never mind, this +is a cushion anyway, it feels soft; that’ll do. Ah, Sainty, you’ve come +a little late, dear. Everything is over.’ + +‘What’s become of Cissy?’ Sainty inquired. + +The young ladies were evidently not in the best of tempers, and this +innocent question served to open the floodgates of their wrath. + +‘Cissy’s gone,’ Norah de Lissac said crossly, ‘and left us in the lurch. +She _said_ she was tired, but _I_ think she was only bored. When it got +dull and shabby and all the nice people had gone it didn’t amuse her any +more.’ + +‘It puts us in such a foolish position,’ Gemma chimed in. ‘People +naturally come here to see her, and when they don’t find her they are +not best pleased. One man asked me if I was Lady Belchamber, and when I +said I wasn’t, he said, “Then which of you is?” Of course I had to say +we none of us were, and then he was quite rude and said, “Then you’ve no +business to put her name up over the stall.” It wasn’t at all pleasant.’ + +Norah took up her parable again. ‘She didn’t even take the trouble to +put on her costume to-day, just came in her ordinary clothes, and of +course we looked like dressed-up fools beside her. If she had just sent +us word she wasn’t going to we wouldn’t have put ours on either.’ + +‘Oh, dears, it would have been a great pity,’ said Lady Eccleston, +emerging from a pile of brown paper with her mouth full of pins. ‘You +look charming in your dresses; they really suit you better than Cissy; +and it would have been so flat if none of you had been in costume, for +there really _is_n’t much in the stall itself to suggest Poland, I must +admit I think Cissy really _was_ tired, you know; she has had a hard two +days of it.’ + +‘Well, we were tired too,’ said the implacable Norah. ‘She’s not the +only person who has had a hard two days. Can’t we go home now, at +least, and get off these ridiculous clothes?’ she asked, turning to her +step-mother. Alice looked distressed and murmured something about ‘not +deserting Lady Eccleston.’ + +‘Oh, don’t _think_ of me,’ cried that lady. ‘You and the dear girls go. +Tommy and I can soon finish what’s left to do. The people are thinning +fast, and we’ve done very well. I _can’t_ thank you enough for all your +splendid help’; and she embraced the whole party with a last galvanic +effort at cheerful enthusiasm. + +Sainty saw the de Lissac party to their gorgeous equipage, and was just +turning away from the door when a small voice at his elbow demanded, +‘Shall I please to call the kerridge, m’lord?’ and looking down he had a +vision of two large appealing eyes and a white kid forefinger pressed +tightly to a curly hatbrim. He recognised the diminutive boy who +decorated Cissy’s coach-box when she rode abroad. + +‘Yes,’ he said; ‘if the brougham is here, I may as well take it. Lady +Belchamber has gone home.’ + +In the course of the drive he wondered why he had taken the trouble to +come to the bazaar, and who had been benefited or pleased by his visit. + +He had hardly got to his room and sat down to his book by the fire, with +a sigh of relief, when a servant came to him. + +‘If you please, my lord, Gibson wants to know if there are any more +orders for the carriage.’ + +‘Not for me,’ Sainty answered, his mind on what he was reading. ‘Ask her +ladyship.’ + +The man looked surprised and still lingered doubtfully. + +‘Well,’ said Sainty, ‘what is it?’ + +‘If you please, my lord, my lady hasn’t come in yet.’ + +‘Oh, I think she must have----’ Sainty was beginning but stopped +himself. He saw no reason for discussing Cissy’s movements with the +servants. ‘Then you must wait for orders till she does,’ he said. + +He wondered a little why, if she left the bazaar because she was tired, +she had not come home. But after all, Norah’s explanation was probably +the correct one. She was bored with the whole thing and took the +shortest cut for freedom; it was not Cissy’s way to allow herself to be +bored. ‘In any case it is no affair of mine,’ he thought, as he turned +again to his book. + + + + +CHAPTER XIX + + +After Easter, when Cissy had a morning-room and a boudoir, and the +drawing-rooms were practically finished, Sainty entered into undisputed +possession of his two back rooms, and spent more and more of his time in +them. Only faint echoes of the turmoil in which Lady Belchamber had her +being penetrated to that peaceful seclusion. Evening after evening Cissy +would dine out with a few of her special cronies and their attendant +swains, and go to the theatre or the opera till it was time to begin the +round of balls or parties, from which she returned in grey summer dawns, +far too tired for there to be any question of her coming down to +breakfast next morning. Sometimes Sainty did not set eyes on her for +days together. Gradually he slipped back into his old studious life, +snatching sketchy little meals from trays, when he remembered to eat +anything, and as little a part of the life of the house as if he were in +lodgings round the corner. + +In May, Lady Charmington came to town, to attend the meetings of the +‘Ladies’ No Popery League,’ of which she was a leading member. + +‘My mother writes me she is coming to London,’ Sainty said. ‘Of course +she will come to us.’ + +‘Well, she can, if you wish it,’ Cissy answered; ‘but I warn you you’re +preparing trouble for yourself. She won’t like the way we live, and when +she doesn’t like a thing, she is not always silent and accommodating. +She’ll expect a family breakfast at 9.15, with prayers at 9. I don’t +suppose she ever breakfasted in her room in her life. I don’t know where +_you_ breakfast, but _I_ certainly shan’t come down.’ + +‘I suppose you couldn’t, just for the time she’s here?’ Sainty +suggested. + +‘I’m not such a humbug as to alter my way of life to please her. She may +as well find out first as last that I am not cut on her pattern.’ + +‘I think she has pretty well made that discovery already,’ Sainty +retorted. + +‘Well,’ said Cissy, ‘she can come if she likes, and if you want her, but +she must take us as she finds us. I told you she wouldn’t like it. She’d +be a great deal happier at Roehampton with Lady Firth. She could come in +to her meetings, and if she wanted to lunch here any particular day, I +could always tell people to keep out of the way.’ + +‘You can’t say I interfere with you much, or often ask you to do +anything to please me,’ said Sainty earnestly; ‘but when we have a great +house here, and my own mother wants to come up, I do think it would look +strange for us not to take her in.’ + +‘Well, please yourself. After all, I was only thinking of you. _I_ can +generally hold my own, but if your mother gets her back up, as she +inevitably will, _you_’ll have the devil of a time of it.’ + +Sainty had presently occasion to prove the accuracy of his wife’s +forecast. Acting on Cissy’s hint, he dutifully appeared each morning to +give Lady Charmington her breakfast. The first day, she lingered before +sitting down, as though she were waiting for something. + +‘Won’t you make the tea for me, mother?’ Sainty asked. ‘It’s like old +times, you and I having breakfast together.’ + +‘You don’t have prayers, I see,’ Lady Charmington remarked, as she took +her seat. ‘Or were they earlier? I can quite well come down sooner, if +you wish it.’ + +‘Well, you see, Cissy never comes down to breakfast, and, as you know, I +am not a great eater, so when we are alone, I generally have a cup of +tea and an egg in the study.’ + +‘Why doesn’t your wife come to breakfast? is she ill?’ + +‘Oh no, she’s well enough. But she’s out late at parties and things +every night, and I’m glad she _does_ rest a little in the mornings; it’s +the only time she does.’ + +‘I confess I’m a little disappointed in Cissy,’ Lady Charmington +remarked, after contemplating the toast-rack judicially for a time in +silence. ‘I never thought her a very deep or earnest nature, but I did +_not_ expect to find her so entirely given up to worldly pursuits.’ + +‘Cissy’s young and pretty, and people make a great deal of her. After +all, it’s natural at her age that she should like to enjoy herself.’ + +Lady Charmington sniffed. ‘Enjoyment! People nowadays seem to think of +nothing but enjoyment. We were not put into the world to enjoy +ourselves.’ + +‘Well, most of us fulfil the object of our being pretty thoroughly +then,’ Sainty said, ‘and yet every one seems to _want_ to be happy; and +it is a good deal to expect of the few who have it in their power that +they should voluntarily forego what most people fail to obtain.’ + +‘I don’t like to hear you talk like that, my boy; you don’t seem to have +a proper sense of your blessings. You have very much to be thankful +for.’ + +Lady Charmington saw nothing incongruous in finding fault with some +acrimony if things were not to her liking, but she was always swift to +rebuke a complaining spirit in others. + +‘Her poor mother, who, if a little too fond of society, has a very +sincerely religious side to her, must be sadly distressed at her +daughter’s light-mindedness.’ + +The thought of Lady Eccleston as a pious matron wounded by her child’s +care for earthly matters was too much for Sainty. + +‘Why, Lady Eccleston goes wherever a candle’s lighted,’ he said; ‘or if +she doesn’t, it’s because she’s failed to get an invitation.’ + +‘Censorious, censorious!’ replied his mother. ‘Who art thou that judgest +another man’s servant? You should watch against that spirit; it’ll grow +on you.’ + +Sainty was only too glad to have diverted the precious balms to his own +head, which had been accustomed to that form of unction for too many +years to be easily broken. He saw his mother off to the first of her +meetings before there was the smallest chance of her encountering her +daughter-in-law, and then betook himself to his own rooms to read the +papers. As he drew near to the fire that his languid blood demanded in +this uncertain season, his eye fell on the letters he had not as yet +thought of opening. As a rule his correspondence was not exciting. It +consisted mainly of advertisements and begging letters. The first that +he took up this morning had such a family look of these last, that he +opened it with a weary certainty of his correspondent’s need for £3, 5s. +6d. to prevent the bed being taken from under his sick child; but though +it was written on cheap paper in a hand carefully made to appear +illiterate, its contents were far other than he had expected. + +‘Ask your wife where she was on the third afternoon of the World’s +Bazaar. A friend.’ + +Sainty had never in his life received an anonymous letter, and the +experience was distinctly unpleasant. He shook it off into the fire as +St. Paul did the other venomous thing, but failed to get the poison out +of his system so cheaply. In case it should not work, his nameless +‘friend’ took care to repeat the dose, and several other communications +of a like tenor followed the first, but none of them produced in him the +unpleasant sensations of that chilly May morning, when he stood watching +the sparks run along the blackened paper and the gray ash writhe and +twist for its final flight up the chimney. After a time he came to +regard them as more or less in the natural order of things, and even +ceased to read them; but the writer showed such skill in varying the +address, that in no case was he able to detect one without opening it. +Some contained but a single sentence, others were much longer, but all +suggested doubts of his wife’s conduct, and recommended a surveillance +of which the very notion was repugnant to him. Of course he could take +no notice of such things. He wondered if he ought to speak to Cissy +about them, only to dismiss the idea as impossible. Still less could he +mention them to any one else. Eventually he decided that there was but +one way to treat an anonymous letter, which was to behave as if it had +not been received. None the less they stirred in him a vague uneasiness. +The feeling that somewhere about one an unknown enemy is watching for a +chance to hurt, fills life with an unpleasant sense of ambush. He could +think of no one who had cause to wish him ill. The enmity, then, must be +to Cissy. A disappointed rival? He needed no reminder of the extreme +unlikelihood of any one’s grudging her the possession of his affections. +But how if the rivalry were for the possession of some one else’s +affections? That possibility was not without its sting. For him there +could be no question of jealousy, in the ordinary sense of the word; but +he began to apprehend the possibilities of scandal, to understand that +his acceptance of the anomalous part which his wife had thrust upon him +by no means exhausted her power of injuring his happiness or his honour; +in short, that he was saddled with an obligation to guard what he did +not possess. + +Meanwhile he found himself in the no less ironical position of having to +champion her many doings, which in his heart he disliked, against his +mother, with whom he secretly sympathised. Lady Charmington was far from +having said all her say on that first morning at breakfast. Cissy’s +prediction of her disapproval of their London life was amply verified. +Occupied with the matters that had brought her to town, and going into a +totally different world from her daughter-in-law’s, she was as ignorant +as her son of the things that would most have stirred her wrath; but she +found quite enough to rebuke in the house itself. Cissy’s idleness and +dissipation, her late hours, her card-playing, her neglect of her +household duties, and the consequent waste and profusion, her +Sabbath-breaking, and the completeness with which she ignored her +husband and her home (not to speak of her guest and mother-in-law) were +each and severally the subjects of the elder lady’s severe +animadversions to the offender herself when occasion offered, but far +more often to the patient ears of poor Sainty, who had to defend the +culprit as best he might. + +Another fruitful topic of maternal discontent was Lady Belchamber’s +failure to provide an heir to the property. This, it may well be +supposed, was not an agreeable topic to Sainty, nor one on which he had +any ready rejoinders at his command. + +‘You have been married close on a year,’ said Lady Charmington, ‘and I +see no signs or hope of a child. I said something to Cissy about it one +day, and she laughed disagreeably, and said she was glad of it. I asked +if she didn’t think she had any duty to the family in the matter. I am +almost ashamed to tell you what she answered: that a baby was a great +tie and a nuisance, and she hoped if she had to have one, it would be at +a convenient time of year, when it didn’t interfere with things.’ + +‘I don’t suppose very young women ever _want_ to have a baby,’ Sainty +said doubtfully, feeling something was expected of him. + +‘Cissy is not so young as all that. She must be two-or three-and-twenty. +I can’t imagine any woman marrying and _not_ wanting to have a child. I +am sure when I married I prayed most fervently that I might give my +husband a son.’ + +‘Well, you know, the answer to your prayer was not quite all you could +have wished,’ suggested Sainty. + +Lady Charmington ignored the interruption. ‘It is not as though she were +not a perfectly normal healthy young woman,’ she said, ‘for I never was +taken in for a minute by all that business of the shock to her nervous +system at Belchamber. Constant dissipation, racketing about morning, +noon, and night, and tight lacing are not the ways to go about having an +heir. I only hope she mayn’t do anything else, if she’s so afraid that +the duties of a wife and mother will cut her out of a party or two.’ + +‘O mother!’ Sainty expostulated. + +‘If she is not going to have any children, what was the use of your +marrying?’ continued his aggrieved parent. ‘We are just where we were +with regard to that other woman. _She_ has children fast enough! Cissy +seems to think she has come into the family merely to have what she +calls a good time, and spend the money that I pinched and scraped +together for you for so many years. I have _never_ seen such sinful +waste as goes on in this house.’ + +Lady Charmington was only putting into words what her son had often, +with some bitterness, asked himself. What was the use of his marrying? +He had not perhaps quite so crudely admitted, even in his inner +consciousness, how much he had been influenced in making up his mind to +such a step by the thought of excluding the children of Lady Arthur from +the succession to his name and estates, but it had none the less been a +powerful motive with him. Had his brother passed his examinations, gone +into the army, and in due course married some commonplace, +unobjectionable young lady, it is more than doubtful if even Lady +Eccleston would have succeeded in dragging Sainty into matrimony. For +one thing, she would have had to reckon with Lady Charmington as an +enemy instead of an ally, which would have put a quite different +complexion on the affair. The young man reflected sometimes with dumb +rage on how his life was turned topsy-turvy, haled from familiar field +and woodland to this hated city, that a girl, who was really no more to +him than any other, should junket from morning till night with a set of +people he could not endure, and squander money, with which he might have +benefited millions of his fellow-creatures, on her senseless, unoriginal +pleasures. And all for what? Sooner or later the children of his +undesirable sister-in-law would sit in his place, and inherit his +patrimony as surely as if he had followed his natural bent, and led a +peaceful, laborious life remote from all connection with Lady Deans and +her play-fellows. And with it all Cissy had not even the common decency +to avoid the tongue of scandal, as these odious anonymous letters showed +him. He really did think she might have spared him that. Day after day +he thought of saying something to her on the subject, and always he was +prevented by lack of courage or opportunity, or else some unfortunate +speech of his mother drove him back into the position of his wife’s +involuntary champion. + +‘Cissy tells me she is going away for Whitsuntide,’ Lady Charmington +announced one day, with the sniff that indicated much more than met the +ear in this apparently simple announcement. + +‘Is she?’ said Sainty, anxious not to commit himself. + +‘Has she not even deigned to let you know?’ inquired her ladyship +scornfully. + +‘I think she _did_ say something about the Suffords having asked her +there.’ + +‘Were _you_ not included in the invitation?’ + +‘I really don’t know; I never asked. I didn’t want to go. I suppose Lady +Sufford went through the form of asking me, but she probably knew I +shouldn’t come. It would be too terrible if I were obliged to go +wherever Cissy does.’ + +‘The arrangement seems to suit _her_ perfectly,’ said Lady Charmington; +‘but I can’t see why you shouldn’t go.’ + +‘It would add to no one’s pleasure, and take away considerably from +mine,’ said Sainty promptly. + +‘Always pleasure!’ cried Lady Charmington. ‘The invariable argument! no +thought of duty!’ + +‘If a thing which is purely a question of amusement doesn’t amuse one, +why make a duty of it?’ argued her son. + +‘Well, if it is not your duty to go about with your wife, I should have +thought it was hers to stay at home with you. Of course I quite +understood that she mentioned her plans to me with the delicate +intention of letting me see that she could not keep me beyond next week; +but she need not trouble; I had settled to go to mother on Tuesday in +any case. She has failed very much lately, and I shall have to be with +her more. By the way, I found she was rather hurt that Cissy had never +once been to see her since she came to town in February, nor asked her +to come in and see your new house.’ + +‘Dear me!’ said Sainty, ‘I ought to have thought of it. Of course we +should have been only too delighted to see granny, if I had only thought +she would care to see the house; but she seems always so absorbed in +other things, it never occurred to me. It was very stupid of me. I’ve +been several times to see her, but she always talks as if it was such a +business to drive into London. I never dreamt of asking it of her. And +she says her sight has got so bad, that I wasn’t sure how much she would +see if she came.’ + +‘She would probably see a great deal that would shock her, as I have,’ +said Lady Charmington. ‘Have you ever calculated at all what this house +is going to cost you by the time it is finished?’ + +‘Oh, I’ve kept pretty good track of the expenses. I’ve paid for a good +deal of the work as it went along. It has all been done much more +extravagantly than I thought necessary. Indeed, as far as I am +concerned, I shouldn’t care if we had no London house at all; but Uncle +Cor seemed to think it indispensable, and he doesn’t consider that we +have done much we need not. He is always afraid that, with my saving +tendencies, I shall fail to do myself credit. He needn’t be uneasy as +long as Cissy is on hand to provide the antidote.’ + +‘There is a great difference between having things suitable to your +position and being foolishly and wickedly extravagant,’ remarked Lady +Charmington. + +‘Perhaps I have deliberately rather given Cissy her head about this +house,’ Sainty answered, ‘to keep her hands off Belchamber; there was a +great deal she was thinking of doing there, but I hope I have put a stop +to that.’ + +‘Belchamber!’ cried out his mother in horror. ‘What could she want to do +there? It was always kept in perfect repair; there wasn’t a door knob +missing nor a tap out of order, and when you came of age there was an +immense amount of money spent in cleaning and restoring. I always +thought it quite unnecessary her doing up those rooms in that ridiculous +way last summer. They looked to _me_ more like an improper person’s +apartments than like anything in an English lady’s house.’ + +‘Well, I can’t say I always admire Cissy’s taste, myself; there’s a +little want of knowledge about it.’ + +Sainty did not judge it necessary to tell his mother how far reaching +had been Cissy’s plans for the remodelling of Belchamber; he had +surprised them by an accident, and had promptly and firmly opposed them. +He could not bear the desecrating touch of fleeting fashion on anything +so artistically and historically complete as the home of his childhood, +and had been glad to purchase its immunity from the threatened changes +by larger concessions in the matter of the London house. Perhaps, even +so, Cissy would not have abandoned her projects without a struggle, but +for the appearance of a most unlooked-for ally to her husband in the +person of Claude Morland, who had supervened in the height of the +discussion and thrown all the weight of his authority into the scale for +the saving of Belchamber. + +‘Sainty is perfectly right,’ he said, with his most pontifical air; ‘it +would be vandalism. There isn’t a more beautiful specimen of its period +in England than the great saloon or the Vandyke dining-hall; they are +perfect. And the red, yellow, and green rooms, though they are later and +not so pure, have a great _cachet_ of their own, and are perfectly _de +l’époque_ as far as they go. No, no, my dear Cissy, it would be a sin. I +am all for your using the rooms, and living in them; but, believe me, +you mustn’t touch them. Do what you like here; you have a clean slate to +work on; but don’t attempt to “improve” Belchamber.’ + +Sainty was astonished at the meekness with which Cissy abandoned her +cherished schemes, but much too grateful to Claude for backing him up to +resent this evidence of his cousin’s greater authority. He knew, too, +that he owed it to him that the London house, if a little over-decorated +and too obviously costly, was, on the whole, harmonious and in good +taste. + +By dint of unremitting vigilance and almost superhuman tact, the date of +Lady Charmington’s departure had almost been reached without any more +serious encounter than a few skirmishes between her and her +daughter-in-law; but one afternoon, having heard his mother come in, and +gone in search of her, Sainty saw at a glance that a battle royal was +raging. Cissy was lolling exasperatingly calm and contemptuous among the +piles of cushions she delighted to heap upon the furniture, while Lady +Charmington sat stiffly erect, an ominous light in her eye, and a pink +spot burning in the centre of each sallow cheek. Her son heard her voice +as he entered, and quailed at the familiar tone of it. + +‘I am well aware,’ she was saying, ‘that nothing _I_ say will have the +smallest influence on your behaviour, but none the less I feel it my +solemn duty to protest, when I see things going on of which I entirely +disapprove.’ + +‘Why trouble, if you are so sure that you will produce no effect?’ asked +Cissy. + +‘Because _I_ have some consideration for my son’s honour, to which you +and he seem to be equally indifferent.’ + +‘Oh! His honour!’ protested Cissy. + +‘Yes; his honour,’ persisted Lady Charmington. ‘When I was first +married, a young woman of your age, a young wife not a year married, who +received men alone, sprawling about on sofas in that kind of indecent +clothing, would have been considered to have lost her character.’ + +‘Mother!’ interposed Sainty. + +‘Oh, it’s largely your fault for allowing such things,’ his mother +flashed out at him. ‘If you were more of a man, your wife would never +dare treat you as an absolute nonentity in your own house.’ + +‘But what’s it all about?’ asked Sainty. ‘What has Cissy been doing?’ + +‘I’m sure _I_ don’t know,’ answered Lady Belchamber. ‘You had better ask +your mother.’ + +‘I came in just now,’ said Lady Charmington,’and found her with that +flimsy rag she calls a tea-gown half off her back lolling about among +the cushions there with Algy Montgomery. I don’t call it decent.’ + +‘Why, Algy’s a sort of relation, you know,’ answered Cissy; ‘his +stepmother’s Sainty’s grandmother; it makes him a kind of uncle.’ + +‘Kind of fiddlestick! a good-for-nothing young rip in the Life Guards, +of six-or seven-and-twenty at the outside.’ + +‘Do you suppose, if I were doing anything that wasn’t perfectly +innocent, that I shouldn’t have taken jolly good care that you didn’t +come spying in?’ inquired Cissy, with lofty scorn. + +Lady Charmington choked. ‘It is not my habit to spy,’ she cried, ‘and I +am not accusing you of actual misconduct; but it’s not only to-day that +I object to. It’s your general mode of going on. Yesterday you were shut +up for ever so long with that vulgar little Mr. Pryor, and you drive +Claude all over London in your brougham. No honest woman should take any +man in her brougham, no matter who it is, that isn’t her husband or her +brother.’ + +‘Would her grandfather be admissible?’ asked Cissy sweetly. ‘I must say +for a high-minded person who angrily repudiates the idea of spying, you +seem to be strangely well informed as to all my movements.’ + +‘Cissy!’ expostulated Sainty. + +‘Well, what is it?’ she asked, turning to him politely. + +‘I have been deceived in you, very much deceived,’ Lady Charmington +broke out. ‘When you wanted to marry my son, you were all sweetness and +honey to me; now you’ve attained your object, you insult me. From the +day I arrived here you have studied in every way to let me see I was +unwelcome; there wasn’t an attention you could have paid me you didn’t +pointedly omit, or a possible slight that you neglected to put upon me. +I can well see that a mother-in-law in the house by no means suited your +book.’ + +‘Even such a sweet affectionate one?’ interposed Cissy. + +‘Mark my words,’ continued the exasperated dowager, ‘you will come to +grief. You are playing a dangerous game, my lady. You have no +conscience, no principle, no sense of duty to restrain or save you. If +you forget God and go after your own vain amusements from morning till +night, you will assuredly make shipwreck in the end.’ + +‘Well, at least you will have the satisfaction of thinking it was not +for want of being warned.’ + +‘Your sarcasms will never prevent my speaking my mind. I have seen +nothing in this house against which I do not think it incumbent on me, +not only as the mother of your husband but as a Christian woman, to bear +testimony--luxury, waste, riotous living, and indelicate behaviour. I am +going away, and I know you will be glad to be rid of me, but I couldn’t +have reconciled it to my conscience to go without speaking.’ + +‘I must say you have eased your conscience very thoroughly, and most +agreeably. Is there anything else your sense of duty impels you to +mention before you go?’ + +At this, Lady Charmington fairly lost her temper. She strode over to +Cissy, and Sainty flung himself between them, afraid that she was going +to strike her. ‘You little minx!’ she cried. ‘You little selfish, vulgar +minx! You have lied and wheedled your way into this family, and grabbed +all you could lay your hands upon, and what have you done in return? The +one thing that was asked of you, to bear a child, and give the house an +heir, you have most lamentably failed in doing.’ + +Cissy sprang to her feet, a curious evil look in her face, and for a +moment the two women looked into each other’s eyes. ‘Oh! in the matter +of a baby, take care I don’t astonish some of you yet,’ she cried. + + + + +CHAPTER XX + + +‘But you will come to _my_ ball,’ said the duchess with decision. The +‘but’ was in answer to Sainty’s assertion that he did not go to balls. +‘_Vous vous faites ridicule, mon enfant._ That you shouldn’t accompany +your wife everywhere, that I can see; it would be silly; but equally it +is not right never to be seen at all. People ask if anything is wrong +with you that you can’t appear, if you are half-witted or have fits.’ + +‘It is very kind of them to occupy themselves with my affairs,’ said +Sainty. ‘I shouldn’t have supposed that most people remembered that I +exist.’ + +‘But it is perhaps as well they _should_ remember it sometimes,’ said +his grandmother, with a significant glance at Cissy. + +‘I should have thought the one form of entertainment from which a lame +man might have been held excused was a dance,’ Sainty persisted. + +‘Ah! there are dances and dances,’ replied the duchess. ‘This is not a +dance _où l’on dansera_, it is a serious entertainment. I don’t say it +will be amusing; I don’t give this kind of thing for my own amusement or +for other people’s; there will be ministers, public men, royalties; +_enfin_ a solemn thing, and you are of the family. You must come, +mustn’t he, Cissy?’ + +‘Oh, certainly, if you wish it, dear,’ Cissy answered lightly. ‘I should +think it would just suit him. He will find people to whom he can talk +about the housing of the working classes. You know how I always _love_ +coming to Sunborough House, but not to _this_ kind of thing; you have +said yourself how it bores you.’ + +Sainty smiled at his wife’s complete assumption of equality with his +grandmother, both in age and position. He couldn’t help reflecting how +enchanted Lady Eccleston’s daughter would have been a short year ago at +the prospect of attending the function of which she now spoke so +slightingly as being for the uninitiated. + +‘Well, you will both come, like good children,’ said the duchess easily. +‘We don’t live only to amuse ourselves, you know.’ + +And so it came about that Belchamber found himself attending the ball in +question, and very much lost in that glittering throng. At first he had +been amused by the show, as he might have been by a scene in a +pantomime. The pompous men, bearers of great names or high positions, +stuck about with orders, the indecent bejewelled women, the lights, the +flowers, the music: it all made an effect of some gorgeousness, with the +really stately beautiful house as a background. But after an hour or so +he became aware of a sense of intolerable weariness. He had taken it for +granted that he and Cissy would be entirely independent of each other, +and that after he had shown himself to his grandmother and the duke, and +amused himself for a little while with the pageant, he would be free to +depart whenever it pleased him; but to his astonishment Cissy had +remarked that she had no intention of staying late and she would be very +much obliged if he would take her home in his brougham. ‘I want Gibson +early to-morrow morning,’ she explained, ‘so I don’t want to take him +out to-night, and I haven’t been in bed before three one night this +week. We can just show ourselves, and then slope.’ + +Once at the ball, however, she seemed to find it less dull than she had +anticipated, for Sainty several times caught sight of her dancing, which +she had announced that she certainly should not do, and had quite failed +in his endeavour to get speech of her to tell her that he would walk +home and leave the carriage for her. The night was fine and his own +house not five minutes away. Any one but Sainty would simply have gone +and left his wife to find it out. But this was a course which his +invincible conscientiousness forbade his taking. As he hung forlornly +about, hustled by the people who crowded in and out of the rooms, he +thought that surely no sound in nature was so ugly as that of a quantity +of human voices all talking at once and endeavouring to dominate each +other. He came presently on Mrs. de Lissac, who always soothed his +exasperated nerves; but after all he need not go to a ball to see _her_. +‘We could have had a much pleasanter talk in your house or mine, without +having to try and outshout a hundred other people,’ he said. + +‘I never can quite get over the strangeness of being here at all,’ Alice +answered. ‘It always seems rather like a fairy story to me, when I think +of my very simple bringing-up at the rectory, that I should come to rub +shoulders with all these grandees.’ + +‘It is a fairy story in which you have certainly been the good fairy,’ +said Sainty warmly. ‘I can’t tell you the difference it has made to me +having you in London to come and talk to sometimes.’ + +‘It is dear of you to say that. I like to think that to you I am not the +rich woman and possible subscriber or hostess, but just your old govey +that you loved when you were a little boy. Sometimes, dear,’ she added, +with a timid look of great tenderness, ‘I fancy you are not much happier +now than you were then.’ + +Sainty passed the back of his hand wearily across his eyes. ‘Happy,’ he +said; ‘is anyone happy? Think of the lives that are being led within a +mile of us to-night; can any one be happy with the cry of those millions +in his ears? Certainly not these people with their eternal desperate +pursuit of amusement who are afraid of being left for five minutes in +company with their own thoughts.’ + +‘Poor boy! you certainly are _not_ happy or you would not be so bitter. +It is dreadful to think of those poor people. I often wonder if we have +a right to be so rich when there are so many starving; but my dear +husband says this is Socialism, and if we weren’t rich we couldn’t give +away so much, and certainly he is very generous; and he says that all +these things that I feel as if it was wrong to spend so much on give +employment to lots of poor people to make, who would be out of work if +there were no rich people to buy things.’ She brought out this +time-honoured piece of argument with such a triumphant pride in her +spouse’s wisdom that Sainty thought of nothing less than combating it. + +‘There is one form of happiness that _you_ ought to enjoy in +perfection,’ he said, ‘that of being and doing good.’ + +Alice blushed. ‘Oh, you mustn’t call me good,’ she said; ‘but I was +going to say, if there is a lot of misery and poverty, I’m sure there +has never been so much done towards relieving it as nowadays.’ + +‘The “World’s Bazaar,” for instance,’ said Sainty. + +‘Well--yes, dear--that and other things. And I’m sure if, as you say, +being and doing good makes us happy, you ought to know it too.’ + +‘I!’ cried Sainty. ‘Whom do I make happy?’ + +‘Oh, you are always doing kind things for people, and see how happy you +make your wife.’ + +‘My wife’s happiness is very much independent of me; indeed, I am rather +the principal drawback to it.’ The words slipped out almost before he +was aware. Even to this kind old friend he had never spoken of his +relations with his wife, and this seemed neither the time nor the place +he would have chosen to do so. Mrs. de Lissac looked pained, but she +took advantage of his little outbreak to say, ‘I have sometimes wanted +to speak to you about your wife, but have not quite liked to. I think +you and she should be more together. You leave her too much to herself. +She is very young and pretty to be so independent, and perhaps a little +thoughtless.’ + +‘Talking of Cissy,’ Sainty interrupted, ‘can you tell me where she is? +As a beginning of acting on your advice, you see we have come into the +world together to-night, and I am actually waiting to go home till she +is ready.’ + +A sinuous young lady, clad in a sheath of some glittering, shimmering +blackness, turned at the words and held out her hand. ‘How d’ye do, Lord +Belchamber?’ she said. ‘I don’t believe you remember me. Are you asking +for Lady Belchamber? I saw her not five minutes ago with Mr. Morland.’ + +With a start Sainty recognised Amy Winston. The unrelieved black of her +dress, and of a long pair of gloves that were pulled up to her elbows, +lent a baleful pallor to her face and neck, and above her brow there +shone in her dusky tresses a single diamond star which, if real, was a +very remarkable ornament to belong to a single woman said mainly to +support herself by the manufacture of magazine tales and occasional +verse. At sight of this siren good Mrs. de Lissac fell back into the +crowd, while the young man to whom Miss Winston was talking, after a +half glance at Sainty, made off not less hastily, so that they were left +facing one another. + +‘I remember you perfectly, Miss Winston,’ Sainty said, ‘although we have +not met very lately. You were kind enough to say you had seen Lady +Belchamber. I wish you would tell me where I should find her; she wanted +to go home early to-night, and I think may be looking for me.’ + +‘She didn’t appear to be, ‘replied the young woman, with the faintest +suspicion of insolence; ‘nor, I must say, did she seem in any particular +hurry to get home. She was going into the garden with _le beau cousin_. +Didn’t you know the garden was lit up? it is one of the great features +of the Sunborough House parties. Let’s go and look for them.’ + +Sainty couldn’t well refuse. He was thinking how much more indecent a +very low-necked bodice was on a thin woman than on a fat one. + +‘Wasn’t that Ned Parsons who left you just now?’ he asked, as they made +their way towards the staircase. + +‘Yes. He has become very fashionable since his book was such a success; +he goes everywhere now. By the way,’ she added, with a little laugh, ‘I +suppose that’s why he bolted at sight of you; he thinks you haven’t +forgiven him for the liberty he took with your coming-of-age party.’ + +‘I should have thought he had quite as much reason to fear my +grandmother; yet I find him at her house.’ + +‘Oh, well--a great ball like this is hardly being at people’s house, you +know; it doesn’t count. But as a matter of fact he and the duchess have +quite made it up. They met at Lady Eva’s, and the duchess prepared to +crush him. “I hear, Mr. Parsons,” said she, in her most regal manner, +“that you have put me in a book.” “Who can have told you such a thing?” +Ned asked, with touching innocence. “The duchess in my book is old and +ridiculous; how _could_ she be meant for you?”’ + +Sainty couldn’t help laughing. As they emerged into the cooler and less +crowded garden, his guide waited for him to come up beside her. Hitherto +she had preceded him, worming her way through the crowd with a deftness +bred of long habit, at which Sainty marvelled, and talking lightly to +him over her shoulder. + +‘One doesn’t often see you at this sort of thing,’ she said. + +‘It is only the second ball of my life,’ Sainty answered. ‘You were at +my first too.’ + +‘Ah! the famous ball immortalised by Parsons. Is it possible that it can +be three years ago?’ + +‘Nearly four now.’ + +‘Good heavens! so it is. How old we are all getting! Your wife was there +too; it was the year she came out. How little any of us thought what was +going to happen, except perhaps dear Lady Eccleston. I shouldn’t wonder +if _she_ had had an inkling even then.’ + +Sainty did not like his companion’s tone, but hardly knew how to resent +it. He had hoped by a rather stiff silence to intimate his want of +appreciation of her particular form of humour, but she continued to +chatter quite unabashed by his unresponsiveness. + +‘Cissy is quite a success,’ she continued; ‘it is astonishing how +quickly she has caught on. I don’t know any one who has more admirers, +unless perhaps it’s Mrs. Jack Purse, and she’s been much longer on the +scene of battle.’ + +‘And who may she be?’ Sainty asked, hoping to divert the stream of Miss +Winston’s malevolence from his own vegetable patch. + +‘Lord Belchamber, where _have_ you lived? I wish she could hear you; +she’d die of it. Why, Mrs. Jack is smartest of the smart. She knows +hardly any one but Jews and royalties. I was quite astonished to find +her at the Suffords’ at Whitsuntide. Hylda Sufford said she couldn’t +imagine why she came to her, but I think the Guggenheim’s party for the +prince falling through had something to do with it.’ + +‘My wife didn’t tell me she met you at the Suffords’.’ + +‘Oh, I don’t know how I came to be asked, but I was.’ + +‘And did you amuse yourself?’ + +‘Oh, we had great fun. One night we all dressed up for dinner. Hylda was +a harlequin and Ella Dalsany the columbine.’ + +‘Do you mean to say that Lady Sufford came down to dinner in tights +before the footmen?’ + +‘Gracious, yes! And Gladys Purse was Mephistopheles and Lady Deans +Marguerite; but we all thought Cissy had the best idea.’ + +‘And what was that?’ asked Sainty nervously. He had neither asked nor +received any account of the Suffords’ country-house party. + +‘Why, she just put on her best frock and all her diamonds, and said she +was the Traviata.’ + +Sainty was not sure that this inspiration of his wife’s exactly appealed +to him. He walked in gloomy silence. + +‘Didn’t she tell you about it?’ asked Miss Winston. ‘She had a +tremendous success. Mrs. Jack, with her red legs and cock’s feather, was +nowhere. Cissy has one immense pull over Gladys Purse as far as the +younger men are concerned. It’s terribly expensive to admire Mrs. Jack; +whereas a charming but impecunious youth like Claude Morland gets many +little advantages by the way from his devotion to his pretty cousin.’ + +In spite of an effort to keep her talk on the level of impartial +ill-nature, Miss Winston could not quite help a touch of scornful +bitterness in her mention of Claude. + +Scattered images had been loosely grouping themselves in Sainty’s brain +as she talked, half-forgotten incidents of his coming-of-age party, the +softly opening door, his encounter with his cousin in the sleeping +house, his examination of Claude as to his feelings for this same +lady--it seemed to him that he began to detect a certain method in the +apparently purposeless gossip with which she was favouring him. And +then, blinding in its sudden illumination, there flashed across his mind +the recollection of the anonymous letters. Here was the key to their +authorship thrust suddenly into his mind. He felt the quick instinctive +recoil of a man about to tread on something nasty, and then a sort of +shuddering pity for what the creature at his side must have suffered. +None knew better than he how they were wounded who put their trust in +Claude Morland. He wanted to turn and hurry from her, or at least to +find something that should stop the flicker of her evil tongue. He found +nothing better to say in the shock of the moment than ‘Do you think you +ought to talk to me so about my wife?’ + +Sunborough House has, for the heart of London, a relatively large +garden, which being cunningly illumined with Chinese lanterns and little +coloured lamps, the next day’s papers were already reporting that the +effect was ‘fairy-like.’ Despite these beauties and the somewhat chilly +allurements of an English summer night, only a few of the most +flirtatiously inclined had been persuaded to drag their expensive skirts +over the sooty London grass, and Sainty and his companion had the +further end of the enclosure, which they had now reached, practically to +themselves. As he made his feeble protestation, they came, round a tree, +upon the glass doors of a sort of little summer-house which backed up +against the high railing that divided the garden from the Park. + +Miss Winston gave one glance into the lighted interior. ‘I think we are +_de trop_ here,’ she said, turning to Sainty, and, slipping nimbly from +his side, she vanished in the soft shadows of the shrubbery. Almost at +the same moment the door was opened from within with such suddenness +that Sainty, who had not the agility of the fair Aimée, could only save +himself from being struck by throwing himself back into the angle formed +by the tree and the railing, and in this small space he now found +himself made a close prisoner by the open door, which was firmly held in +position by the broad back of a man, as he could see through the glass. +He reflected that his position was not a dignified one, that as the +inmates of the summer-house were evidently leaving it, he had only to +stay quiet till they were gone, and then push the door and follow them +at his leisure; and they need never know how nearly he had been tricked +into playing the spy upon them. Miss Winston had evidently counted on +finding her quarry there (perhaps from personal knowledge of his +cousin’s habits), and had hoped that she could so excite his jealousy +that he would not be able, once there, to resist the temptation of +looking. He had no doubt as to whom he would have seen, even before he +recognised Claude’s voice. He was relieved to hear that there was +nothing lover-like in it. Morland spoke in brief business-like tones +through which pierced a scarcely disguised note of annoyance. ‘Then you +won’t see him?’ he said, pausing against the door, evidently continuing +some discussion they had been having. + +‘I daren’t,’ Cissy answered. ‘I’m sure it would kill me.’ + +‘Then you must do the other thing; there are not two ways about it; and +the sooner the better. If you’re right, you’ve no time to lose. But are +you quite sure?’ + +‘Oh yes, quite. I wasn’t at first, but I am now.’ + +‘It’s cursedly unfortunate----’ + +They spoke low, and as they moved off he could hear no more. + +Sainty pushed the door, and stepped out from his temporary prison. Of +the fragment of dialogue that he had overheard he did not understand a +word; indeed, he did not pay it any particular attention at the time; he +supposed it to refer to some of the many plans the two were always +discussing. He was accustomed to Cissy’s use of needlessly strong +language. ‘I should simply die of it’ was a common phrase with her for +expressing dislike of the most trivial things. It was not till months +after they were spoken that the words came back to him with a new +significance. + +He followed the retreating figures up the garden, his feeling one of +relief at the failure of an ill-natured plot of which he had been meant +to be the victim. Miss Winston’s motive was not difficult to guess. It +all seemed like something in a novel or a play, curiously theatrical and +unlike life; but at least the _dénouement_ had been essentially +undramatic. + +When he reached the front hall, he found Cissy already cloaked among the +group of people who were waiting for their carriages. + +‘Where _have_ you been?’ she said. ‘I’ve been looking everywhere for +you. I told you I wanted to go home early. I thought you must have +gone.’ + +‘I was looking for you,’ Sainty answered. ‘I was told you had gone into +the garden, so I went there after you; but we must just have missed.’ + +In the brief transit to their own door neither spoke. Sainty was +wondering if he ought to say anything to Cissy of the ill-will that was +dogging her footsteps, to put her on her guard against evil tongues. A +woman in her exceptional position could not be too careful to furnish no +weapons to scandal. Yet it was not only Miss Winston’s vengeful jealousy +that had warned him to look after his wife. Had not kind little Mrs. de +Lissac tried to suggest that he left her dangerously unguarded? Even the +duchess had hinted the advisability of his being more with Cissy. It was +evident that she was being talked about. Cissy herself seemed to provide +him with just the necessary opportunity for speech, so difficult to find +in their divided lives. To his surprise, instead of going immediately +upstairs on arriving at home, she followed him into his rooms on the +ground-floor. His study, though of Spartan simplicity compared to the +rest of the house, had the indefinable pleasant air of rooms much lived +and worked in. Everything in it was meant for use, and daily used. Books +seemed to accumulate round Sainty like some natural growth. The one lamp +with its plain green shade lighted the comfortable litter on the big, +serviceable writing-table, and on another table near it was the humble +appliance by help of which, as in his college days, he sometimes +refreshed himself with a midnight cup of tea if he was working late. + +‘How cosy you are in here,’ Cissy said, looking about her. ‘I must have +spent five times as much on my boudoir, but with all its silk walls and +cushions and frills and furbelows it doesn’t look as homey as this.’ + +‘You’re never in the house for long enough to do more than scratch off a +dozen notes,’ said Sainty, ‘unless you have people with you. Nothing +ever looks like a home in which people don’t live.’ + +‘I think it’s the books,’ Cissy went on. ‘They are wonderful furniture. +I really must get some.’ + +She lingered, wandering about the room looking at one thing and another. +‘What’s this for?’ she asked, coming to the old kettle with its lamp. + +‘Sometimes I like a cup of tea if I’m working. It’s a bad habit I got +into at Cambridge.’ + +‘How shocking for the nerves, my dear,’ cried Cissy, with a lifelike +imitation of old Lady Firth. ‘Well, you might have a decent-looking +kettle and teapot. I shall have to give you one. Do you mean you could +make a cup of tea now, this minute? What fun! Do make me one. I’m cold +and famished. It will be lovely.’ + +Sainty obediently set about lighting the spirit-lamp and preparing the +demanded refreshment. He was not a little puzzled by this latest caprice +of his wife. + +Cissy went to the door, and called the butler. ‘You needn’t sit up,’ she +said. ‘Give me a candle, and then put out the lights and go to bed.’ She +came back, and flung herself into an armchair, her summer wrap of satin +and lace billowing foamlike round her. + +Sainty, as he made the tea, was wondering how he could introduce the +subject on which he wanted to speak. It was not once in six months he +would have such an opportunity. He must not let it slip. And yet he was +unwilling to sermonise when for once she was in so friendly a mood. He +brought the cup of tea to her, and stood looking down at her as she +gulped little teaspoonfuls of the hot liquid. + +‘You have never told me anything about your visit to the Suffords’,’ he +said. + +Cissy looked up suddenly. ‘What about it?’ she asked distrustfully. + +‘I mean about the dressing up for dinner and all that. Was it amusing?’ + +‘Oh, _that_!’ said Cissy indifferently, but with an air of relief. ‘I +didn’t suppose it would amuse you to hear about such nonsense. Who told +you?’ she asked, with a return of suspicion. + +‘Miss Winston. I met her to-night. I hadn’t seen her for years.’ + +‘That’s a nasty cat,’ Cissy remarked with conviction. ‘She hates me.’ + +‘Oh, you know it?’ + +‘Know it? Of course I know it. Why----’ She seemed to think better of +what she was going to say, and checked herself. ‘What did she say about +me?’ she asked. + +‘She spoke in a way I didn’t like,’ Sainty answered. ‘For some reason +that woman is your enemy, and I wanted to tell you to be on your guard +against her.’ + +‘Oh, thanks, that’s all right. I’m not afraid of Aimée Winston,’ and she +smiled a little cold smile at her own thoughts. + +‘Don’t you think,’ said Sainty, with some hesitation, ‘that you are a +little imprudent sometimes? a little careless of appearances? that, in +fact, you rather give a horrid woman like Miss Winston occasion to take +away your character?’ + +‘Oh, my character!’ said Cissy lightly. She had set down her tea-cup, +and was pulling off her long gloves, and rubbing her round white arms +softly over each other. + +‘I think, you know,’ Sainty went on, ‘you are beginning to be talked +about a little. It was not only Miss Winston, but some one else, a nice +woman, who----’ + +‘Mrs. de Lissac, for a fiver!’ interjected Cissy. ‘There’s another woman +who don’t love me, though not for the same reason.’ + +‘Well, it _was_ Alice, as it happens,’ Sainty admitted; ‘but she only +said the kindest things, that you were too young and pretty to be left +so much to yourself. You know even the duchess implied that I ought to +be seen with you sometimes.’ + +‘Well,’ said Cissy imperturbably, ‘why aren’t you? It seems to me that +it is _you_ who are failing in your duties, according to all these +ladies, not me.’ + +The coolness of the retort took Sainty’s breath away for the moment. + +‘But you know,’ he stammered, ‘that there is nothing you would like +less. I have never pretended to any right to control your actions. You +know you are free to amuse yourself as you like. All I ask is that you +won’t compromise yourself, won’t get talked about, and--and all that.’ +He ended rather lamely. He half expected an outburst. To his surprise +she leaned towards him, and laid her hand very gently on his. + +‘Don’t you think,’ she said, and her voice was kind, ‘that you _are_ +rather to blame perhaps? If I _am_ talked about, isn’t it partly your +fault? Can I help it if other men admire me?’ She had unclasped her +cloak, as the tea warmed her, and now, as she rose, it slipped from her +and fell into the chair. She was standing very close to him, a beautiful +woman, her beauty enhanced by everything that dress could do for it. Her +breath was on his cheek, the faint heady fragrance of her garments +troubled his nostrils, the dazzling fairness of her bare shoulders was +close under his eyes. He drew back a little, bewildered. ‘I don’t +understand,’ he murmured. ‘I have tried not to annoy you. You remember +what you said. After that I naturally could not trouble you.’ + +Cissy sprang suddenly away, and caught up her cloak. There was in her +movement something of the recoil of a spring that has been forced too +far in one direction and has suddenly escaped. + +‘Ah, no,’ he heard her whisper, ‘I can’t----’ and then aloud, with a +sudden scornful flash, ‘No, _of course_ you can’t understand,’ she said. +‘Heavens! it’s nearly three ... and I, who meant to go to bed early. +There’s a fate against it. Give me my candle. Good night--or what’s left +of it.’ She hurried past him, almost snatching the candle from his hand. +The feeble flicker of it had vanished from the great well of the +staircase, while he still stood in the doorway dumbly wondering. + +What had she meant? Was it possible that she repented of her cruelty, +that she wished----For a moment it had seemed so. Yet he could not +believe it. Vividly he recalled the night of their wedding, her agonised +repetitions that she never could be his. And yet her following him to +his room, her words, still more her looks. He stood there long +irresolute, wondering if he were losing a great opportunity. Once he +started to go and seek her. He looked up at the skylight far above, +where the first faint coming of morning was making a pale twilight. He +listened, but in all the silent greyness of the big house he could hear +no sound but the innumerable ticking of clocks. A breath of chill +discouragement seemed to steal down to him where he stood. He had a +vision of the grotesque figure he should cut, misled by his own fatuity, +and meeting closed doors, or the half concealed impertinence of a +waiting-maid, and slowly he turned back into his own rooms and shut the +door. + + + + +CHAPTER XXI + + +From the time of their coming to London it had required no effort on +their part for the Belchambers to be very little together, but after the +ball at Sunborough House, Sainty was aware that they avoided each other. +On the rare occasions when they met, he was conscious in his wife’s +manner of a more thinly veiled contempt, while on his side he felt a +shyness with her which was the beginning of dislike. + +There was something almost frightening to him in the absolute quality of +her egotism. In the scene of which he had been a horrified witness +between her and his mother, Lady Charmington had by no means displayed a +conciliatory courtesy, but if she had been rude she had at least lost +her temper in a thoroughly human manner--she had _cared_. Had Cissy +shown heat in return, he could easily have understood it. What revolted +him in her attitude was the complete indifference as to what her +mother-in-law thought of her, or whether they were on good terms or ill. +The way in which, when she wanted nothing more of them, people simply +ceased to exist for her, seemed to him monstrous. She had summarily +declined to make any overtures towards peace, alleging, not without +justice, that she was the injured party. ‘Lady Charmington had insulted +and abused her in her own house, and she had taken it with the meekness +of a lamb. She really could not see what there was for _her_ to +apologise about; she was quite ready to _accept_ an apology if her +mother-in-law wished to make one’; but that lady, oddly enough, showed +no signs of any such desire. She had departed next day without so much +as seeing Cissy again, merely mentioning to her son before she left that +he would probably suffer the curse of childlessness, as a punishment +for his wife’s behaviour and his own inability to guide and chasten her. + +So the young couple drifted more and more apart, Sainty realising with a +terrified fatalism the extent to which this creature, at once so hard +and so capricious, who bore his name and spent his money, yet had never +been his wife and had become almost a stranger to him, had it in her +power to injure him irretrievably. + +After the duchess’s ball he received no more anonymous letters, which +confirmed him in his theory of their authorship. Miss Winston, having +played her trump card in the disclosure she thought she had made to him, +evidently judged it useless to continue the letters which were meant to +lead up to it. One day, however, the post brought him an envelope which, +at first sight, he made sure was the beginning of a new series. He was +on the point of destroying it, unopened, when he was aware of his own +coat-of-arms and crest gorgeously emblazoned on the back, and a closer +inspection proved that the illiterateness of the handwriting was not +feigned but perfectly genuine. It was from Lady Arthur, and contained +the unwelcome news that his brother had been ill, more seriously than +she had at first imagined, and a request that he would come and see him. +‘He won’t make the sign,’ she wrote, ‘and I expect he’d be very angry +with me if he knew I was writing, but all the same I know it would be a +comfort to him to see you. He’s worrying about money matters. You see, +being so ill has made him think if he was to die what would become of me +and the children.’ It was put rather crudely, but Sainty admitted that +it was a legitimate cause for solicitude, and hailed this proof that +Arthur was taking thought for others. Even if it were the others who +were taking thought for themselves, a poor woman could not be blamed for +wishing to secure the future of her helpless offspring. He decided that +he must go down and see his brother. He was sorry Arthur had been so +ill; he never remembered him ill in his life, since the measles and +chicken-pox of early childhood. + +Sainty did not judge it necessary to say anything to Cissy about his +expedition; it required no diplomacy on his part to conceal any of his +movements; if he should be absent for a week, she would neither know nor +care, and he found by consultation of Bradshaw that he could go and +return in the long summer day. It was a relief to him that he need not +spend a night in the house of kinsfolk whom he did not receive in his +own. The situation was awkward and unpleasant, and when he thought of +all that Arthur’s marriage had made him do and suffer, it must be +confessed that he approached his brother’s home and wife with invincible +repugnance. + +The Chamberses had taken up their abode (of course in a hunting country) +in an old vicarage from which a victim of shrunken tithes had been glad +to move into a smaller house. Arthur had added new and magnificent +stables that had cost Sainty a pretty penny before they were completed. +The house itself might have been transplanted bodily from the heart of +Belgravia. It was of such commonplace and uncharacteristic architecture +that even the process known to Lady Arthur as ‘Smartenin’ the old place +up a bit’ had failed materially to disfigure it. It was approached +through all the dignity of a lodge gate and ‘carriage sweep,’ which +swept round a mound of damp laurels opposite the front door, and +deposited Sainty at a small Ionic portico of stucco pillars. Having +confided his name and business to a dingy man in a shiny dress-coat who +opened the door to him, Belchamber was told ‘’is lordship was expecting +of ‘im, and would ‘is lordship please to walk this way,’ and followed +the butler upstairs to Arthur’s room. He smiled to see how exactly the +interior of the house corresponded with his anticipations: everything +was modern, ugly, expensive, and already shabby. A great litter of caps, +gloves, sticks, and hunting-crops encumbered the hall, together with a +female garden-hat ornamented with huge red bows and faded muslin +poppies. A strong smell of cooking pervaded the staircase, and from some +of the many open doors came the sound of women’s voices in dispute, and +high above all else the shrill wailing of a baby. + +It was with a conflict of feelings that Sainty found himself once more +face to face with Arthur, whom he had not seen since his fruitless +attempt to detach him from the woman who was now his wife. They had +parted as boys, they met again as married men, and with no particularly +happy experiences behind them. Sainty noted with pained surprise how +much of his brother’s good looks had been what the French call ‘the +devil’s beauty.’ That boyish freshness was gone for ever, and the face +had gained nothing of manly dignity in its place. + +The young man was sitting propped with pillows in a big easy-chair, +arrayed in a gorgeous silk dressing-gown. His recent illness had given +him a pinched bluish-white look about the nose, but the colour had set +and hardened on the cheek bones, and the eyes had a tired shifty look. +The beautiful curls were already worn a little thin at the temples, and +an absurd little fair moustache seemed to be ineffectually trying with +its waxed points to conceal the two lines that ill-temper had traced +beside the nostrils. + +‘Very good of you to come,’ he said, as he held out his hand. + +‘I’m so sorry to hear you’ve been ill. What was it?’ Sainty asked, as he +sat down beside him, struggling with a lump that would rise in his +throat. + +‘I fancy I’ve been pretty bad,’ Arthur answered. ‘Some superior form of +mulligrubs. I don’t believe the damn fool of a doctor knows quite what +_was_ the matter. I think he was frightened himself. He gets into +corners with Topsy and whispers, till I want to break his head. I’ve +pulled through all right, but, of course, another time I mightn’t, you +know, and that’s what I wanted to see you about.’ + +There was no suggestion that he wanted to see him for any other reason. +They met after two years of absence and estrangement, and after what +seemed a very fair chance that they might never meet again. The elder +brother was husky with emotion, the younger as unmoved by any thought +of their common past as though it were his solicitor whom he had +summoned to the discussion of a matter of business. + +His coldness reacted on Sainty, and helped him to steady his voice as he +answered, ‘Your wife intimated in her letter that you were troubled +about money matters.’ + +‘That’s it. You see, as long as I live I’ve got this cursed pittance. A +fellow can’t live like a gentleman on it, but at least we don’t starve. +But as the missus pointed out to me, if I was to hop the twig, there’d +be just nothing for her and the kids; so I made her write and tell you I +was ill; I thought I owed it to her. She grumbles a good deal, and she’s +a damn bad manager, and we have our rows, but she’s not a bad sort of an +old girl. Last winter she went without a pony for her shay, so as I +could keep another hunter. Now that was rather decent of her. I’m not +very partial to the kids myself; it’s unbelievable how they yell; but I +shouldn’t like ’em to be left in the gutter, you know.’ + +‘Do you know me so little, Arthur, that you could suppose, if anything +happened to you, I shouldn’t provide for your wife and children?’ + +‘Well, you were never a particularly free parter, you know, old man, and +then you didn’t approve of the connection. How was I to know?’ + +‘Of course, in case of your death, I should continue the same allowance +to your widow.’ + +‘Would you now? Well, _that’s_ all right. But I say, suppose _you_ were +to kick? you’re not so remarkably strong, you know, yourself.’ + +‘In that case, your boy comes in for the whole thing, and of course the +trustees would make a suitable provision for his mother.’ + +‘Oh, gammon! we don’t count on that, you know. What’s to prevent your +having children yourself? By the way, isn’t Lady Belchamber showing any +signs yet?’ + +‘Er--no; as a matter of fact--not----’ + +‘Well, she’d better look sharp, or we shall begin to indulge unholy +hopes. But, bar chaff, you couldn’t put it in writing, could you, about +the allowance going on in case we were both to what the papers call +“join the majority”?’ + +‘If it will be any comfort to you I can, but I should think you could +trust me; and in case I should ever have an heir, I promise at once to +add a codicil to my will, providing for your children.’ + +‘Well, let’s have that in writing too; then there can’t be any mistake +about it, and Topsy’ll let me alone. She’s got her damned old mother +with her (she’s an old vulgarian, I tell you), and the two of ’em have +nagged my life out of me about this. I never will have old Mother Mug +here, but I was going to town for a lar--on business, if I hadn’t been +taken ill, and so I said she could have her to keep her company while I +was away, and I’m blowed if the old devil didn’t turn up, just the +same.’ + +‘How do you like this place on the whole?’ Sainty asked. + +‘It isn’t bad in the winter; just between two packs, you know; and one +or two of the people round have given me some shooting. But at this time +o’ year it’s simply infernal; not one blessed thing to do. As I told +you, if it hadn’t been for this cursed illness, I was going to town for +a bit; if I didn’t get away now and then I should rot and burst.’ + +‘Is there nobody you see or like in the neighbourhood?’ + +Arthur winced. ‘Well, you see,’ he said, ‘most of the huntin’ lot go +away in the summer, and the regular county sort of set ain’t +particularly lively; and then the women jib a bit at Topsy. One or two +of ’em have called, but not many. Our parson and his wife toady her +freely; they ain’t particular as long as she’s my lady, and will give +’em money for the school treat. I assure you she’s becoming quite the +charitable religious lady; nothing else to do, poor girl. But most of +these county women are a damned stiff-backed lot; they ain’t like +Londoners.’ + +At this point in the conversation the dingy butler, who looked like the +‘heavy father’ of a not very prosperous travelling company, came to say +that ‘lunching was served, and Lady Harthur Chambers ‘oped Lord +Belchamber would do ’er the honour to come down.’ He also brought +Arthur’s meal on a tray, over which the invalid let fly a volley of +curses: ‘the napkin was dirty, the soup was cold, the bread was stale; +he could take it back to the damn cook and tell her,---- her, if she +couldn’t send up a decent basin of broth to a sick man,---- her, and---- +her, she’d better---- well go.’ + +To this rolling accompaniment, Sainty got himself out of the room, +saying he would come up again after lunch, and was conducted by the +seedy retainer into the presence of his sister-in-law, who received him +with much state. + +The three years that had elapsed since their last meeting had not +treated Lady Arthur more kindly than her husband. They were in her case +three years considerably nearer to the term of youth. In the days of the +supper at the Hotel Fritz she had been a decidedly handsome young woman, +if a little over-florid. In the interval she had grown more florid and +less handsome, and suggested an impression of having run to seed. A +growing tendency to corpulence was resisted by violent compression, with +disastrous results to the complexion, imperfectly corrected by a +plentiful application of _blanc de perle_. Her attire was gorgeous +beyond the needs of the occasion, but left somewhat to be desired in the +matter of tidiness, and exhaled a heavy scent of musk that made Sainty +feel sick. She presented him to her mother, a terrible warning of what +she was on the highroad to become. This lady was a shorter and twenty +years’ older edition of Lady Arthur, more coarsely painted, more frankly +vulgar, more consentingly fat, and she wore an olive green wig of Brutus +curls. + +‘Do you like the country, Mrs. de Vere?’ Sainty asked, as they sat at +meat together in heavy silence. + +‘Muggins,’ the lady corrected, with a giggle. ‘De Vere was Maria’s--I +mean Cynthy’s--stage name.’ + +‘My _Nong de Tayarter_,’ said her daughter, with a warning look at the +dingy man, who was handing the potatoes with an air of forced +abstraction. + +‘Well,’ said Mrs. Muggins, ‘I was connected with the profession myself +when I was young; there’s nothing to be ashamed of in it. It’s an art, +and nowadays very highly considered. But you was askin’, my lord, if I +liked the country. For a little visit like this, I don’t say, but to +live in, year in, year out--no thank you. It may be all very well for +them that were born to it, but give me London. I like to see my +fellow-creeturs. I should think Cynthia’d die of the mopes in this +place. I should, I know, if I was her.’ + +‘It isn’t very lively,’ assented her daughter. + +‘I can’t think whatever you find to do all day,’ said the elder lady. + +‘I have my children,’ said Cynthia, with the air of a Cornelia, ‘and I’m +getting quite interested in the village and the poor people.’ + +‘Well, it wouldn’t amuse _me_,’ said her mother. ‘I call it cruel of +your brother, my lord, to keep her mewed up in a place like this. Such a +winter as she’s had. It’s all very well for him, ‘untin’ five days a +week, and shootin’ with Squire this, that, and the other, but what fun +does _she_ get out of it, poor child? Their stuck-up wives don’t even +come and see her, and the moment the ‘untin’ and shootin‘ ’s over, my +lord was off to London and Newmarket, if he hadn’t been took ill. He was +hardly here a week last summer. Does he offer to take _her_?--not him, +not if he knows it.’ + +‘Three weeks at the sea was all the change _I_ got last year,’ said Lady +Arthur. + +‘And _that_ I had to make you insist upon, or you wouldn’t have got +_that_,’ chimed in mamma. + +‘It was more for baby’s sake than my own,’ said Cynthia; ‘the child +needed sea air.’ + +‘Dear little Arthur was baby then,’ explained Mrs. Muggins; ‘the second +little dear wasn’t even expected. Now there’s two of ’em they’ll want a +change more than ever.’ + +‘You have two children?’ Sainty said. ‘Are they both boys?’ + +‘Both of ’em,’ assented Lady Arthur proudly. ‘Poor as we are, there’s +many people would be glad of my two little boys, or even one of ’em,’ +and she pointed this delicate allusion by a side glance at her mother, +as who should say ‘I had him there.’ + +The ill-concealed hostility of these people, the way they abused his +brother to him, his sister-in-law’s hint at the want of ease in their +circumstances, all combined to make Sainty’s visit thoroughly +uncomfortable. + +‘What’s been the matter with Arthur?’ he asked, to change the subject. + +‘Eating and drinking too much,’ responded Mrs. Muggins readily. ‘And so +I told him. “Arthur, my boy,” I says to him, “you mark my words: you’re +digging your grave with your teeth.”’ + +Lady Arthur simpered. ‘It’s rather awkward to talk about insides to +gentlemen,’ she said; ‘but it was of that nature. The doctor said he had +had a narrow squeak of--what was the word?--perrynaitis, or perrytaitis +or something. I told him he couldn’t expect ladies to remember his long +Latin names, but it was some kind of inflammation from what he said.’ + +‘What she don’t tell you,’ put in the irrepressible Mrs. Muggins, ‘was +how she nursed him. Three nights she never went to bed nor had her +clothes off her, and, as often as not, sworn at for her pains.’ + +‘I only did my duty,’ said Cynthia nobly; ‘but I hope I shan’t often +have to do the same again.’ + +‘What she wants,’ said Mrs. Muggins, ‘after being shut up so much, and +the anxiety and all, is a good change. Why don’t you come up and stop +with me a bit, when I go back, and see the theatres and the shops? The +spring fashions are very pretty: sunshades are very tasty this year, I +must say.’ + +‘I do want a new sunshade,’ Lady Arthur admitted, ‘and for that matter, +lots of things; but Arthur don’t care _how_ I’m dressed, _now_,’ and +she removed a discoloured tear with the untorn corner of an imitation +lace handkerchief. + +As they were leaving the dining-room, she detained Sainty a moment to +whisper in his ear, ‘Has Arthur spoken to you about what I wrote?’ + +‘Oh yes,’ said Sainty, ‘we have talked about it. I assured him that +would be all right.’ + +Lady Arthur looked relieved. ‘What should I have?’ she asked. + +‘Oh!--er--the same as now,’ Sainty gasped. + +‘You’ll think me very mercenary, I fear,’ said his sister-in-law, with +an attempt to climb back into the grand manner from which she had so +swiftly descended. ‘I don’t care for myself, you know; I’ve worked for +my living before, but a mother must think of her children; even a bear +will fight for its cubs.’ + +The ‘cubs’ were presently produced, of course. The baby was a mere +bundle of lace and ribbons; but the elder child, who appeared to be +nearly two, and had been most carefully combed and starched and +decorated for the occasion, was set upon two chubby legs within the +door, and stared stolidly at his uncle. Sainty tried hard to see +something of Arthur in the little boy who would probably be his heir, +but the younger Arthur was a most unmistakable miniature edition of Mrs. +Muggins, with the same prominent eyes and hanging lower lip, and even +his ‘oiled and curled Assyrian locks’ suggested a sort of childish +imitation of the Brutus wig. His grandmother was fully aware of the +likeness, and evidently thought it must be a cause of unmixed +gratification to Lord Belchamber. + +‘He favours our side of the family,’ she said proudly, ‘and, though I +say it that should not, a handsomer little picture of a cherub I don’t +think you’ll easily find.’ + +‘Give uncle a sweet kiss, dearie,’ said the proud mother; but on +Sainty’s stooping to receive the embrace, the amiable infant set up such +a piteous howl, in which the baby promptly joined, that both children +had to be conducted into retirement. + +‘I think,’ said Sainty, ‘if you’ll let me, I’ll go up and see my +brother again for a few minutes. I see I must be leaving in about half +an hour, if I am to catch the afternoon train up. I told the fly to come +back for me.’ + +‘Well, if you _must_ go,’ said his sister-in-law, ‘there’s no good +pressing you to stop. I’m afraid the lunch was not what you’re +accustomed to. No doubt you have a French cook and every luxury, but +_we_ have to cut our coats according to the cloth, you know. I may not +see you again before you go, I’m going to take mamma for a bit of an +airing. I hope Lady Belchamber is well. She has no children, I think.’ + +‘Well,’ said Arthur, when Sainty returned to him, ‘what do you think of +old Mother Mug? _She’s_ a beauty, isn’t she?’ + +‘She seemed to think you were a little inconsiderate about your wife, +that she needed a certain amount of change and amusement; and, indeed, +that poor woman must have a dull life, so very different to everything +she has been accustomed to.’ + +‘No doubt the pair of ’em have been abusing me finely, and, of course, +you take their part. What the devil’s she got to complain of, I should +like to know? Haven’t I made an honest woman of her, and jolly well +muckered my own life by doing it? I suppose she expects me to give up +the little fun I do get, and take her to London and show her round. +Don’t you marry your mistress, old man. You can take it from me, it +isn’t good enough. But there!--you _are_ married, and you haven’t got a +mistress.’ + +Sainty did not escape without the usual demand for money, which Arthur +irritated him by calling a loan. + +‘What’s the good of talking like that?’ Sainty said. ‘You know you +haven’t the slightest intention of repaying it. As you are always +rubbing it into me that you can’t live on what I give you, is it likely +that next quarter, or next year, you will be able to save the amount you +require out of the same insufficient allowance?’ + +‘You don’t suppose I enjoy having to ask you for every dirty penny I +want?’ retorted the invalid sullenly. + +‘Then why don’t you try to live within your income, and then you +wouldn’t have to?’ + +‘I must say you always make it as unpleasant as possible.’ + +‘Well, don’t let’s wrangle about money; I give it just the same. I’ll +send you a cheque. Good-bye, and I hope you’ll soon be better.’ + +‘And these are the people who are to come after me!’ Sainty said to +himself bitterly as the train took him back to London. He had a vision +of Belchamber, his beloved Belchamber, overrun and ravaged by these +barbarians; of Cynthia ‘smartenin’ the old place a bit,’ with the aid of +Mrs. Muggins’s suggestions as to what would be ‘tastey’; of Arthur +cutting down the trees and selling the books and pictures to buy more +horses and lose bigger bets; of that unattractive child with its stiff +curls and goggle eyes coming in turn to make final havoc of the ruin its +parents had left. And it was for this end that he had given his name, +his future, his honour, into the keeping of a beautiful parasitic +creature without heart or conscience, who obeyed no law but her own +imperious appetites! + + + + +CHAPTER XXII + + +Although Belchamber had become a very different place from the home of +his childhood, it was still a relief to Sainty to get into the country. +It must be confessed that the parties with which Cissy delighted to fill +the house were extraordinarily unexacting in the attention they demanded +from their host, so that he was able, as in London, to lead very much +his own life, undisturbed by his wife or her guests. Except at dinner, +or in occasional passage meetings, as he slunk from the library to his +own sacred quarters in the western pavilion, he seldom met any of them. + +Moreover, the young couple were, for the moment, nearly alone. Most of +the society which Lady Belchamber specially affected was either at Cowes +and Goodwood, or devoting a fortnight to the care of its property and +the reception of its schoolboys before the annual round of Scottish +visits. Sainty had been passingly surprised at Cissy’s decision to +forego a very gay house-party in Sussex, and return quietly to +Belchamber at the beginning of August. The young woman did not seem to +be in her accustomed health; indeed, she admitted she was quite done up, +and needed rest; there had even been a talk of ‘waters.’ She had begun +to be not quite herself before they left London, and then there had been +the curious incident of her fainting at her own party. + +Quite early in May, before Lady Charmington’s unfortunate visit, Cissy +had announced her intention of giving some kind of entertainment, but +the difficulty of deciding on what form it should take, and the +impossibility of finding an evening when it would not interfere with +something else she wanted to do, had combined to defer the execution of +the plan till nearly the end of the season. She found it so much easier +to go to parties which other people had the trouble of arranging than to +take the trouble to arrange one for herself, that Sainty had begun to +hope the whole thing might fall through, when she suddenly fixed a date, +called in Lady Eccleston to assist her, and telegraphed to Roumania to +offer a fabulous sum to a celebrated violinist, who had not been heard +in England that summer. By eking out this star with the only two +expensive singers who had not yet left the opera, and rigorously +excluding from her invitation-list any one to whom it could be a +pleasure or excitement to be present, she managed to have a very +brilliant and select little gathering indeed, which, but for the +unfortunate _contretemps_ above mentioned, would have been an +unqualified success. The right dowagers were slumbering in the front +row, the right younger people were jostling and chattering in the +doorways, the talented performer was executing his most incredible +calisthenics, when Sainty, jammed into a far corner of one of the big +rooms, became aware of a bustle and commotion near the door of the +boudoir. People moved and heaved and whispered, and ceased to bestow +even a perfunctory attention on the music, which came rather abruptly to +an end. He saw Claude Morland elbow through the crowd with a bottle and +a glass, and some one near him said ‘Lady Belchamber has fainted.’ + +Among the many duties thrown unexpectedly on him by the catastrophe, +appeasing the anxiety of the guests and soothing the susceptibilities of +the artists, he was startled by the speech, accompanied by a meaning +pressure of the hand, with which Alice de Lissac took leave of him. ‘I +am _so_ glad,’ she whispered; ‘_now_, I feel sure all will come right.’ +Enlightenment as to her meaning came most unexpectedly from his +mother-in-law next morning when he inquired of her after his wife’s +health. Lady Eccleston, who had been the last to depart the night +before, arrived at an amazingly early hour, and after a long visit to +her daughter was still able to appear in Sainty’s apartments almost +before he had finished his breakfast. She was evidently in high +good-humour and began by embracing him tenderly. + +‘How did you find Cissy?’ Sainty asked. ‘I haven’t sent to ask after her +yet for fear of disturbing her. She seemed quite worn out last night; I +think she has been doing much too much.’ + +‘She is not _ill_,’ said Lady Eccleston, with a world of meaning. ‘I +will not allow that she is _ill_.’ + +‘I am glad to hear it,’ said Sainty. ‘I thought she looked very seedy +last night, I must say.’ + +‘She will admit nothing,’ continued her ladyship. ‘I think I have told +you _how_ delicate and reticent she is on certain subjects. Even to +_me_, her mother, and you know we have always been like sisters, she +will tell nothing. Do you know what I think? she will tell no one till +she has told _you_. That’s it; you may be sure that’s it. She will run +no risk of your hearing it from any one but her. For heaven’s sake don’t +let her know I have even hinted at anything----’ + +‘What _do_ you mean, Lady Eccleston?’ Sainty gasped, a supposition of +which only he knew the full grotesqueness beginning to dawn on him. + +‘Dear, sweet, innocent Sainty!’ cried Lady Eccleston, in a transport of +archness. ‘You and my girl are made for one another. You are like a pair +of child-lovers in a fairy-tale. I have told nothing, remember that; I +will tell nothing. I will not rob dear Cissy of the joy of announcing it +herself. Besides, as I say, I can only conjecture; she has absolutely +refused to admit it.’ + +‘Dear Lady Eccleston,’ cried Sainty, in great perturbation, ‘I can’t +pretend to misunderstand you; but, believe me, I think you are wrong. I +am sure--I am _almost_ sure--it cannot be as you suspect.’ + +Lady Eccleston shook her head and pursed her lips mysteriously. ‘A +mother is not deceived,’ she said. ‘But recollect I have told you +nothing. Cissy would never forgive me. I will not even congratulate you +till _you_ tell _me_. Meanwhile I shan’t breathe a word, not a word. +Trust me’; and she again folded her son-in-law to her heart. ‘It was +the one thing wanting to our happiness,’ burst from her, as it were +involuntarily, as she hurried away, leaving Sainty too much bewildered +to protest. + +Two days later they went into the country. Cissy was certainly not +feeling well. She asked Sainty if he would mind going sooner than had +been settled; she thought rest and country air would set her up. No, she +wouldn’t see a doctor; there was nothing wrong with her. ‘I’m just +knocked up with being on the go, morning, noon, and night, for months.’ + +‘Your mother suggested the weirdest explanation,’ said Sainty. + +Cissy flushed crimson and then grew so pale that he feared she was going +to repeat the performance of the night before. + +‘Mamma really is a bigger fool than I thought,’ she said hotly. ‘I +didn’t think she would have had the idiotcy to carry that nonsense to +_you_. What did you say?’ + +‘What could I say? I told her it was impossible, but she would listen to +nothing.’ + +‘Of course it’s impossible! no one should know that better than _you_.’ + +On the afternoon of his first day at Belchamber Sainty ordered his +little cart and drove as in duty bound to pay his respects to his +mother. He had not seen Lady Charmington since she had left his house in +wrath, and though he had written to her several times he had received +only the briefest and coldest answers. It was not, therefore, with any +very pleasing anticipations of the coming interview that he set out to +visit her. + +It was one of those perfect, cool autumnal days which English people +mistake for summer. The open spaces of the park were dappled with +pleasant temperate sunlight like the flanks of the deer that fed there. +Hundreds of rabbits squatted in the familiar glades or tilted themselves +hastily into covert as he passed. Never had his home looked lovelier or +more peaceful, or appealed more strongly to him. The woods and coppices +called to him with a thousand voices, and his poor heart, starved of +all human emotion, answered as only the lonely and despised among her +children can answer to the great cry of Nature the universal mother. + +Then, as he drove along the smooth green alleys, there came to him the +recollection of his brother and of the woman his brother had married. +Ever since his visit to them Sainty had thought much about his +sister-in-law, and had striven in his own mind to do her justice; +terrible as she was to him æsthetically, he was forced to admit that she +was a better sort than her husband. She did think of her children and do +her duty by them according to her lights, whereas Arthur thought of no +one but himself. After all, were Cissy’s ideals in life, except +superficially, much less vulgar than Lady Arthur’s? He sometimes +wondered if it were not better to have been frankly improper before +marriage and settle down into an irreproachable wife and mother, than to +be a frivolous little worldling, refusing to live with her husband, and +lending numberless occasions to the tongue of scandal. + +Argue as he would, and rigidly impartial as he strove to make his mental +attitude, the thought of his successors poisoned the beauty of the day +for him and blotted out the sunshine. It was vain to tell himself that +Cynthia’s standard of personal conduct was higher than Cecilia’s. Her +ghastly veneer of gentility shocked his taste more than even her +mother’s frank vulgarity or Arthur’s callous selfishness. To think of +her and her shiny-faced babies at Belchamber was to profane his most +sacred associations. + +He soon found that he need not have doubted his mother’s welcome. She +received him with what, for her, was almost cordiality. On the rare +occasions when Lady Charmington assumed a staid and humorless jocosity, +she was wont to affect a Scottish accent and manner of speech, and +Sainty noted with surprise this mark of unusual hilarity. ‘Come ben the +house, man,’ she remarked; ‘the sight of ye is good for sair een.’ + +‘How pretty you have made everything,’ said Sainty. ‘Your borders are +lovely. There is no one like you for a garden, mother.’ + +Lady Charmington looked round her with a certain pride. ‘Yes, I think +I’ve improved the place,’ she said. ‘Do ye know these late-flowering +delphiniums? this is the only kind that blooms as late as this. I +thought at one time my hollyhocks were going to have the disease, but +I’ve brought them through it.’ + +‘They are lovely; and how beautiful these roses are.’ + +‘That’s the pink Ayrshire; it’s not so common as the white. You know the +big bush in the corner of the west wing, I brought it from Scotland with +me soon after I married; these are some cuttings from it I took a few +years ago, and last autumn I moved them here; haven’t they grown?’ Thus +talking on safe subjects, they entered the house, where Sainty’s +admiration was claimed and freely given for various ingenious +arrangements and improvements. + +‘And how’s Cissy?’ asked Lady Charmington presently, a certain subdued +excitement in her look and manner. + +‘It is very good of you, mother, to ask after her so kindly,’ Sainty +answered. ‘She doesn’t seem to me very well; she’s a little knocked up +with all her gaieties, I think, but she won’t admit there’s anything +wrong with her which a little rest and country air won’t set right.’ + +‘Wrong with her! certainly not; what should ail her?’ cried Lady +Charmington, with the same curious air of meaning more than she said. + +‘I hope,’ Sainty began awkwardly, ‘that you won’t remember her rudeness +and bad behaviour to you last May; it would be terribly painful to me to +have you on bad terms with one another. I quite admit she behaved +shockingly to you, but I hope you will overlook it. I feel sure if you +will come and see her you’ll find her ready to meet you more than +half-way.’ + +‘I bear no malice,’ said Lady Charmington, with bewildering good-humour; +‘and indeed I could find it in my heart to forgive her at this moment +worse things than a little incivility to myself.’ + +‘That’s very kind of you,’ Sainty said; ‘but why specially at this +moment?’ He was beginning to feel uncomfortable. + +Lady Charmington leaned forward and looked sharply in his face. + +‘Is it possible you really don’t know?’ she said. ‘You are the queerest +couple I ever came across. I made sure you had come here to announce it +to me, and I didn’t want to take the wind out of your sails by letting +you see that I knew it already.’ + +‘Know what? announce what?’ cried Sainty. He was beginning to divine his +mother’s meaning; his mind reverted to his conversation with Lady +Eccleston. Why did all these women persist in mocking him with +congratulations on the impossible as though it were an accomplished +fact? ‘Have you heard from Lady Eccleston?’ he asked, with apparent +irrelevance. + +Lady Charmington pounced on the implied admission. + +‘Oho! So you are not quite as ignorant as you pretend! But why should +you try to keep it from _me_, when you must know it is the bit of news +which it would give me more pleasure to hear than anything in the +world?’ + +‘Dear mother,’ said Sainty, ‘do you suppose if I had any such news to +tell as you seem to imagine, that I shouldn’t have rushed to you with +it? But it’s not so. It can’t be so.’ + +‘But why shouldn’t it be so?’ asked Lady Charmington. + +‘Believe me, it’s impossible,’ Sainty was beginning, and then +recollected that he couldn’t tell his mother _why_ it was impossible. ‘I +don’t know what’s come to everybody,’ he said lamely. + +‘Why did you ask if I had heard from Lady Eccleston? It shows you +guessed what I meant.’ + +‘Because she too has run away with the same idea, and when I told her +that she must be mistaken, she only became more positive.’ + +‘You see,’ said Lady Charmington triumphantly, ‘her own mother thinks +so, and _she_ ought to know.’ + +‘But really, really, I feel sure you are all wrong. I don’t want you to +build on this, mother, because I know what a disappointment it will be +to you.’ + +‘Do you mean to say your wife is not going to have a baby?’ + +‘I certainly think not; she said herself her mother had been talking +nonsense. Did she tell it to you as a fact, in so many words?’ + +‘Lady Eccleston’s style is sometimes a little involved, but I certainly +took her letter to mean---- Oh yes--there’s not a doubt of it; she +_can’t_ have meant anything else.’ Lady Charmington turned over a pile +of letters on her writing-table, and selecting one began to mumble +through it. ‘Um, um, London emptying fast, just on the wing myself, +cannot go till I’ve found some one to read to my dear blind ... um, um, +um. Ah! here it is: “I cannot refrain from giving you a hint of the +great news. I know how it will rejoice your heart. But don’t betray me +till the dear children tell you themselves. I should not say a word +about it, only they are both so absurdly reticent and sensitive; it is +quite possible they may neither of them mention it. Dear Cissy was +almost angry with me; she tried to make out I was mistaken, but a +mother’s eye! you and I know when....” Well, we needn’t go into all +that; but you see, her mother’s convinced.’ + +‘Well,’ said Sainty, ‘I can only set on the other side that Cissy denies +it herself.’ + +‘How about her being taken ill at the party?’ It was evident that Lady +Eccleston had gone into details. + +‘People may faint without being in that condition,’ protested Sainty; +‘no one should know that better than I. Believe me, you are all building +too much on that momentary loss of consciousness, which may as likely as +not have come from tight lacing.’ + +Lady Charmington shook her head impatiently. ‘Her mother says she has +never been known to faint before in her life; and any one can see with +half an eye she has always laced....’ + +After this the conversation languished perceptibly. It was obviously +futile to go on discussing the prospects of an heir, when the parties +principally concerned agreed in denying that there _were_ any +prospects. Lady Charmington, ‘convinced against her will,’ was very much +‘of the same opinion still’; but balked of the topic on which she burned +to dilate, she resolutely declined every other which her son brought +forward. Sainty’s well-meant efforts to extract information on local or +farming subjects were killed by the stony indifference she opposed to +them, so that he presently took his leave, without obtaining more than a +very qualified and doubtful agreement to his suggestion that she should +come and see Cissy. + +At first the pertinacity of their two mothers in attributing miraculous +offspring to Cissy and himself had seemed only a peculiarly galling +mystification. Sainty never knew at just what moment a horrible solution +of the puzzle had begun to suggest itself to him as possible. Had he +fought against the conviction from the first, or did it come to him +slowly and insidiously as his mother marshalled the reasons for her +belief against his repeated denials? He could put his finger on no point +in time when the suspicion had flashed into his brain; but by the time +he reached his own door again, it seemed to him that there had been no +hour of his unhappy married life when this terror had not sat grinning +behind every trivial incident. He determined to see his wife, to know +the worst at once. He asked for her, but learned she was out. ‘Her +ladyship had gone driving late, after tea, and had not come in yet.’ He +had no chance of speech with her through the evening, but when at last +she went to her room, he followed boldly, hardly waiting for the answer +to his knock before entering the room. + +Cissy had thrown herself on the sofa, and the loose sides of the +tea-gown she had worn at dinner had a little fallen back. At the sound +of the opening door she started up, and drew her draperies so swiftly +about her that Sainty could not be sure if he had noticed or only +imagined a slight change in her figure. + +‘You!’ she cried. + +‘Yes,’ he said, in as steady a voice as he could. ‘I want to speak to +you, and I could find no other chance of seeing you alone.’ + +Their glances crossed and he read in her eyes a confirmation of his +worst suspicions. Still he must be sure, must hear it from herself. She +had looked startled, almost frightened, as she faced him, then her face +took on a dogged sulky expression. + +‘Well?’ she said. + +‘I went to see my mother this afternoon,’ Sainty began. + +‘Your mother,’ Cissy broke in. ‘Oh! _she’s_ been making mischief.’ + +‘On the contrary, she was all amiability and delight, ready to make it +up with you, to forgive everything “at this moment,” as she said.’ + +‘That’s very kind of her; but why?’ + +‘She was bursting with congratulations and excitement; she had had a +letter from your mother.’ + +Lady Belchamber muttered something very unfilial about her parent. ‘And +what did _you_ say?’ she inquired. + +‘I? What _could_ I say? I said they were both mistaken. That you had +told me it was not true; and of course it isn’t--it _can’t_ be; I don’t +need to be told that.’ + +He was pleading against his own certainty; from the time he came into +the room, he knew what he should hear before he left it. Yet with his +whole heart he was begging her still, if it were possible, to deny the +shame that had come upon his house. He stood mute and suppliant before +her, and she looked at him almost pityingly. Then with a little +discouraged gesture she turned away and sat down again on the sofa. + +‘It _is_ true,’ she said quietly. ‘You may as well know it first as +last. In any case I couldn’t conceal it much longer; and now that mamma +has guessed it, she will have told it to at least fifty people already. +She little knows what she’s doing,’ she added, with a hard laugh that +jarred on Sainty’s overstretched nerves. + +He had been sure of it, had known it. Yet now that the words were +spoken, that the fact confronted him, admitted, undeniable, irrevocable, +he staggered with the blow. + +‘You are going to have a child?’ he gasped. + +She nodded, and for all answer threw back the covering she had pulled +across herself. + +‘But it is not mine.’ + +‘Yours!’ impatiently. ‘How should it be?’ + +‘Good God!’ + +There was a silence. Sainty moved restlessly about, as agitated as +though it were he who was making the confession. Cissy was far the more +self-possessed of the two. She sat upon her sofa watching his agonised +motions with a faintly inquisitive distaste, as a person of imperfect +sympathies might observe the contortions of some creature he had +unwittingly injured. + +‘I suppose,’ she said presently, ‘you want to know whose it is?’ + +‘No, no!’ cried Sainty shudderingly. ‘That least of all. For God’s sake +don’t tell me!’ and he made a step towards her, as though he would have +choked back the name he feared to hear. + +Cissy stared. ‘Queer!’ she ejaculated. + +There was another pause. A clock struck midnight, and was echoed loudly +or faintly by others near or distant. Sainty counted the strokes, and +was conscious of irritation when one began before another finished and +embroiled his counting. + +It was again the woman who spoke first, and the question was +characteristic, severely practical. + +‘What are you going to do about it?’ + +‘I don’t know--I can’t think. Give me time--give me time to think.’ + +Cissy looked at him with undisguised contempt. ‘_I_ should know what to +do,’ she said. After a while she added, ‘Of course I can’t stay here +now.’ + +‘I don’t know--I don’t know,’ Sainty kept repeating. ‘We must do nothing +in a hurry. Think of all it means, all the consequences.’ + +Cissy shrugged her shoulders. ‘It seems rather late for that,’ she +remarked. ‘Besides, we can’t keep it to ourselves indefinitely, you +know.’ + +‘At least give me to-night to get my ideas into some sort of order,’ +Sainty pleaded. ‘You can’t be surprised if this is rather a shock to me, +can you?’ he added, almost apologetically. + +Cissy laughed. ‘I wonder if any man ever took this announcement in just +the same way?’ she said. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII + + +To Sainty, sitting alone in his old room in the western pavilion, it +seemed that there was no bitterness left untasted. Far into the night he +sat, his elbows on the table, his head buried in his hands. At first all +seemed mere chaos and horror; he was stunned and could not think. But +for the haunting consciousness of misery, he could almost have fancied +that he had slept. Gradually, however, definite images began to emerge +from the bewildered trouble of his brain. + +What was this thing that had come on him, through no fault of his own? +He had done no wrong, snatched no forbidden pleasure; it was those other +two who had sinned and enjoyed. Why must he be pilloried with them, +share the scandal and the punishment? He, with his morbid shrinking from +publicity, to have his private life turned inside out to the scorn and +laughter of the vulgar! He knew well enough how little sympathy he had +to expect; in all times and countries had not the betrayed husband been +a butt for mirth? He wondered why. It seemed hard to him that of the +three characters in the eternal drama of adultery, it should always be +the one innocent person that was selected for satire. Surely it was the +most elementary justice that punishment should fall on him who injures +his fellow, not upon the injured. Yet of they three, who would suffer +most? He, without a doubt, who had the greatest capacity for suffering. +He saw, as in a dream, the dingy scene of the divorce-court, the +headlines in the papers, his name dragged in the dirt. He pictured to +himself the long martyrdom of cross examination, the bar pathos, the bar +wit; he knew how he should flinch and writhe at the stake. + +In his case, moreover, the situation was complicated by the coming +child. He had not only to proclaim his dishonour to the world, but must +lay bare to every grinning idiot the grotesque story of his married +life. If the husband whose rights had been invaded was absurd, what of +him who had not even been able to obtain those rights. And he must stand +up in open court and tell this thing of himself, he who felt the mere +idea of marriage too sacred for spoken words! The cruel irony of it all! +Was there no other issue but through that horrible sordid ordeal? What +did men do in his position? What was the _beau rôle_ for the injured +husband? He thought of Dumas’s ‘_Tue-la!_’ and wondered how it would +have advanced matters if he had murdered Cissy, supposing he had the +strength and courage to do it. It was only to shift the scene; another +court, an added horror, but the same publicity, the same scandal, the +same story to tell, the same agony to undergo. + +He almost regretted the foolish old fantastic code of honour which would +have made it incumbent on him to challenge the seducer, and as likely as +not be killed by him. Death _might_ have been a solution, but there was +no such easy way out of the situation as that. The hand that had done +him so much wrong would not render him that supremest service. + +Hitherto he had succeeded almost without conscious effort in keeping the +inevitable third in this grim trio almost an abstraction. Yet he +remembered how passionately he had refused to know, when his wife had +offered him the name of her lover. Now the figure was beginning to take +shape against his will; a tall figure with a false air of slenderness, a +figure that by the languid grace of its movements counteracted the +slight tendency to heaviness in the hips and shoulders. How well he knew +that back, the sinuous curves of the waist, the sidelong persuasive +droop of the head; he had seen it walking away beside Cissy on the +afternoon of their very first meeting. It had been pressed against the +glass door that held him an unwilling witness on the night of the ball +at Sunborough House. How clearly the impressions came back to him, the +dusky garden speckled leopard-wise with lanterns, the lithe, shimmering +blackness of the figure at his side trying to instil the doubts he would +not harbour, the swift swing back of the door, the words so clearly +overheard, that then had held no meaning for him. Still it was only a +back, he had not seen the face, the gentle, kindly, sly, mocking face. +He pressed his icy fingers tight against his hard straining eyeballs as +if he could shut it out, that face he would not see. Not _he_! not he of +all men! Had not his mother mentioned other men with whom her imprudence +was compromising Cissy? Oh! but that back was unmistakable. And then the +voice! low and soft, but so distinct; he could hear it, could hear the +words, counselling the horrible meanness of which he had so nearly been +the dupe. He understood _now_ the secret of her mysterious behaviour in +the library that night. Surely such baseness was unbelievable; even +Cissy had recoiled from carrying out the scheme. + +For one brief moment he wished she could have done it--that he might +have been deceived. ‘I need never have known!’ he cried, and his voice +speaking aloud in the silence of the night startled him like the cry of +a creature that is being killed. + +He raised his head and looked about him. The candle he had brought had +burnt almost to the socket; he rose and lighted two others from it, and +blew it out. The chill of the tireless summer night made him shiver, but +there was that which lay so cold about his heart that he welcomed the +physical discomfort as almost a relief. He moved about the room for a +little, but soon tiring, went and sat down again. + +The same procession of black thoughts kept up their weary circle through +his head; round and round he followed them, yet came no nearer any +light, nor any decision of what it behoved him to do under the +circumstances. Was this the end of all his dreams, all his sacrifices, +all his endeavour for others, all he had hoped to accomplish? Was +everything to go down in this whirlpool of a disgrace greater even than +that which Arthur’s marriage had brought upon them? It was Arthur’s +marriage that had been the origin of all his troubles. Oh yes, he saw it +clearly enough now; however he had deceived himself at the time, he had +married, had taken on himself the most sacred obligations, for no object +but the mean one of excluding his brother. Perhaps this was his +punishment. + +He saw what a puppet he had been in the hands of two strong-willed +women, an instrument to satisfy the vulgar ambitions of the one, the +angry revenge of the other. What a failure, what a dreary failure he had +been all through! For years he had had but one thought, one object in +life, to steer Arthur past the rocks and quicksands of youth, and anchor +him safe in the harbour of property and responsibility, and with what +result? What had come of all his plans, his careful tact, his delicate +manipulation of his mother and brother? Arthur’s marriage afforded a +comment of grimmest irony on his efforts in that direction. Since then, +as ardently as he had once longed to renounce his birthright in favour +of his brother, he had striven to preserve it from that contaminating +touch, to keep that brother’s wife from sitting in their mother’s place; +and, once more, with what result? To instal in the innermost shrine of +all he held most sacred a woman no less wanton than her sister-in-law, +only without her redeeming qualities and the excuses of her early +training, one who would make his home a wilderness, his name a by-word! +Shame, then, shame either way, and nothing accomplished! + +It is not to be supposed that he thought these things out for himself, +coldly, sententiously, in order, as, for the sake of the reader, they +have to be written down. They were the residuum of all sorts of wild and +whirling fancies, flung up at him, as it were, out of a seething +cauldron of black wretchedness, which was rather sensation than thought. +Not once, moreover, but a thousand times, did each and all of them +appear and vanish in a kind of witches’ dance to his weary brain, +without perceptible sequence or connection. He seemed somehow to be +outside his own consciousness, to sit and watch these images, as, one by +one, some demon held them up for his tormenting, yet all the while every +nerve in him tingled with the apprehension of how intimately they were +part of himself. + +As he sat gazing stonily at despair, there came a soft stirring of the +stillness, a murmur, a breath; then from without, a faint chirping. + +’... as in dark summer dawns,’ + +he quoted mechanically, and was aware of a vague irritation that he +could not remember the beginning of the line. + + ‘The earliest pipe of half-awakened birds + To dying ears, when unto dying eyes + The casement slowly grows a glimmering square.’ + +He looked. The chintz curtains that veiled the windows were growing +ghostly and transparent. It was the dawn. + +All through the night he had sat with his trouble, yet the morning found +him as helpless and undecided as ever. + +‘To dying ears, when unto dying eyes,’ he repeated dully. ‘Ah! if it +were but that! Death! how easy to die! What a rest, what an escape!’ It +was life, not death, life with its hideous decisions and +responsibilities that he had got to face. + +The candle flames became more spectral as the light slowly broadened, +the light of a new day, the day in which he would have to make up his +mind, to take a line, to _act_. There was no way out--none. Once more he +was confronted with the inevitable, the pitiless future coming every +moment nearer, with all it held of suffering and shame, the +fruitlessness of all his efforts, all in vain, in vain! + +Then suddenly, as if some voice had spoken, came the question ‘Why?’ Why +need it be in vain? The solution, after all, lay ready to his hand. He +had only to hold his tongue. It was all so simple. ‘Their strength is to +sit still,’ he thought. Why, among all that had passed through his +wretched head, had this never struck him? He had wished for a child to +bar his brother and his brother’s sons from the succession. Well! here +was the child, his wife’s child, born in wedlock, legally, lawfully his. +Who could ever say it was not? No one but they two, and of their silence +he could be tolerably sure. + +At first he put the idea from him with horror. It was a cheat, a fraud. +He, with his fastidiously high standard of conduct, to cozen his brother +out of his inheritance by a shabby trick. Impossible! The thing was +impossible. + +He got up, and put back the curtain, and stood looking out into the +silence of the growing morning. Over opposite to him, the grey sky was +beginning to flush with palest rose, in which the last stars were +growing dim; but as yet the great quadrangle lay all in black shadow, +out of which the restored statues stood vaguely up like shapes of evil +menacing the eastern glory. No, no, no. Better the talk, the scandal, +the publicity of the divorce court, than to stand convicted before the +tribunal of his own conscience. Whatever else went down in the shipwreck +of his life, let him at least keep his self-respect. ‘What did it profit +a man to gain the world, and lose his own soul?’ Yet how often in the +old days, in his talk with Newby, had he inveighed against the +selfishness of the Puritan idea, which would make the saving of one’s +soul the object of conduct. Surely the only rational motive was the +consideration of how one’s acts affected others. In the present instance +who would be the worse for his silence? No one would be hurt or +disappointed. These people did not expect to succeed; they had given up +all hopes of it when he married. Had they not told him so themselves? On +the other hand, there was his mother, his mother who had done so much +for him. He remembered how he had found her, when she had first learned +the truth about Arthur, and terror mixed with his grief at the mere +conjecture of what she might say and do with the marriages of both her +sons thus ending in shame. Their talk that afternoon had shown him how +much her hopes were centred in the birth of an heir to Belchamber. The +mere prospect had blotted out the very recollection of her quarrel with +Cissy, and Lady Charmington was not a forgiving woman. His fear of her +had always gone hand in hand with his love of her, and both made him +wince at the thought of her disappointment. Had he the right to bring +this fresh blow upon her, who had suffered so much, merely to salve his +own conscience? After all, had he any self-respect to sacrifice? Was it +possible for him to have a meaner opinion of himself than he had always +entertained? + +At that moment the sun topped the mass of the eastern wing, flooding +with light the broad spaces of grass and gravel at his feet, and casting +a long ray over the tall, stately _façade_ of the beautiful house. And +at the thought of all that was symbolised by that pomp of hewn and +fretted stone, the aristocrat that lurked so deep within him, so +overlaid with fine theories of brotherhood and equality that he was +unconscious of his very existence, stirred and claimed his own. ‘For the +credit of my house,’ he murmured uneasily, as he turned away from the +window. + +He did not yield at once, or without a struggle, but he knew from the +first that it would come to that. From the moment the idea leaped +full-grown like Athene from his brain, it was fully armed to meet every +point that had distressed him. He feared scandal. There need be no +scandal. He shrank from the ignominy of a divorce case. There need be +none. Did the thought of unveiling to the public eye the bitter +humiliation of his married life revolt him? Here was a means not only of +secrecy, but actual disproof. Did it break his heart to think of +inflicting such a blow upon his mother? He had only to be silent to +crown her dearest wishes, and make her the happiest woman in England. +Had he married, enduring all that marriage had brought him, that he +might keep his sister-in-law and her children from the heritage of his +name and home? Here, too, was the one thing necessary for that end. And +to attain all these desired objects there was nothing to do, no word to +say, no lie to tell. He had only to let things take their course. It +was the line of least resistance, so easy, so fatally easy! + +To a man of his character and disposition, what a temptation, what a +terrible temptation! He was weakened by his long vigil, the little stock +of vitality that he could ever call to his assistance, worn almost to a +thread with watching and misery. He knew he should give in. To all the +arguments in favour of it, what had he to oppose but one poor little +scruple of personal honour? + +He wondered if his wife had known what he would do before he had thought +of it himself? Had she traded on her certainty of his cowardice? At such +a suspicion, he almost grew strong again; but no--she had seemed to +entertain no doubt that he would repudiate her. He fancied she had even +felt a certain relief at the prospect of being rid of the semblance of a +connection with himself, and the freedom to claim openly the protection +of the man whom, in her way, she loved. If so, here was another argument +in favour of silence. By it he could thwart and punish her. + +He wandered into his brother’s old room, next his own. Here the drawn +blinds made still a glimmering twilight, and lent an unreality to the +familiar objects. He went and looked at the old school photographs. +There was one of Arthur in a group of the cricket eleven, which had +always been his special favourite. The figure stood squarely on its +legs, the brawny arms bare to the elbow and crossed upon the chest, a +boyish grin lighting the handsome face, from which the cap was pushed +back by the strong upward spring of the hair above the brow. It was the +image of youth, and life, and happiness. Long he stood motionless before +it, and then he bent forward and pressed his poor pale lips to the cold +glass. ‘Arthur,’ he whispered. ‘My little Arthur, you are dead, and so +is your miserable brother who loved you so. You are no more that brutal, +querulous egoist that I saw the other day, than he is the wretch who can +stoop to crime to rob you.’ + +Distant sounds showed him that the household was beginning to be astir. +Before his man came to wake him he must have removed the signs of his +long vigil. He returned hurriedly to his own room, once more drew the +curtain across the window, extinguished the lights, and, hastily +undressing himself, crept into bed. Already the sense of having +something to hide stung him with a terrible self-contempt. He had caught +sight of his drawn, haggard face as he passed the mirror. It was the +face of a coward. + +He did not leave the pavilion all day. He sent word he was ill. That at +least was true enough, but late in the evening, as he was lying on the +sofa in his study, there came a knock at the door, and Cissy entered. +Though perhaps a shade paler than usual, nothing in her appearance +suggested a guilty wife come to hear her sentence. + +‘I have come to return your visit of last night,’ she said, as she stood +looking down on him. + +Sainty groaned and hid his face. At sight of her, the desire to brand +her as what she was almost conquered, where conscience and sense of +honour had failed--almost, but not quite. + +Cissy kept her indifferent pose, playing with the ornaments she wore. + +‘Well?’ she asked at last. ‘Have you made up your mind yet?’ + +‘Yes.’ His voice came muffled and strange. + +Lady Belchamber started. ‘What are you going to do?’ she demanded, with +slightly quickened interest. + +‘Nothing.’ + +There was a pause. + +‘Do you mean to say,’ she asked at last, ‘that you are going to +acknowledge the child?’ + +‘Yes.’ + +She turned away from him with a half-stifled exclamation. Was it relief +or disappointment? he could not tell. After a time she flung a word over +her shoulder: ‘Why?’ + +‘Because it happens to suit me,’ he said doggedly. + +The silence was broken by the little laugh he hated. + +‘I suppose I ought to be very grateful to you,’ she sneered. + +Sainty sprang from the couch. ‘I have ceased to expect gratitude or any +other kindly feeling from you,’ he blazed out at her; but his wrath fell +as quickly as it had flared. + +Her puny disdain was powerless to hurt him, merged in the measureless +ocean of his self-contempt. There would be lies enough, acted, looked, +and lived, if not spoken. At least to her there need be no pretence of +an attitude; if not with an accomplice, with whom may one permit himself +the luxury of being honest? + +‘After all, why should I scold at you?’ he said wearily. ‘You have +nothing to thank me for. Don’t suppose, if I stoop to this incomparable +baseness, that it is with any thought of pleasing _you_.’ + +Cissy stared at him, cowed by the dim apprehension of a tragedy she was +incapable of understanding; and it was not without a certain +satisfaction that he saw in her eyes the vague terror of the +incomprehensible beginning to permeate her habitual scorn of him. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIV + + +Though the birth of an heir to the house of Belchamber might naturally +be supposed a festive occasion, it brought little satisfaction to those +principally concerned. It is true that Lady Charmington talked broad +lowland for weeks; nor was Lady Eccleston, who kept a supply of +conventional sentiment always on tap, likely to be wanting at such a +time; but in spite of every grandmotherly effort to impart a correct +sense of rejoicing, a certain flatness attended what should have been +such an auspicious event. Cissy, entirely preoccupied by terror of +physical suffering, insisted that her confinement should take place in +London, where she would be within reach of the best professional aid, to +the extreme disgust of her mother-in-law, who had decided that +Belchamber was the appropriate scene on which the newcomer’s eyes should +first open. Sainty, being appealed to, expressed the most complete +indifference on the subject; he said he didn’t suppose it mattered to +the baby where it was born, or that it would be likely to retain the +smallest recollection of the event. ‘It will be a great disappointment +to everybody,’ Lady Charmington remarked. ‘Besides, it will mean your +not being here at Christmas. How do you expect your people to rejoice in +the birth of an heir, if you slink away and let it happen in London, +like anybody else’s child?’ + +‘How do you know it will _be_ an heir?’ Sainty said. ‘Why shouldn’t it +be a girl?’ + +His mother disdained to notice such a preposterous suggestion. + +‘It ought to be here,’ she kept repeating. + +‘_I_ wasn’t born here,’ Sainty said. + +‘That was quite different; Belchamber wasn’t our home in those days. +Your father and I hardly ever came here in the old lord’s time; for that +matter, they weren’t here much themselves. Besides, I wanted to be with +my mother; there is nothing to prevent Cissy having _her_ mother with +her here; things are very different for _her_ from what _I_ had to put +up with. I should like to have seen my mother-in-law allowing me to be +confined in her house! but your poor father felt it very much.’ + +‘Well,’ Sainty said at last, ‘you can settle it with Cissy; if you can +persuade _her_, you’re welcome to; _I_ never can, and in the present +case I don’t care to.’ + +Every allusion to the coming event was the turning of a sword in his +heart. His mother’s restrained eagerness was not less terrible to him +than Lady Eccleston’s loud jubilation. + +He never knew if Lady Charmington availed herself of his suggestion that +she should appeal to Cissy. Certainly, if she did, it was with no +success, for long before there was any possibility of the child making +its appearance, Lady Belchamber removed to London, taking her parent +with her. Cissy, as usual, when frightened or needing help, turned to +her mother, for whom, as we know, she cherished no very profound respect +at other times; and Lady Eccleston was not even permitted to return to +her own house in Chester Square, but must take up her abode with her +daughter, who considered it a great concession if she allowed her to go +out for an hour’s shopping. It is not to be wondered at if mamma became +a little important under the circumstances, and gave herself airs in +writing to the other dowager, who must have hated having to stay and eat +her heart out at Belchamber, with no hand in what touched her so nearly. + +Poor Lady Charmington abounded in strange recondite lore, and gave much +advice which was a little out of date at the stage proceedings had +reached. ‘On no account let her mother coddle your wife,’ she wrote to +Sainty. ‘If she wants a son, make her take exercise and not be too +luxurious or over-eat herself.’ + +Every day the letters came, advocating a Spartan _régime_; but the +messages never reached their destination. Sainty would have cut his +tongue out sooner than address a word to Cissy on the subject, who, none +the less, produced in due course an infant of the desired sex. + +Lady Charmington hurried up to Roehampton, and actually dragged poor old +Lady Firth into London to visit her great-grandson. The old lady, who +had become nearly blind, and now hardly ever left her own fireside, +peered curiously at the baby through two pairs of spectacles. + +‘I don’t know who he is like,’ she said. ‘You _have_ a look of your +father, Sainty, but you are _more_ like our family; this little lamb +isn’t like either. No, certainly not a bit like _you_, nor yet like your +wife, who is so fair. I don’t know, I’m sure, who he takes after.’ + +‘Does it matter much, grandmamma,’ Sainty asked, ‘as long as he is +strong and healthy?’ + +His mother turned on him promptly. ‘Oh! _you_ never think anything +matters. Can’t you even take an interest in your own first-born son?’ + +‘Come, mother, it doesn’t follow that I take no interest because I don’t +think it matters who he looks like,’ Sainty protested meekly. + +He had several occasions to curse the propensity common to the whole +female sex, when brought into the presence of a newborn babe, to hunt +down and fix a likeness for it to some one or other of its kinsfolk. It +seemed as though the one important thing to do for the little Lord +Charmington was to determine this vexed question of resemblance. The +child was of a marked type, too, with long-lashed dark eyes, and an +unusual quantity of very black hair, as far removed from Sainty’s sandy +insignificance as from the delicate fairness of his wife. + +At last the matter was set at rest quite unexpectedly, and Sainty +breathed more freely. The duchess, who had come to town for a little +Christmas shopping, called to inquire after Cissy, and requested to be +shown the baby. + +‘_Eh bien! vous voilà père!_’ she remarked, looking rather quizzically +at her grandson, as he piloted her upstairs. ‘My compliments! And how is +Monsieur Bébé? Is he pretty, at least? brown or blond, a Chambers, a +Bigorr, or,’ with the faintest pause of indescribable insolence, ‘an +Eccleston?’ + +Belchamber took dexterous advantage of opening doors, giving warning of +steps, and such small attentions, to avoid giving any direct answer, but +he might have saved himself the trouble. The eternal topic was at once +brought up by the monthly nurse, as she proudly displayed her charge. + +‘We can’t think who he is like, your grace,’ she said, folding the +flannel back from the tiny face. ‘Just look at his beautiful great eyes, +and did ever you see such a head of hair on a babe?’ + +Sainty could have throttled her. ‘That’s the one thing every one seems +to think of,’ he said rather testily. + +‘Like?’ said the duchess. ‘There can be no question; he’s like _me_. You +know the miniature of me as a little girl--the child is the image of +it.’ + +Sainty started; he had so entirely forgotten that her grace was ever +dark, that the resemblance had escaped him, but once pointed out it was +salient. He felt like a criminal who discovers that the detective he has +been dodging is on the track of some one else. After all, she was _his_ +grandmother too! + +‘Of course!’ he cried, ‘how stupid every one has been not to think of +it.’ And the next time the unwelcome subject was mentioned in his +presence (by his mother, who had been showing the precious infant to +Alice de Lissac), he said quite naturally, ‘Oh, we’ve settled _that_ +question. He’s just like the miniature at Sunborough House of the +duchess when she was a child.’ + +Lady Charmington, who loved her mother-in-law no better than Cissy did +hers, was most unwilling to admit the likeness, but could not deny it; +and there being no doubt that baby derived his appearance from the +member of the family she least wished him to resemble, was in future as +averse as her son could desire to all discussion of what had occupied +her so much. + +Lady Eccleston, on the contrary, who loved all great people, was +enchanted to point out the likeness to every member of her huge +acquaintance. ‘Isn’t he like the _dear_ duchess?’ she would cry. ‘It is +_so_ clever of him to have picked out the most beautiful of all his +relations to take after, bless him!’ + +As time went on, the shortlived interest in the hope of the Chamberses +rapidly waned. The bonfires in his honour had hardly burnt themselves +out before this poor little scion of a noble house found himself in as +much danger of being altogether neglected as if he had been of quite +humble birth. Lady Charmington returned to the country, and Lady +Eccleston, having provided a grand nurse and nursery-maid with +unimpeachable testimonials out of one of the most aristocratic nurseries +in the land, gradually allowed herself to be reabsorbed by her numerous +avocations, social and philanthropic. + +Cissy has been most inadequately represented if it need be stated that +the very last person to trouble her head about the poor little thing was +its mother. She was entirely at one with the fashionable _accoucheur_ +who attended her, in his opinion that to nurse the child would be far +too great a strain on her constitution. After the briefest period of +seclusion which the same authority could be got to say was sufficient +for her own restoration, and a flying visit to the seaside, she seemed +to have but one object in life, to make up by extra assiduity for the +weeks she had been compelled to sacrifice from the engrossing occupation +of amusing herself. If before she had been much out of her own house, +she was now hardly ever in it. The only limit to the number of her +engagements was the fear lest she should be betrayed into doing +something that was not ‘smart’; and even with this important +restriction, they were far too numerous to admit of her having any time +to bestow upon her son. + +As for Sainty, he hardly ever saw her. In so large a house, with a +perfectly mutual desire to keep apart, it was not difficult to avoid +meeting. He had had one necessary interview with her after the birth of +the boy, in which he had told her some very plain truths. + +‘You may as well understand the situation quite clearly,’ he said. ‘In +return for the various things you enjoy as a result of being believed to +be my wife, I have hitherto asked nothing of you; after what has +happened, I would not take it if you offered it on your knees. I made +just one condition, which you have not thought fit to observe, that +there should be no scandal; to avoid it, I have sacrificed my last shred +of self-respect. Don’t, therefore, think that you can count on a like +cowardice on my part in the future. I pretend to no sort of control over +your actions. What you _do_ is of no consequence to me; but on just this +one thing I _insist_: I must never hear you talked about, and, above +all, there must be no repetition of this--this occurrence.’ + +‘I see,’ said Cissy. ‘Having by hook or by crook got the heir for which +you and your mother were so anxious, you have no further use for me, and +will seize the next opportunity to get rid of me.’ + +Sainty looked at her a moment, so antagonistic, so hard, so insolent in +her youth and beauty, to which her late recovery lent a character almost +ethereal. Bitter as her taunt was, he could not deny its substantial +truth. + +‘Precisely,’ he said, and left her without another word. + +While Cissy immersed herself in social frivolities, Sainty was trying to +find in work forgetfulness of the child he was ashamed to remember. He +devoted long hours to humble toil and study, of which the only result +would be a paragraph in the report of some learned society, read by no +one but its own members. He attended the debates in the House of Lords +with unparalleled assiduity, and came to be a familiar figure in the +gallery on important nights in the other House. The scarcity of Radical +peers gave him an extrinsic value for the leaders of his party, while +his patience, powers of work, and known interest in all schemes of +beneficence, marked him as specially designed by Providence to serve on +Parliamentary Committees. + +There was one important point of difference between the couple. While +Cissy’s absorption in her favourite pursuits was quite natural and +genuine, and she found no difficulty whatever in forgetting her maternal +duties, it was only by consistent effort that Sainty succeeded in +shutting out the recollection of his shame. The image of the baby, with +its tell-tale dark eyes, was perpetually between him and the page he was +writing or the pamphlet on which he was trying to fix his attention. + +As we know, his rooms were on the ground-floor of the London house, +while the nurseries were up three flights of stairs; it seemed +impossible that any echo should penetrate from them to his study, yet he +was always fancying that he detected faint sounds of crying from the +upper regions of the house. Sometimes he would stop in his work and +listen, and then, convinced that his imagination had played him a trick, +turn again to his reading or writing, only to be haunted by this +illusive wailing as before. + +One day in the early spring, the child being then some three months old, +this impression was more than usually persistent. At last, exasperated +by his inability to fix his mind on what he was doing, Sainty pushed +away his papers and went out upon the back stairs to listen. This time +there was no question of imagination. Perhaps some door usually closed +had been left open, but whatever the explanation, there was no doubt +that a most real and material lamentation, such as the human infant +alone is capable of producing, was echoing through the house. He +returned to his table and sat down again. ‘I suppose babies of that age +always yell,’ he said to himself, and he recalled Arthur’s complaint of +that tendency in his own offspring. Why, of all people in the world, +need the baby’s crying make him think of his brother? The recollection +of that stucco rectory in the shires, where the birth of the little Lord +Charmington must have aroused anything but enthusiasm, made him start +and tremble like a felon. + +For a moment he fancied the noise had ceased, but a second visit to the +landing convinced him such was not the case. He looked at the clock. It +was almost time for him to go down to Westminster; he would go out and +walk a little first--sometimes he thought he did not have enough fresh +air--it would do him good. He put away his papers, gathered together +some loose sheets of notes that he wanted, and left the room. + +What made him turn to the stairs instead of the front door he never +quite knew. Some occult power seemed to draw his feet. He couldn’t go +out to do battle for the children of the poor with that lamentable +wailing ringing in his ears, and make no inquiry into what ailed the +child under his own roof. + +He had not mounted to these upper floors since he had conducted the +duchess thither, but if he had been in any doubt about the room, the +cries, which seemed to redouble in force as he drew nearer, would have +been a quite sufficient guide. Through the wide open door Sainty could +see the interior of the nursery before he entered. Lady Eccleston had +given the rein to her grandmotherly fancy in the provision of all things +needful and luxurious for the young heir. He was at least sumptuously +lodged; the walls were gay with sanitary illustrations of juvenile +literature from Miss Greenaway’s charming designs; buttercups and +daisies sprinkled the window hangings; everything streamed with pale +blue satin ribbon, and the very powder-box, of choicest ivory, had the +mystic word ‘Baby’ slanting in turquoises across the lid. But nothing +was ranged, or ordered, or in its proper place. The costly little +garments so lavishly provided were tossed about with careless profusion, +damp cloths trailed over the floor, a common enamelled saucepan for +heating the child’s food had been set down on a lace robe, and +half-washed-out feeding-bottles mingled on the table with the materials +from which the nurse had evidently been manufacturing a new hat for +herself. + +The room was bare of human presence save for the emitter of the howls, +who was lying alone in his cot, roaring himself purple in the face. He +had kicked himself free of his wrappings, and his poor little legs were +quite cold to the touch. Without attempting to cope with the +complication of integuments, Sainty loosely pulled the coverlet over the +child, and then looked with horror and anxiety at the convulsed face. +What was to be done? ‘Don’t!’ he said imploringly, in no particular +expectation of being understood, but from a general instinct to say +something. ‘_Please_ don’t!’ + +Whether the sense of a human presence was of some comfort to the baby, +or it was only startled by the sound of an unfamiliar voice, it is +certain that it intermitted its screaming, and slowly unpuckering its +face, allowed the hidden eyes to appear. They were all wet and shiny +with tears, their long lashes glued into points like a series of tiny +camel’s-hair paint brushes. + +Sainty wondered if he dared wipe them. ‘It can’t be comfortable to have +one’s face all slobbered over like that,’ he thought, and taking out his +handkerchief began, as lightly and tenderly as he could, to remove some +of the superfluous moisture that seemed to exude from every feature. The +baby, far from being sensible of this attention, showed unmistakable +signs of being about to resume its lament. Sainty swiftly desisted from +his endeavours, and once more implored its forbearance. + +The baby, with its face all made up for a fresh howl, paused suddenly +when, so to speak, half-way there, and once more opened its eyes. It +stared solemnly at Sainty and Sainty stared back at it. What dumb +interchange of intelligence passed between them it would be hard to say, +but presently a faint windy smile flickered across one side of the +baby’s face leaving the other immutably grave. + +Sainty was transported with gratitude; he nodded and smiled repeatedly +at the baby and tried to think of pleasant noises to make to it. One of +the little hands had broken loose from under the coverlet and was +beating the air--sparring at life with the aimless hostility of infancy. +Very gingerly Sainty laid his forefinger against the palm, and +instantly the absurd fingers closed round it and held him prisoner. + +Long he stood beside the cradle gently swaying the hand that held his +own back and forth and contemplating the baby, which, soothed by the +rhythmic movement, seemed inclined to sleep. Since it ceased crying, its +face had become a touch pleasanter and more normal colour, and, as the +suffusing crimson died away, Sainty could notice how the poor chin was +chafed and red where it had rubbed on the wet unchanged bib; the tiny +nails, too, were edged with black, and surely, he thought, a carefully +tended baby ought not to smell as sour as this one did. It was being +borne in upon him that the child was neglected, a thought which made him +not less indignant that he could not feel wholly without blame in the +matter. True, the child was not his, but by acknowledging it he had +accepted responsibility; he knew far too well how little reason there +was to expect that its mother would occupy herself with such matters to +think of sheltering himself behind the plea that it was her business. It +was monstrous that the sins of its parents should be visited on this +helpless creature. The queer little claw still grasped his finger, and +he was still swinging it and crooning gently, when the nurse hurried +into the room and was visibly taken aback at sight of her master. At +once she was voluble in explanation and excuse. + +‘That was the worst of these girls, you never could trust ’em; her back +wasn’t a minute turned that that Emma wasn’t off to her own affairs. She +hadn’t but just stepped downstairs to give the orders herself about his +lordship’s milk, which, it was surprising, with all these lazy servants +in the house, never _could_ be sent up at the right time, and had +particularly told the girl not to leave the room for a second till she +came back ...’ with much more to the same effect. + +Sainty grimly eyed the artificial roses she was whisking out of sight +with clumsy dexterity, in her attempt to bring order out of chaos, with +one hand, while with the other she made playful passes at the baby, +crying ‘Did he?’ and ‘Was he, then?’ and ‘Nana’s here, precious.’ + +Neither Sainty nor the baby was in the least taken in by this +transparent comedy. + +‘I think this child is not properly looked after,’ the former said +sternly. + +‘Not looked after!’ Nurse was outraged in her finest feelings. ‘Not +looked after! She didn’t know what his lordship meant. She was never +away for a minute all day and often up half the night with the little +darling; not that she grudged it, not she; she was well aware it was but +her duty and what she was paid for, but it _was_ hard after all to be +told she didn’t look after the dear child, and she did think no one who +hadn’t done it had any idea what it was to be with a young infant at +night....’ + +And just then the peccant underling returning from her own private +expedition in neglect of her duty, she made a diversion by falling on +her and smiting her figuratively hip and thigh in a frenzy of righteous +wrath. + +The baby’s official guardians having for the time being returned to +their posts, Sainty did not judge it necessary to remain and enter into +details in which he might easily betray his ignorance. Having made his +sweeping indictment and seen his heir restored to tranquillity by a +bottle, he returned to his own neglected duties, feeling a little as if +the Lord Chancellor might address to him some of the scathing reproaches +he had just heard flung at the head of Emma. + +He tried to immerse himself in his usual employments, but, do what he +would, he was haunted for the rest of the day and far into the night by +the vision of the piteous, dirty baby left to howl by itself in the +midst of its luxurious surroundings, and felt the cold clasp of the tiny +fingers growing gradually warm and moist upon his own. + + + + +CHAPTER XXV + + +The interview last recorded between Belchamber and his heir was to have +momentous consequences for both of them. The principal gain was at first +to the baby, as the immediate result was the dismissal of his neglectful +attendants. Cissy, for her part, first delicately expressed surprise at +Sainty’s interesting himself in the matter at all, and then adopted the +simple plan of refusing to believe a word against the nurse, whom she +eventually passed on to another young mother, with as strong a +recommendation as she had received of her, adding in explanation: ‘My +husband took a dislike to the woman, and so, of course, she had to go.’ + +Lady Eccleston was full of concern and astonishment. ‘I _can’t_ +understand it,’ she cried. ‘Lady Quivers gave her the very _highest_ +character, and before that, she was four years in the nursery at +Branches, first as nursery-maid and then as under-nurse, and I went to +see dear Lady Olave myself, who couldn’t say enough about her. I _can’t_ +think she would really neglect the darling.’ + +Sainty repeated his experience, and ‘Go and see for yourself,’ he said. +‘The child is ill-cared for; he isn’t even kept clean.’ + +Grandmamma went to inspect, and returned declaring the angel was as neat +as a new pin. ‘You can’t, no matter _how_ careful you are, prevent their +dear little chinnywinnies from getting a wee bit chapped if they dribble +much,’ she said. + +‘No doubt he was clean enough after my unexpected visit,’ Sainty +answered; ‘but I assure you _I_ didn’t find him so; his hands were dirty +and nothing about him was fresh. I don’t know much about babies, but I’m +sure they ought not to smell so nasty. He was hungry and cold too, poor +little chap! and left all alone to yell himself into a fit.’ + +‘Nurse declares she wasn’t gone five minutes; she was dreadfully +distressed that you should have found the child alone. I feel sure one +can trust that woman; I can always tell by people’s faces and the way +they look at one; and Lady Quivers said she was _so_ devoted to her +last, and I know it was a very delicate little thing.’ + +For once, however, her son-in-law was inexorable. ‘The woman may have +been all you say when she came,’ he said; ‘but it is not surprising if +the best of nurses grows neglectful when the mother sets her the +example.’ + +This was taking the matter to very unsafe ground, where Lady Eccleston +felt that it behoved her to walk warily. ‘I _can_ want nothing but the +darling baby’s good,’ she said hastily. ‘I hold no brief for nurse, and +if you are dissatisfied with her, dear Sainty, of course she had better +go, though I don’t see what precautions we can take more than we did in +getting this one.’ + +It was Alice de Lissac who finally discovered a successor to Lady +Quivers’ treasure, and imported a pet lamb from her mother’s bible-class +at Great Charmington to act as nursery-maid. + +Once the treasure was gone, the other servants abounded in evidence, +which more than justified her removal, though they would apparently have +had no difficulty in reconciling their consciences to perpetual silence +had she remained. It transpired that it was her frequent habit to +administer narcotics to her unfortunate charge, in order that she might +fulfil evening engagements of her own, from which she had sometimes not +returned till the small hours of the morning; yet when Sainty felt it +his duty to impart this information to her new employer, he was very +civilly shown the door, with profuse thanks, but a polite intimation +that his interference was not required; from which he was forced to +conclude that Cissy was not as exceptional among fashionable mothers as +he, in his ignorance, had imagined. + +He carried the child off to Belchamber, where he knew that Lady +Charmington would keep a lynx eye on the new nurse and her acolyte, and +where, indeed, it soon began to improve visibly in condition. + +Since its mother seemed to be without the common instincts of the animal +kingdom, he imposed it on himself as a duty to see that the poor little +creature was at least warmed and fed, and not poisoned with drugs. The +duty was at first rather a painful one, involving as it did a constant +recollection of what he would fain forget; but, as the months went by, +like other things originally taken up from the sternest sense of +responsibility, it came to have for him a decided interest. + +It has been somewhat cynically said that to be under an obligation to a +man is the beginning of dislike; be that as it may, there is no doubt +that any one to whom, in a world of frustrated effort, we have been able +to do a tangible service, establishes thereby a distinct claim on our +gratitude. ‘This,’ we say to ourselves with a pardonable glow, ‘is our +work; here is something accomplished, some one better or happier for our +existence,’ And it is impossible not to have a kindly feeling towards +the person who has procured us such a pleasing reflection. + +Sainty found his mind constantly running on his small charge; he dwelt +with pleasure on the prospect of seeing it; he even began to make +excuses for more frequent visits to Belchamber, where it was astonishing +how often his presence and personal supervision seemed to be required. + +In addition to the baby, there was now another person there, on whom he +had the pleasure of knowing he had conferred a benefit; he had rescued +his brother-in-law, Thomas Eccleston, from the hated thraldom of the +broker’s office, and placed him with his agent, Mr. Danford, who was +beginning to feel, as age stole upon him, the necessity for help in +managing the huge property. + +The good Tommy, his legs permanently gaitered, his honest pink face +burnt to a healthy brickdust colour, and his hands hardened by much +congenial outdoor labour, was as happy as a rabbit in a vegetable +garden. To initiate this neophyte into his duties, and at the same time +keep things smooth between Danford and the pupil in whom his jealousy +could not but scent a possible successor, called for many visits from +the master. Sainty made time for them gladly, half ashamed to admit even +to himself how much the new tenant of his old nurseries had to do with +his alacrity. It surprised him to find how eagerly his eyes would scan +the walks and lawns for the distant gleam of white in the perambulator. + +Week by week, and month by month, the little life was expanding and +developing like an opening flower in the sunshine, and Sainty noted the +changes, watching with reverent awe the miracle of the dawning +intelligence. He brought wonderful toys, heads in fancy costume that +could by a turn of the wrist be made to gyrate on a handle to a feeble +lute-like accompaniment; wonderful parti-coloured acrobats in the +attitude of St. Andrew on his cross, who shook their extended limbs with +a great tinkling of bells; white furry animals that emitted strange +squeaks when pressed in the abdominal regions. + +It must be confessed that the toys left the baby rather cold; sometimes +he looked at them with solemn and contemptuous eyes, sometimes with an +indulgent smile; more often he swept them from him with a downward +sabre-cut action of the right arm. Whatever he did seemed to Sainty an +indication of unusual capacity. He thought with a pang of fierce +hatred--was it envy? was it contempt?--of the men who begot such +marvellous beings, and grudged an occasional moment from their low toils +or pleasures to glance impatiently at them and order them from the room. +Of a mother who could bring forth a child and leave it to take its +chance of life or death in the care of hirelings, he dared not trust +himself to think at all. + +A hunger of paternity possessed him. How he could have adored a child of +his own! His own! Was this child _not_ his own? To whom did it rather +belong? the father who disowned, the mother who neglected it, or to him +who had tended and cared for it, and was learning to love it? And the +crowning wonder of all was that the child was learning to love _him_. It +was not a merry baby--‘a solemn wise-like thing,’ the nurse called +it--looking out upon the world with grave mysterious eyes, and that +peculiarly detached, far-off expression that belongs only to babies and +cats; but at sight of Sainty the rare smile never failed to light up the +little white face, the legs would jump and kick against the nurse, the +arms be held out for his embrace. + +A baby’s partiality has as little cause or meaning as its aversions, and +it is as unreasonable to be flattered by the one as to be hurt by the +other; but a man must be of a sterner temper than our poor Sainty to +resist a certain mild elation when a little creature hurls itself into +his arms with such confident self-surrender. To him, moreover, the +novelty of the experience made it doubly dear. His mother had doubtless +loved him in her own grim way, because he was her son; others, as his +uncle, had pitied, or done their duty by him; others again might have +paid him attention for what they hoped to obtain from him; but never in +the course of his existence could he remember that any living thing had +been simply attracted to him by the magnetism of his own personality; +and no one can suspect a baby of any complexity of motive. So, when his +coming was greeted with jubilant laughter and dancings and outstretched +arms, a warmth crept about his heart, and he owned to himself with +humble gratitude that out of what had seemed his greatest affliction had +come the best happiness his life had ever known. + +Of course he did not arrive at this height of devotion all at once; it +was the growth of many months, and every time he came to Belchamber, the +little tendrils wound themselves more closely round his heart. At the +end of the session, he established himself there with a more joyful +sense of homecoming than he had known for years. + +To those who have experienced how rich in possibilities is the intimacy +of a baby of six months, it were unnecessary to describe it; they who +have not would hardly credit it, however cunningly set forth. There is +something intangible about it that must necessarily evaporate in the +mere attempt to put it on paper. Sainty fell into the habit of having +the child almost constantly with him; often it slept on the sofa in his +study, or in its perambulator under the great cedars while he read or +wrote beside it, and the sense of its nearness at once soothed and +stimulated him; even if it woke, it was so gentle and quiet that it +hardly disturbed his work. + +He abandoned his little cart in favour of a larger open carriage in +which the nurse and baby could accompany him on his drives. Not +infrequently they would start by way of the dower-house, where Lady +Charmington would be a willing addition to the party. Sainty and his +mother were brought very close together by their common worship of the +child; at no previous time, and on no other subject, had her son been in +such constant need of the good lady’s advice. Exactly what the baby had +suffered at the hands of the ‘treasure’ remained in doubt, but certainly +its internal economy was none of the strongest, and many changes of diet +had to be tried, which its two guardians discussed by the hour. Then it +began to cut its teeth exceptionally early, with all the usual +accompaniments of heaviness, loss of appetite, and restless nights. +Without his mother’s rocklike commonsense to lean upon, Sainty would +have worked himself into a fever of anxiety; her experience of the +frailty of his own early days was of inestimable comfort to him. + +‘I tell you, this child is a tower of strength to what you were,’ Lady +Charmington would say. ‘I’ve been up night after night with you when you +were teething.’ + +‘But was I as hot and restless as baby?’ + +‘Hot and restless? I should think you were! twice as bad, and croupy +into the bargain, which this child, thank God! hasn’t a symptom of.’ + +So Sainty took heart, and when, after a time, he was made to feel with +his finger two tiny white points in the red gum, this also seemed to +him an almost supernatural achievement on the part of one so young. + +He had come to regard the precious infant as so entirely his charge, +that he did not bestow much thought upon its recreant mother. Cissy had +started on a round of visits at the end of the Season, hardly going +through the form of inquiring if Sainty thought of accompanying her. It +was a shock to him to find how completely she had gone out of his +existence, when she presently announced that she was coming to +Belchamber; she had spent a day or two there, before going North, to get +some country clothes and give her maid a chance to repack, but had not +seen the baby more than two or three times, nor appeared to take any +particular interest in what was being done for it. It never occurred to +Sainty as likely that she would in any way occupy herself with the child +or its relation to him; it was therefore no small surprise to him to +discover, before she had been many days in the house, that it was a +distinct irritation to her to see them together. + +The first time she found it under the cedars with him, she inquired, +with a perceptible shade of annoyance in her voice, where the nurse was, +and why she hadn’t taken it out. + +‘Baby generally spends most of the morning with me here if it’s fine,’ +Sainty said. ‘The doctor likes him to be in the open air as much as +possible, and it gives nurse a chance to do various little things for +him.’ + +‘Nonsense! it’s her place to be with him; she’ll get utterly spoilt if +you do her work for her; she has got a girl in the nursery. If she can’t +manage, she had better have another. There’s no earthly reason for you +to do nursery-maid.’ + +‘I like having baby with me, and _this_ woman doesn’t neglect her +duties; at least she doesn’t leave the child alone, when he’s _not_ with +me, like the one your mother got for him.’ + +‘You were always unjust about that poor woman. Ah! here you are, nurse. +You had better take baby and walk him about. You shouldn’t leave him +here to worry his lordship.’ + +‘Begging your ladyship’s pardon, my lord partick’larly _wished_ for the +child to be left with him,’ retorted the nurse, as she wheeled the +perambulator viciously away, quivering with suppressed indignation. + +‘You see the results of your spoiling that woman,’ Cissy remarked. ‘If +she’s going to be insolent to me she’ll have to go.’ + +‘No--by heaven! I’m hanged if she shall,’ Sainty burst out ‘She’s +devoted to the child, and takes very good care of him, and he isn’t very +strong. It would be monstrous, after never giving him a thought from the +time of his birth till now, if you undertook to sack the people who _do_ +look after him, because you considered they didn’t sufficiently kowtow +to _you_.’ + +‘It’s precisely what you did to her predecessor.’ + +‘On the contrary, I sent her away because she neglected him, which was, +no doubt, what gave you a fellow-feeling for her.’ + +‘Oh! well, don’t let me interfere between you and your _protégée_. I +don’t even pretend to inquire what terms you are on with her; but I must +confess I can’t see what particular pleasure you derive from the +constant presence of another man’s child.’ + +‘Hush!’ Sainty said, casting a swift, frightened glance around to see if +any one was within earshot. ‘Be careful what you say. Remember the child +is _mine_. He has got to be mine. Your remark was in your usual +excellent taste, but on that particular subject you will have to forego +the pleasure of wounding me. If you are so fond of reminding me that I +am not his father, you will say something one of these days before +others that you will regret.’ + +It gave him a horrible sense of complicity to be obliged to entreat her +discretion a feeling that, bound by their guilty secret, let them hate +each other as they would, they dare not quarrel. Probably Cissy was not +less aware of this necessity than her husband, for though her object +remained the same, she altered her tactics. She would try to keep the +child from him by little underhand manœuvres, sending it out when she +thought him likely to want it, and even going so far as to take it with +her when she drove; but she did not risk another face attack. + +Sainty, on his side, did nothing to provoke an encounter. He saw the +child not less, but as it were by stealth, and this introduction of a +slightly clandestine element into their intercourse only heightened his +love for it. Not that it required any great exercise of tact or +ingenuity to evade Cissy’s notice. Lord Charmington would have fared ill +had he been dependent on the fitful attentions of his mamma for care and +comfort. Even the amiable desire to deprive her husband of his one +pleasure could not make a domestic character of Lady Belchamber. She was +much away, and when at home constantly surrounded by guests who absorbed +her attention. It was only at rare intervals that she found any leisure +to bestow on the separation of her husband and her child. + +She had a trick of arriving when least expected, swooping suddenly into +visible space like a comet, and, like a comet, followed by her train; +though to speak of her appearances as comet-like gives a false +impression of something periodical and calculably recurrent, whereas no +one could foretell when Cissy might take it into her head to entertain a +party, which seemed to be her only idea of the uses of a home. + +Once, when he thought she was safely launched on a round of +country-houses, Sainty had asked his old friend Gerald Newby, for whom +she entertained no great regard, to pay him a visit. They were at tea on +the lawn, when, preceded at a short interval by a heralding telegram, +her ladyship descended on them with a few friends, and the announcement +of a further contingent for the morrow. + +Lady Charmington had come over from the dower-house, and Tommy had +dropped in for tea and to play with his nephew, about whom he was almost +as weak as Sainty. + +No one looking at the group under the cedars would have guessed that he +was witness of anything but the most delightful scene of domestic +felicity. The stately ancestral home, the superb trees, the great +stretches of smoothly mown turf, the young married couple with their +baby between them, surrounded by all that wealth and great possession +could give, the adoring grandmother, the loving uncle, the admiring +friends, the glow of flowers, the cheerful, intimate little meal, all +combined to make the picture complete. It appealed strongly to Newby, +who beamed indulgently on the party. + +‘Our dear Sainty appears in a new and most amiable light,’ he said; ‘I +am not accustomed to see him as Kourotrophos. It is the epithet applied +to Hermes in his character of the child-tender,’ he added explanatorily +to Cissy, who looked rather blank. + +‘I can’t think why nurse doesn’t fetch baby,’ that lady remarked; ‘or, +for that matter, why she brought him down at all. I’ve always told her +not to when any one was here. Whatever one may think of one’s own +children, one has no right to bore other people with them.’ + +‘_I_ asked to see the child,’ said Lady Charmington, the light of battle +waking in her eye. + +‘Mother had settled to come over before I knew you were coming,’ Sainty +said quietly. ‘When I got your telegram it was too late to stop her, and +as she had come on purpose to see baby, I couldn’t refuse to send for +him. No one need bother about him; he will be quite good with me.’ + +‘Dear little man!’ said one of the ladies who had come with the fond +mother. ‘I’m so glad you didn’t stop him, Lord Belchamber. I love +babies. I’ve been trying to think who he reminds me of. He’s not a bit +like you or Cissy.’ + +‘We think him like my grandmother--’ Sainty began. + +‘I never could see that he was so like the duchess,’ Lady Charmington +cut in. + +‘To _me_ he’s the image of Claude Morland,’ remarked the luckless Tommy. + +There was a sudden hush that may have lasted some five seconds ere it +was broken by Newby inquiring, ‘What has become of your charming cousin? +I liked him so much, and hoped I might meet him here.’ + +‘We see very little of Claude now,’ Lady Charmington responded. ‘He +never seems to come here. I suppose he finds other places more amusing. +He was glad enough to come in old days.’ + +‘I fancy,’ said Sainty, ‘as the duke gets older that he is more +dependent on him. He very seldom gets away.’ + +He had, in fact, for some time been conscious that Claude came much less +to the house than formerly, and was acutely aware of a like +consciousness in Cissy, though each was careful to say nothing about it +to the other. + +‘By the way, that reminds me,’ said Lady Charmington to Sainty. ‘I had +almost forgotten. Alice de Lissac writes she is coming to her father for +a little, and she is very anxious to see baby. May I bring her over some +day?’ + +‘Why should Claude remind you of Mrs. de Lissac?’ Cissy asked, with a +little laugh, her desire to score off her mother-in-law getting the +better of her prudence. ‘I never knew they had much in common.’ + +‘Only because Alice says in her letter they have seen a good deal of him +lately. He seems to have been several times to Roehampton; and mother +mentioned his coming in to see her one day with one of the girls.’ + +‘Morland’s a deep ‘un,’ ejaculated Tommy. ‘Shouldn’t wonder if he was +after one of the heiresses. Those girls’ll have a devil of a lot of +money. The mater was always egging me on to be civil to ’em. Do you +remember the World’s Bazaar, Cissy? Oh my!’ + +‘I wonder if he can be thinking of Gemma,’ said Lady Charmington +thoughtfully. ‘Alice doesn’t _say_ so, but----’ + +‘It’s not true,’ Cissy burst out; then, seeing awakened curiosity in +several surrounding pairs of eyes, she added more indifferently, ‘I know +Claude well enough to feel sure he would never be attracted by that +black Jewess.’ + +‘He might be by her blond sovereigns,’ suggested Tommy. + +Cissy became suddenly solicitous for the comfort of her guests. ‘I am +sure you want to see your rooms,’ she said. ‘Wouldn’t you like a bath +after that dirty journey?’ and swept them into the house. + +‘Cissy don’t seem to fancy the idea of Morland being sweet on the dark +lady,’ Tommy giggled. ‘She used to flirt with him herself once. I +remember mater----’ + +‘Tommy,’ said Sainty, ‘do, like a good soul, ask nurse to fetch baby.’ + +He felt sick and frightened. The contrast between the appearances of +life and the ghastly things that were so thinly overlaid by them +suddenly appalled his spirit. Almost unconsciously he picked up the +baby, and clasped it closely to him. It was on that same spot, and on +much such an afternoon, that he had first seen Cissy five years before. +With the clearness of a picture thrown on a screen, he saw her standing +as she had stood that day with Claude beside her, her girlish beauty +bathed in soft golden light, and recalled the prophetic pang with which +he had watched them turn away together under the baleful gaze of Aimée +Winston. As he sat holding their child to his heart, the permanent +dweller in his cupboard seemed to grin out at him with a more than +usually fiendish malignity. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVI + + +One morning early in October, Thomas Eccleston appeared in his +brother-in-law’s study with a shade of distress deepening the habitual +ruddiness of his open countenance. + +It has already been intimated that Sainty cherished a very real +affection for this young man, holding a character so manly and direct to +be little short of miraculous in a child of Lady Eccleston. + +‘What’s the matter, Tommy?’ he asked. ‘You look perturbed. Have you and +Danford been coming to blows?’ + +‘Oh no, Danny’s all right; it so happens I’m rather in his good books +just now. But the fact is, I’ve had rather a queer letter, and I didn’t +quite know what to do about it, so I thought the simplest thing was to +bring it to you, though it’s not by any means what he intended me to +do.’ + +‘Who’s “he”? Danford?’ + +‘No; I tell you it’s nothing to do with him,’ + +‘To begin with, then, who’s your correspondent?’ + +‘Well, if you want to know, it’s your brother.’ + +Sainty started. ‘Arthur? What _can_ he want of you?’ + +‘I think the best way would be for you to read it,’ Tommy said, holding +out the letter. + +Sainty hesitated a moment, then took it and read: + +‘DEAR ECCLESTON--I expect you’ll be rather astonished at hearing from +me, and still more at what it’s about. The fact of the matter is, I want +you to do me a good turn. I was awfully glad to hear my brother had got +you at Belchamber, and it suddenly occurred to me you would be just the +chap to do what I want. To cut a long story short, I want to come to +Belchamber. I suppose it’s very undignified of me, but I’m badly in +want of a little amusement, and I thought if they were going to have a +shoot, and it wasn’t a very big party, you might suggest to your sister +to pop me in as one of the guns. You may think it funny that I don’t +write straight to my brother, but I know he’d be infernally sniffy, and +say I had no proper pride; and Cissy always seemed a good sort, and so +did you, and I thought between you, you could work it for me. I know +they won’t ask Lady Arthur, and I don’t ask it of ’em. At first I was +afraid she mightn’t take it kindly, but she’s been all right about it; +she says she don’t want to go where she isn’t wanted, but don’t mind my +going without her. Do you think you can work it through your sister? Do, +if you can, and oblige yours ever.--A. W. CHAMBERS.’ + +‘Oh! _how_ like Arthur!’ Sainty murmured, as he refolded this +characteristic letter. + +‘I thought,’ said Tommy, who had been watching him uneasily as he read, +and fiddling with the things on the writing-table, ‘that it was better +to come straight to you than to go to Cissy about it.’ + +‘So it is, and I’m very grateful to you, dear boy, for all your +loyalty’; and Sainty laid a thin claw in Thomas’s large red hand. The +sub-agent pressed it fervently. + +‘What had I better say?’ he asked. ‘It puts me in such a deucedly +awkward posish, don’t yer know.’ + +‘Of course he had no business to write to any one but me,’ Sainty said. +‘Well--you needn’t answer; I’ll write to him myself.’ + +Tommy looked much relieved. ‘Hope I didn’t do wrong,’ he said +doubtfully. + +‘On the contrary, you did more than right,’ Sainty said warmly. + +‘Shall you ask him?’ Tommy ventured, after a pause. + +‘I can’t say straight off; I must talk to Cissy about it, and’ (with an +ill-concealed tremor) ‘to my mother,’ + +Cissy made no objections. Arthur was a pleasant, good-looking fellow, +and a man you could ask without his wife was as good as a bachelor. +Rather to Sainty’s surprise, Lady Charmington was not less willing. She +hardly ever mentioned Arthur. Since the day when, livid and furious, she +had solemnly cursed her younger son, Sainty could almost count on the +fingers of one hand the times when she had spoken his name; but when, +with some trepidation and much uncertainty, he approached her on the +subject, he was met quite half-way. + +‘Unto seventy times seven,’ she remarked, ‘the Scripture tells us we +must forgive. That woman I will _never_ receive, but as long as he is +willing to come without her, I see no reason you shouldn’t have him at +Belchamber; and--and--you may tell him I am willing to see him too, if +he likes.’ And Sainty read in the sudden suffusion of the hard eyes, the +tale of the poor woman’s long silent yearning for a sight of her +favourite son. + +So Arthur had his wish, and came once more to Belchamber. There was, no +doubt, a certain awkwardness in the situation, and Sainty was surprised +and touched to find that, though he certainly felt it much the most, +Arthur was not without a perception of it, too. He was decidedly subdued +during the first days of his visit, and Sainty’s ready sympathy went +out, as usual, to any one who was ill at ease. Had Arthur been in his +accustomed mood of complete self-satisfaction, he would have felt less +tenderly towards him, but seeing him so humbled and brought low, on the +footing, as it were, of a guest and poor relation in the home of their +common childhood, was almost more than he could bear. + +Perhaps Arthur intentionally rather accentuated this note, conscious of +the effect it would have on his brother. He would pointedly ask leave to +do the most obvious things. ‘There’s a spare gun in the gun-room,’ he +would say; ‘the keeper says he doesn’t know whose it is. Should you mind +if I took it, old chap? I’ve only one here, and it got so hot yesterday +I could hardly shoot with it.’ Or it would be, ‘Tommy and I are going to +practise a bit; may I use this old bat? I fancy it must once have been +mine, but I’m not sure.’ Or, ‘Would it be convenient for me to have a +horse this morning? I was thinking of riding over to see the mater.’ +Formerly, whatever the house afforded was as freely his as Sainty’s. If +he was not the owner, he was something more than an ordinary heir, and +guns, bats, and horses were so emphatically his natural property, that +it was unthinkable his asking permission to use them. + +On the first morning of his visit, the brothers had wandered out +together, and Arthur had commented on the new arrangement of the +forecourt. + +‘You’ve fetched all the old statues out of the shrubbery, I see,’ he +said. ‘What did you do that for?’ + +Sainty explained, almost apologetically, that it was an attempt to +return to Perrault’s original plan. + +‘Is it so long since you were here?’ he said. ‘I had forgotten----’ +Then, as the other remained silent, gloomily sucking at his pipe, ‘I’m +afraid you don’t like it,’ he suggested meekly. + +‘Oh! well, of course, it’s none of _my_ business. I must say I think +they looked better where they were, but I’m not much of a judge. +Naturally, don’tcherknow, I liked ’em where I’ve always seen ’em. I +can’t bear changes in the place.’ + +‘I’m sometimes half sorry I did it, myself,’ Sainty admitted. As he +spoke he was aware that the moment had come which he had been dreading +ever since his brother’s arrival, the first appearance on the scene of +the baby, who was being taken out for his morning’s airing. + +‘And so this is the son and heir, is it?’ said Arthur. ‘Hulloa! little +‘un, how do you do? I’m your uncle. You look very solemn, but it would +be more natural if I did. You don’t know the difference your small +existence makes to me and mine.’ + +The baby, as usual, at sight of Sainty, began making demonstrations of +welcome, doubling himself forward over his restraining strap, and giving +vent to a note like that of the nightingale, which is conventionally +represented in print as ‘Jug-jug-jug,’ and a cry of ‘A-da, A-da-da, +A-da,’ which was a sort of sound of all work with him for the +expression of his varying emotions. + +‘He wants his dada,’ said the nurse, eager to display her charge’s +precocity, and, at the same time, gratify her master. ‘He says “Dada” +quite plain, my lord, and it’s the first word he’s said.’ + +‘It’s a wise child that knows his own father,’ said Arthur jocosely. + +Sainty could not restrain a hasty glance at him, but he was evidently +innocent of any special or personal application of the often-quoted +adage. + +They walked on for a little beside the child, Sainty resting one hand +lovingly on the edge of the little carriage, the baby squirming round +and looking up into his face, wrinkling its nose and gurgling to attract +his attention. When their ways divided, the parting was not effected +without a burst of protest from the infant, which Sainty soothed and +diverted as skilfully as the professional attendant. + +‘The little beggar seems to like you,’ Arthur remarked. ‘I don’t +remember either of mine ever yelling for _me_.’ + +‘You have probably never taken as much notice of them as I do of baby.’ + +‘You were always a kind of old granny; you’ll probably spoil that brat. +Have you done anything to the stables since I was here?’ + +Once received, the prodigal brother came several times to Belchamber in +the course of the winter. He liked the luxury, the magnificence, the +good food, the gentlemanly licence of the conversation, the fine horses +to ride (he soon ceased to ask if he might take one), better than the +shabby gentility of the stucco rectory, the half-trained grooms, the +half-lame hunters, the half-refined wife of his own home. It sometimes +seemed to Sainty that he almost forgot he was a husband and father at +all, and there were not wanting among the ladies of Cissy’s surrounding +some who were quite willing to help him to this pleasing oblivion. + +‘I like Lady Deans,’ he would say confidentially; ‘she’s rare sport, +and there’s no nonsense about her; she don’t care what she says, and you +haven’t got to think twice about what you say to _her_. Now if I were to +say half the things to Topsy I do to her, she’d bridle and shy and look +as sour as if she’d been brought up by a bishop. And when you think--oh +my!’ and the sentence would end in a long puff of cigar smoke, or the +burial of the speaker’s nose in a tall whisky and soda. + +Arthur was a decided success with the members of the softer sex. The +story of his romance cast quite a halo about him, and the very few +mothers of grown-up girls who were tolerated in that gay company felt +almost tenderly towards a detrimental who had put it out of his own +power to marry their daughters. + +As for Cissy, she and her brother-in-law got on capitally. She pressed +him to come whenever he liked, partly, no doubt, because she divined +that his presence was a constant unhappiness to her husband. The sight +of him in juxtaposition with the baby kept a keen edge on all Sainty’s +feelings of remorse; nor was Arthur likely to be restrained by a +fastidious delicacy from all allusion to the change which the birth of +an heir had made in his own position. His remarks on the subject were +not always in the best possible taste; he affected jokes about the Babes +in the Wood, referred to himself as the ‘wicked uncle,’ and ‘wondered +Sainty was willing to trust him in the house with the precious infant.’ +Such pleasantries, of a slightly sub-acid jocularity, went through and +through Sainty in a way that the speaker could neither have guessed nor +intended; he probably thought, on the contrary, that he was taking his +blighted prospects with an easy amiability which did him infinite +credit. He was not indeed without certain touches of kindliness towards +his nephew. ‘When he gets a big boy, you must let his poor old uncle +teach him to ride and shoot,’ he would say. ‘We must make a good +sportsman of him, and you know _you_ won’t do much in that line for him, +old man.’ Sainty wondered if he wanted the boy to be a sportsman. His +personal hatred of taking life extended itself to this nurseling of his +affections. Must those tiny fingers be taught to curl round a trigger, +that innocent heart learn to find its pleasure in slaughter and +destruction? Yet he desired all forms of perfection for his darling; he +hated to think of him at the same disadvantage among those with whom he +would have to live as he himself had always been. He would have him +strong and brave and daring, trained in all arts and exercises that +became a gentleman; for instance, there could be no doubt that a certain +proficiency in horsemanship was desirable for the ideal youth, but he +recalled with horror his own early efforts to attain it, and shuddered +to think how he should tremble, when, in course of time, the child came +to an age to face these dangers. + +He began to see how ill-fitted he was to be the trainer of a young man. +Hitherto he had imagined himself only as a nurse of callow infancy, +shielding the little one with his greater insight and sympathy from the +misunderstandings that had made his own childhood unhappy. Somehow he +had fancied the child would be like him, timid and shrinking, needing +protection; but now it struck him that there was no reason why it should +resemble him at all, and he recoiled with sudden terror from the thought +of what unlovely qualities the offspring of two such parents might have +inherited. How would he be able to bear seeing the treachery of the one, +or the hard egotism of the other, reproducing itself in the being he +loved best in the world? Had he the firmness needed for correcting such +tendencies? Could he ever steel himself to the necessity of punishment? + +On the other hand, it was hardly to be desired that the little boy +should grow up on his pattern. He was not so conspicuous a success in +his position that it was an object to educate a successor on the same +lines. He began to understand the kind of problems his own bringing up +had presented for solution to his mother and uncle; he remembered how +futile had been the efforts of these two strong natures, with all the +advantages of example, to instil into his feeble soul a more virile +attitude towards life, and the sum in proportion of what difficulties he +would have to encounter in a like endeavour was not a hard one to work +out. If Lady Charmington, absolutely sure of what she wanted, and with +her bull-dog tenacity of purpose, had failed so lamentably of her +object, what kind of a creature would he turn out, assailed by a hundred +doubts, fears, and indecisions, and desiring simultaneously quite +irreconcilable ideals? + +He recognised that the child had become the chief preoccupation of his +life, its health, its food, its education--for he already tormented +himself with questions that, by their very nature, could not have to be +faced for years to come; and the more he troubled himself about the +little thing, the more he loved it, the greater his love grew, the +greater grew the desire to do his duty by his charge, the greater the +anxiety as to what that duty might be. + +So far, however, his troubles were only those common to all parents and +guardians who took their responsibilities somewhat morbidly; his special +self-torture began where theirs left off. When all was said and done, +the thousand dangers that dog the steps of youth safely passed, the +pitfalls on either hand successfully avoided, the boy trained to all +perfection of manly virtue and delight--what then? To what purpose, and +for what end, should he have fashioned this splendid creature? To be the +means by which he was to rob his nearest kinsfolk of their birthright! +If his remorse was constantly awakened by Arthur’s presence, and the +things that he said, it yet addressed itself less to Arthur than to the +child. It was not so much the injury to his brother and his brother’s +children that was becoming an hourly torment to his conscience, as the +injury to this innocent accomplice in making him the instrument of +wrong. Was that, then, the best that he could do for the son of his +heart, the being who was daily becoming more and more the centre of his +existence, dearer than are the children of their loins to ordinary +fathers, to use him as the unconscious weapon of his own fraud? There +was no way out, no turning back; he could not now disavow him if he +would. The crime was committed, irremediable, to go on breeding +injustice, perpetuating wrong to the last chapters of the history of his +race. + +He saw in imagination the little boy passing from childhood to youth, +from youth to manhood, growing tall and strong and beautiful, in his +turn marrying, and begetting children to become links in the long chain +of falsehood and carry on the consequences of his lie. And he would have +to live and watch this happening, always alone, always in silence, with +no one to whom he could unburthen his heart. There would only be two who +shared his knowledge, and to neither of them could he say a word on the +subject, though hideously, eternally aware that they knew, and were +watching with himself. And then a new terror assailed him. When a secret +was already the property of three people, could he be certain that no +breath of it would ever reach the person principally concerned? He had +plenty of experience of how recklessly Cissy could talk on occasion, +what rash and terrible things the desire to wound could make her say, +and he trembled lest in some fit of sudden anger with her son, some +momentary loss of self-control, she might turn and crush him with the +story of his birth. The word once spoken could never be recalled; he saw +the poor boy coming, white and stern, to ask him if this thing were +true, and felt by anticipation the agony of his own inability to deny +it. A dozen times a day he lived through the misery of that confession, +and watched the love and respect die out of those dear eyes, as his +unwilling hand dealt the final blow. Perhaps it would be some fair +growth of young romance, the prospect of an innocent, happy marriage +with a good girl, that he would have to blast with that terrible avowal. +He heard himself condemning the boy to sterile loneliness or the devious +byways of illicit love, to make a tardy reparation, and restore the +stolen heritage to its rightful owners. + +These thoughts were with him day and night; they went to bed with him, +and got up with him; they followed him about the place; they sat with +him beside the sleeping baby, and looked at him out of its great solemn +eyes when it woke. Truly ‘the Lord his God was a jealous God,’ that +fastidiously high standard of conduct and personal honour, his one sin +against which was to be ‘visited upon the children, unto the third and +fourth generation.’ + +And then on a sudden the end came, and he learned the futility of his +crime and his remorse alike. The poor little life that had been to him a +source of such happiness and such self-torture came to an end as +independently of any act of his as it had come to its beginning. It may +have contained from the first the germs of some mortal disease, or +perhaps the practices of its former nurse had left behind more fatal +results than any one suspected. It is probable that too rapid teething +had something to do with it. A baby’s life is at best but such a newly +kindled flame, feeble and unsteady, that a puff of wind will make it +flicker and go out. The whole thing did not take a week. The child was +flushed, heavy, restless, as it had so often been before. ‘He is cutting +another big tooth,’ the nurse said. ‘It’s no wonder he’s a little +fractious, poor lamb! It’s the third in a fortnight.’ Lady Charmington +was appealed to, and repeated, for the twentieth time, her comfortable +assertions of how much more Sainty himself had suffered during the same +anxious period; by constantly reassuring her son with them, she had +finally almost persuaded herself that the baby was as strong as she +wished it. She declared it was ridiculous to send for the doctor. ‘Have +him, if you like,’ she said; ‘but I know just what he’ll say. Baby has +been exactly like this so often, and each time you always think it is +something dreadful. Nurse knows exactly what to do for him, don’t you, +nurse?’ + +On the third day Sainty grew restive, and sent for him all the same. The +doctor, if not as well satisfied as Lady Charmington, yet seemed to +think there was no particular cause for anxiety. He detected a little +sound in the bronchial pipes, and asked if the child could have got a +chill in any way. ‘It might all very well come from the teeth,’ he said. +‘The little fellow is feverish; you had better keep him in for a day or +two.’ + +He came once or twice more, a little uncertain, very non-committal; and +then, one day, there was a swift unexplained rise of temperature, a +convulsion or two, and, before even Sainty, with his genius for +prophesying disaster, had fully realised the danger, all was over in +this world as far as the baby was concerned. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVII + + +‘My little boy, my poor little boy! You were conceived in sin, and your +birth was a lie. Your father never owned you, your mother never loved +you. It was left to me, who should have hated you, to tend and cherish +you. It was little enough that I could do for _you_, but God only knows +what you have been to _me_. It was no fault of yours, my baby, but my +misdoing, that would have made your innocent existence an injury to +others. I might have known that you could do no harm, that you would go +away before your life could wrong them.’ + +Sainty was murmuring broken phrases, his face bowed upon the face of the +dead child. The tiny coffin, almost like a toy, was supported on two +chairs facing each other, and on a third chair beside it he had sat +almost continuously since the room had been put in order and the people +turned out of it. His mother had said it was bad for him, but, with that +single exception, there was luckily no one who cared enough to try and +take him away, and so he had remained, hour after hour, steeped in the +great quiet that surrounded that little figure. + +The pale diffused daylight came sifted through the lowered blinds, +giving an unreal look to common objects, turned suddenly useless, and +ranged against the walls. Sainty himself had helped to order the room, +and to deck it with flowers. He would allow no heavy fragrance of white +funereal blossoms, but all the greenhouses of Belchamber had been +ransacked for the unseasonable roses of winter, and to this day the +smell of roses brings back to him the little white waxen face, barred +with its black-fringed lids, at which he gazed so long in those sacred +hours of communing with the dead. + +It was his first experience of death. His father had died when he was a +mere baby, and both his grandfathers in his early childhood; since he +had been able to reflect or remember, he had never lost a friend. It +struck him as strange that he, who had tasted so many sorrows, should +have had no experience of this the supremest and commonest that man is +called upon to bear. It was different from any other trouble he had ever +known, deeper, more awful, more hopeless, yet somehow for that very +reason more bearable too. There was no element of meanness in it, +nothing petty or small. Such grief was large, calm, august, and above +all very still; in presence of this perfect peace he could not strive +nor cry. Shelley’s words about the Niobe came back to him as he sat +there, and he kept repeating them to himself, ‘Her tender and serene +despair.’ Despair, then, was ‘tender and serene’; how true it was! He +was not even very unhappy. The consciousness of the aching void in his +life would come later; but, for the moment, the bitterness of parting +was lost in the relief of seeing his darling free from the suffering it +had been torture to watch and know himself powerless to allay. He +understood why David had arisen and washed his face and taken food, when +they told him that his child was dead. + +The baby hands were folded, and held a bunch of violets; and as he bent +over them, laying his parched lips upon their marble coldness, the +comforting promise seemed to steal down to the sources of his being, +that at last, far off, after all the fever and the pain, this rest on +which he looked was waiting for him, as for every one. + + * * * * * + +A discreet tap on the door jarred the silence like a drumbeat, and +Sainty went across and opened it. A servant stood there wearing the +decorous expression of those officially connected with mourning which is +not a personal grief to them. + +‘Her ladyship has been inquiring for you, m’lord,’ the man said, ‘and +the post has come. I have put your lordship’s letters on your +writing-table.’ + +Sainty came out into the passage, and locked the door behind him, +slipping the key into his pocket. ‘You can tell her ladyship she will +find me in my study,’ he said; ‘or if she prefers, and will let me know, +I will come to her.’ + +He wondered what Cissy could have to say to him; he felt a sure +foreboding that it would be nothing he should care to hear. What more +was there for her to say to him henceforth, for ever? + +He went to his study in the old western pavilion and sat down at his +writing-table; it was heaped with a great pile of letters; the morning’s +mail had been added to those which, yesterday, he had had no heart to +open. They would have to be gone through some time, he supposed; it was +a task he could not well leave to his secretary. Why not attack them at +once while he was feeling calmed and strengthened? He drew a few towards +him and nerved himself for the ordeal of reading them. He thought he +knew so well what they would contain, yet in the very first that he took +up he found matter quite unexpected, which even at that moment arrested +his attention. + +‘DEAR OLD SAINTY,’ he read: ‘I don’t at all like the idea of intruding +my happiness on your grief; but I equally don’t want you to hear of it +from any one but me, which you would be sure to do if I didn’t write at +once. And first let me just stop and tell you how awfully sorry I am for +you and Cissy losing your little boy. I can’t bear to think of you with +your sensitive nature. The only thing to be said is that it was better +than if he had been older, when you would have missed him so much more; +you can’t personally have seen very much of him at that age. But to come +back to myself. I hope I am the first to tell you (as you are almost the +first that I have told) of my engagement to Gemma de Lissac. You who +know my Gemma, and the admirable woman to whom she owes so much, will +realise without any words of mine what a lucky fellow I am. I need not +say I am tremendously in love, and absurdly happy. Mr. de Lissac has +been most awfully good about it, and very generous. Of course, a +wretched pauper like me could never have married a girl who hadn’t got +something. For myself, as you know, my wants are few, but I couldn’t +have asked Gemma, who has always had every luxury since she was a baby, +to give up all she has been accustomed to, especially her thousand and +one good deeds. Mr. de Lissac wants me to chuck my P. S.-ship and go in +for parliament, and the duke has been very kind in promising his help. +Forgive such a long letter about myself when you are in trouble, but +happiness is always egotistical, and I can’t help hoping that mine won’t +be indifferent to you. As I have written you such a yarn, and have so +many letters to write, will you please tell Cissy, with my love, and ask +her to forgive my not writing to her separately. I haven’t written to +Aunt Sarah either, as I think Mrs. de Lissac is writing to her. Wish me +joy, old man. There is no one whose good wishes I shall value more. Your +affectionate cousin, CLAUDE MORLAND. + +‘_P.S._--I don’t offer to come to the funeral. I know you’ll feel just +as I should about it, and want to keep it all as quiet as possible.’ + +Sainty read the letter through twice. He had hardly finished his second +perusal of it, when the door opened, and Cissy stood before him. She was +dressed in hastily improvised mourning of incongruous showiness. The +black clothes enhanced her fairness, and accentuated the slim +girlishness of her figure, but her face had no youth in it, and her eyes +glittered with an unnatural brightness. + +‘You wanted to see me?’ Sainty asked. + +‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I have got something to say to you, and I may as well +say it first as last.’ Then, as he stood waiting in silence to hear her, +‘You and I have got to have an explanation,’ she added. + +‘Is it the moment, with the child lying dead in the house?’ Sainty +asked, with a gesture of protest. + +‘Yes,’ she said eagerly, ‘it is just that I wanted to speak about. As +long as he lived, I have stayed for my child’s sake.’ + +Sainty gave a convulsive laugh. ‘You have done a great deal for the +child’s sake!’ he said. + +‘Now,’ she went on, ‘I have no reason for remaining. I have come to tell +you that after the funeral I am going away. I can’t keep it up any +longer. We hate each other, you know we do. Life together has become +intolerable.’ + +‘Life together!’ Sainty repeated. ‘Do you call it life together? To me +it seems that we could hardly be more apart. In Kamchatka I should not +be further from you.’ And indeed she seemed so far away, that he felt as +if his voice could hardly reach her; he wondered how she could ever have +affected him for pain or pleasure. He looked at her across a chasm in +which lay the dead child. + +‘And where do you propose to go?’ he asked indifferently. + +‘I shall go to the only man I have ever really loved,’ Cissy said +dramatically. + +‘I thought we were coming to that.’ It all seemed no business of his, +not to affect him in any way; he even felt a little sorry for her under +the blow he was going to deal her. He found himself casting about in his +mind for the best way of telling her. How strange that that letter +should just have come (or was it, perhaps, not wholly a coincidence?), +that he should have selected that hour for opening it, that it should +have been the first one that he had read! He still held it in his hand, +and without saying anything he moved it so that the writing might +attract her attention. + +‘What have you got there?’ she cried, turning suddenly very white. ‘Let +me see it. Is it from Claude?’ She sprang upon it, and snatched it from +him before he could give it to her, and he heard the two sheets rattle +against each other with the shaking of her hands. + +‘There is a message for you in it,’ he said, as he turned away. He did +not want to pry into her misery. He felt no exultation, only a sick +contemptuous pity, pity in which there was no love. + +Presently, hearing her give a sort of hoarse cry, he looked round. She +had sunk into a chair, with one arm laid along the table, her other +hand, clenched, rested on her knee. The letter had fallen on the floor. +She sat looking straight in front of her, and her mouth moved as if she +were speaking, but no sound came. She had evidently forgotten his +presence altogether. She was frightening like this, her lips drawn back +a little from her teeth, her face set in a grimace that made her almost +monkey-like, ugly as strong emotion always is. After a time she began to +beat on the edge of the table with her hand. ‘Blackguard! Blackguard!’ +she kept repeating under her breath. + +Sainty was longing for her to go and leave him alone with his grief. The +presence of this other misery which, by the nature of the case, he could +do nothing to soothe only aggravated his own; it seemed to bring him +down to earth, to drag him back to the sordid and base, from the regions +to which he had risen in the chamber of death. What had he to do with +this woman’s fierce resentment, balked of her earthly passion, he who +had been so near the borders of eternal peace? + +He went over to her and spoke very gently. ‘I think we should be better +apart,’ he said, ‘each with his own sorrow. We can do nothing to help +each other.’ + +She seemed hardly to understand what he said, but she nodded dully and +rose, and he held the door open for her to pass. + +It was nothing to him, he reflected, whether she went or stayed, whether +she played out the dreary farce of their married life to the end, or +broke away to follow her own devices. The shame, which had seemed so +unendurable that he had bartered his personal honour to avoid it, +appeared to him now as a thing of no importance. He wondered how he had +ever cared about it. Let her go, in heaven’s name, if she had a mind to! +He almost wished that she would, but he knew in his heart that Claude’s +letter had done its work; there would be no more talk of her going. He +stooped and picked up the crumpled papers, smoothing them out and +looking at the beautiful neat little handwriting, not an erasure, not a +correction. Whatever the writer might say of haste and want of time and +pressure of correspondence, that letter had not been written in a hurry. + +‘It’s so complete,’ he said to himself; ‘the last touch. Nothing was +wanting but this.’ He found himself almost admiring the absolute quality +of his cousin’s villainy, so rounded and finished, with no loose ends. + +In a few seconds his mind flew back over all the stages of his +connection with Claude, the first coming to Belchamber of the large pale +boy, with his dreamy eyes and curious fascination, the old Eton days, +his baleful influence on Arthur, the story of his connection with Aimée +Winston, the double treachery of his behaviour about Cynthia.... But +when he came to the part Morland had played in his own married life, his +imagination shuddered and winced, he could not, dare not, think of it. +‘And now, to crown all, this----’ And his hand struck the pages with +their rippling conventional expressions of happiness and affection, +their bland pretence of sympathy offered and demanded. For a moment the +room swam round him, and he had to clutch the table for support. Could +he let this thing be? Ought he to allow this girl to be sacrificed, and +not make an effort to save her? But almost simultaneously he recognised +the futility of any such attempt. He thought of Gemma, conceited, +headstrong, self-confident, and at the same time superlatively +sentimental, and imagined the reception he should meet with if he were +to tell her the man into whose hands she had just surrendered her +existence, was--what? The lover of his wife, the father of his child. +How could he tell this thing, and that he had known it and accepted it +in silence? No wonder Claude had dared to write as he did; he knew well +enough that from Sainty at least he was safe from all attack. + +Should he have to answer, to thank, to congratulate, to ‘hope they +would be happy,’ to send gifts? At least he would not have to go to the +wedding; his mourning would save him from that--his mourning for the +child of the bridegroom! He felt a wild longing to get back to that +upper chamber where all these mad thoughts were stilled. What had he to +do? The letters. Why should these people steal the little time he had +left to be with his lost darling? With a sigh of ineffable weariness he +sat down once more, and hastily tore open two or three. The same little +phrases recurred in all. ‘Sincere condolences,’ ‘heartfelt sympathy,’ +‘God’s will,’ ‘Consolation where alone it may be found.’ He remembered +employing some of them himself on like occasions. Why make these +attempts to plumb the unfathomable? As well smear ointment on a door +behind which a man lay wounded. + +As he turned over the heaps of still unbroken covers in search of a +handwriting that promised at least the relief of tears, his eye was +caught by one unfamiliar, yet not unknown. He took the letter from the +rest and held it poised upon his palm, trying to fix the memory it +recalled. The anonymous denunciations of his wife? Ah! no, that was +impossible. Yet as he broke the seal he realised why his only other +sight of this writing was associated with that time. It was from his +sister-in-law. + +‘DEAR LORD BELCHAMBER,--I know you have never liked me, and did not +approve of your brother marrying me; but though it is little kindness or +notice I’ve ever received from you or yours, I am a mother myself, and I +know what it would be to me to lose either of my little darlings; and so +I feel I must write a few lines of condolence with you and Lady +Belchamber in your great sorrow, for I really do sympathise with you in +the death of your dear little boy. I know you think me a common, +grasping woman, but I don’t give a thought to any difference it may make +to us, and, as Arthur says, what is to prevent your having others? I +have a _heart_ (indeed it was me made Arthur write and offer to come to +Belchamber without me, and he’ll come to the funeral too). I’m not +really a bad sort, and can feel for your loss. With sincere condolences +to you and Lady Belchamber, I should like to sign, Your affectionate +sister-in-law, + + CYNTHIA CHAMBERS. + +‘_P.S._--I have ventured to order a wreath sent, which please accept.’ + + THE END + + Printed by T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to His Majesty + at the Edinburgh University Press + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77826 *** diff --git a/77826-h/77826-h.htm b/77826-h/77826-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..40e0969 --- /dev/null +++ b/77826-h/77826-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,12893 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html lang="en"> + <head> +<link rel="icon" href="images/cover.jpg" type="image/x-cover"> + +<meta charset="utf-8"> +<title> + The Project Gutenberg eBook of Belchamber, by Howard Overing Sturgis. +</title> +<style> + +a:link {background-color:#ffffff;color:blue;text-decoration:none;} + + link {background-color:#ffffff;color:blue;text-decoration:none;} + +a:visited {background-color:#ffffff;color:purple;text-decoration:none;} + +a:hover {background-color:#ffffff;color:#FF0000;text-decoration:underline;} + +body{margin-left:4%;margin-right:6%;background:#ffffff;color:black;font-family:"Times New Roman", serif;font-size:medium;} + +.c {text-align:center;text-indent:0%;} + +.astt {text-align:center;text-indent:0%;font-weight:bold; +letter-spacing:1em;} + +.fint {text-align:center;text-indent:0%; +margin-top:2em;} + + h1 {margin-top:5%;text-align:center;clear:both; +font-weight:normal;} + + h2 {margin-top:4%;margin-bottom:2%;text-align:center;clear:both; + font-size:100%;font-weight:normal;} + + hr {width:90%;margin:2em auto 2em auto;clear:both;color:black;} + + hr.full {width: 60%;margin:2% auto 2% auto;border-top:1px solid black; +padding:.1em;border-bottom:1px solid black;border-left:none;border-right:none;} + + img {border:none;} + +.lftspc {margin-left:.25em;} + +.nind {text-indent:0%;} + + p {margin-top:.2em;text-align:justify;margin-bottom:.2em;text-indent:4%;} + +.pagenum {font-style:normal;position:absolute; +left:95%;font-size:55%;text-align:right;color:gray; +background-color:#ffffff;font-variant:normal; +font-style:normal;font-weight:normal; +text-decoration:none;text-indent:0em;} + +.r {text-align:right;margin-right: 5%;} + +small {font-size: 70%;} + +.smcap {font-variant:small-caps;font-size:100%;} + +table {margin-top:2%;margin-bottom:2%;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;border:none;} + +div.poetry {text-align:center;} +div.poem {font-size:90%;margin:auto auto;text-indent:0%; +display: inline-block; text-align: left;} +.poem .stanza {margin-top: 1em;margin-bottom:1em;} +.poem span.i0 {display: block; margin-left: 0em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} +.poem span.i1 {display: block; margin-left: .45em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} +.poem span.i2 {display: block; margin-left: 1em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + +.toc {margin:1em auto;max-width:25em; +border:2px solid black;text-indent:0%;text-align:center;} +</style> + </head> +<body> +<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77826 ***</div> +<hr class="full"> + +<div class="c"> +<img src="images/cover.jpg" width="351" height="550" alt=""> +</div> + +<p class="toc"> + +<a href="#CHAPTER_I">CHAPTER I</a>, +<a href="#CHAPTER_II"> II</a>, +<a href="#CHAPTER_III"> III</a>, +<a href="#CHAPTER_IV"> IV</a>, +<a href="#CHAPTER_V"> V</a>, +<a href="#CHAPTER_VI"> VI</a>, +<a href="#CHAPTER_VII"> VII</a>, +<a href="#CHAPTER_VIII"> VIII</a>, +<a href="#CHAPTER_IX"> IX</a>, +<a href="#CHAPTER_X"> X</a>, +<a href="#CHAPTER_XI"> XI</a>, +<a href="#CHAPTER_XII"> XII</a>, +<a href="#CHAPTER_XIII"> XIII</a>, +<a href="#CHAPTER_XIV"> XIV</a>, +<a href="#CHAPTER_XV"> XV</a>, +<a href="#CHAPTER_XVI"> XVI</a>, +<a href="#CHAPTER_XVII"> XVII</a>, +<a href="#CHAPTER_XVIII"> XVIII</a>, +<a href="#CHAPTER_XIX"> XIX</a>, +<a href="#CHAPTER_XX"> XX</a>, +<a href="#CHAPTER_XXI"> XXI</a>, +<a href="#CHAPTER_XXII"> XXII</a>, +<a href="#CHAPTER_XXIII"> XXIII</a>, +<a href="#CHAPTER_XXIV"> XXIV</a>, +<a href="#CHAPTER_XXV"> XXV</a>, +<a href="#CHAPTER_XXVI"> XXVI</a>, +<a href="#CHAPTER_XXVII"> XXVII.</a> +</p> + +<h1> +BELCHAMBER</h1> + +<p class="c">BY<br> +HOWARD OVERING STURGIS<br> +<br><small> +AUTHOR OF<br> +‘TIM,’ ‘ALL THAT WAS POSSIBLE’</small><br> +<br> +<br> +Westminster<br> +ARCHIBALD CONSTABLE<br> +AND COMPANY, LTD.<br> +1904<br> +<br><br><br> +Edinburgh: T. and A. <span class="smcap">Constable</span>, Printers to His Majesty +<br><br><br> + +TO<br><br> +WILLIAM HAYNES SMITH<br> +</p> + +<h2><a id="CHAPTER_I">CHAPTER I</a></h2> + +<p class="nind"><span class="smcap">Belchamber</span> is one of the most beautiful places in England. The name, if +not the house, dates from days when Norman-French was the polite +language of our kings; the reigning monarch, some early Henry or Edward, +alighting for the night, as was the habit of reigning monarchs, at the +house of his vassal, and having been especially pleased with something +about the apartment prepared for his use, is said to have remarked in +high good humour, ‘<i>Pardie! tu as là une belle chambre</i>.’ Something of +old-world scandal hung about the legend (which in its authorised form is +just a little bare and dull for the nucleus round which gathered the +fortunes of a noble family), tales of frail beauty not insensible to a +royal lover, of feudal complaisance, not to be more overtly acknowledged +than by this gracious allusion to the <i>belle chambre</i>, from which the +domain was to take its name.</p> + +<p>The house, as the humblest tourist may see for himself on certain days +of the week, is an exquisite Jacobean structure borrowing largely from +the Renaissance palaces of Italy, yet with a certain solid British +homeliness about it, that specially fits it for its surroundings, the +green undulations of an English park. The view from the front is +sufficiently extended, and behind it, the various Dutch and Italian +gardens are interspersed with water-works and statues like a miniature +Versailles. Great oaks and ashes and Spanish chestnuts stand in the +park, and four large avenues of elms draw their straight lines across it +to the four points of the compass. The little river, which in the woods +and meadows is a natural shallow trout-stream with loosestrife and +ragged robin fringing <span class="pagenum"><a id="page_1">{1}</a><br><a id="page_2">{2}</a></span>its banks, is pressed in the gardens into many +curious uses—fountains and cascades, and oblong rectangular fish-ponds, +where old carp and goldfish circle in and out among the stalks of +foreign water-lilies sunk in hampers. The huge lawn behind the house is +shaded by cedars of Lebanon, that are such a characteristic feature of +Restoration places, and there is one that disputes with the famous tree +at Addington, and I dare say with half a dozen others, the doubtful +glory of being the oldest cedar in England.</p> + +<p>Of the thousands of acres of which the property consists, the farms and +manorial rights, the livings in the gift of the owner, it is not +necessary that I should give a catalogue; it is not the business of the +novelist to value for probate, but if possible to convey a vague but +imposing impression of wealth and position. Suffice it that the Lord of +Belchamber is ground-landlord of the greater part of three large +parishes, and that in the county of his residence alone no less than +three beneficed clergymen sit in their comfortable rectories by the +grace of a sickly young man of no very definite religious beliefs, +without counting his lordship’s domestic chaplain, who ministers to the +spiritual needs of a small army of in-and out-door servants and their +families in the little tame church that is, so to speak, tethered on the +lawn.</p> + +<p>Belchamber has suffered but little at the hands of restorers; the family +have always taken a sort of lazy pride in the beautiful house, which +luckily seldom rose to the point of desiring to improve it. The third +marquis, to be sure, had some formidable projects for remodelling the +building, of which the plans remain in a great Italian cabinet in the +hall; but his two favourite pursuits combined to save his home, for he +lost so much money at cards that even he drew back before the large +expense involved, and while he still hesitated, a bad fall out hunting +cut short his building projects with his life. That was more than a +hundred years ago, when gambling and unpaid debts were indispensable +parts of the ideal of a gentleman.</p> + +<p>If Charles James, third Marquis and eighth Earl of Belchamber, lost +large sums at the club gaming-tables when he<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_3">{3}</a></span> came up to the House of +Lords, and died as he had lived, in the hunting-field, his successor, +George Frederick Augustus, the fourth marquis, in no way fell short of +his respected parent’s example. He played as high, drank as deep, and +rode as hard as his father, while he imported into his excesses just +that flavour of vulgarity which the bucks of the Regency copied so +successfully from their master and pattern. He kept two packs of hounds, +and several establishments in addition to his acknowledged and +legitimate residence; and if he did not break his own neck, he at least +broke his wife’s heart, not to mention such unconsidered trifles as his +word, and a large quantity of beautiful old china, when in liquor. +Belchamber saw him but little; he preferred London and Brighton, and one +of his smaller places which was in a better hunting-country; and here +once more the very vices of its owners seemed to conduce to the +preservation of the beautiful house and its treasures. The books, the +celebrated Vandykes, and the painted ceilings suffered somewhat from +want of fires; but neglect has never been so fatal to works of art as +attention, and if the pictures cracked and faded a little, at least they +were not burnt, or repainted, or buried under a deposit of +coachbuilder’s varnish.</p> + +<p>To the poor lady, who was occasionally brought from the seclusion of her +lord’s hunting-quarters to be exhibited at a drawing-room in the family +emeralds and diamonds, a son and heir was born, who received in common +with so many of the children of that date the names of Arthur Wellesley. +This was the fifth marquis and tenth earl, and the grandfather of the +hero of this book. Marquis Arthur differed from his father and +grandfather only in his mode of getting rid of money. If he played less, +he made up for it by losing large sums on the turf, and by a generally +luxurious and extravagant style of living. He was a notorious beauty, +and had a straight nose, and an immense bushy pair of whiskers, which +were fatal to the peace of mind of great numbers of the fair sex; he was +inordinately vain, and a woman had only to tell him she was in love with +him, and that she had never seen a man with such small feet, to get +anything she wanted out of him. He frittered away more money over +bouquets and scent and ugly jewellery than his father and grandfather +had lost in their longest nights at Crockford’s. His triumphs over +female virtue were so numerous and notorious that many thought he would +never give a hostage to fortune in the shape of a wife of his own. But +when the nets of the fowler had been spread for many years in the sight +of this volatile bird of gay plumage, he surprised every one by bringing +home a bride from across the Channel.</p> + +<p>If report said true, this beautiful young woman revenged the wrongs of +her sex, and of many husbands, most thoroughly on her whiskered lord, +who was not her master. At first it was impossible to Lord Charmington +(as he then was) to believe that any woman he honoured with his +affection could fail to be madly in love with him; then as the +conviction grew upon him (and ideas came to him slowly), there were +furious scenes of recrimination, anger, and jealousy on his side, and +cold contempt and indifference on hers. More than once they were within +a short distance of the divorce court; but his vanity never could be +reconciled to the thought of appearing <i>coram populo</i> in the character +which to him seemed always the most ludicrous and humiliating possible. +His wife soon discovered this weakness, and traded on it freely. If she +was not a very clever woman, he was a more than ordinarily stupid man, +so that he learned to dread her tongue almost as much as the ridicule +that must attach to him in case of a scandal. He also began to take a +certain pride in her position both in London and Paris. She was +certainly for many years one of the most conspicuous figures in the +society of both capitals; and if the more particular and old-fashioned +ladies held up their hands in horror at the stories told of her, she had +a large share in introducing a different standard of morals for the +younger set, in which she was always a leader. When no longer in her +first youth, she was one of the galaxy of beautiful women who adorned +the Second Empire, and though at the severer Court of St. James she was +less smiled<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_4">{4}</a></span> upon, there were not wanting circles in the land of her +adoption hardly less august, and infinitely more congenial, where she +was not only received, but highly popular.</p> + +<p>Through long years which converted her contemporaries into invalids or +grandmothers, in which her husband grew fat and coarse, and took to +drink and low company, in which children were born to her, two of whom +died in infancy, in which her eldest son and one daughter grew up and +married, in which her grandsons were born, and her son died, she +remained always ‘the beautiful Lady Belchamber,’ always in the world, +and of the world, immutably ‘gay,’ and fast, and frivolous, following +the same dreary round of fashionable existence year in and year out, +bedizened in jewels not always virtuously come by, dressed and +head-dressed in the latest mode, and absorbed in the newest craze or +pastime with women who might have been her daughters, and men who were +sometimes the sons of her early lovers. As her natural charms faded, +they were of course replaced by art; the raven locks that had been +admired by Louis Philippe at first only took on an inkier black, then +grew a little brown, and passed through dull burnished copper to a rich +golden red, while the cream-white skin grew more and more rosy in +sympathy. Gradually, as fashion artfully disarranged the hair of its +votaries, and the wig-makers’ art developed and improved, so much of her +ladyship’s elaborate coiffure came to be false, that it could be almost +any colour she chose without inconvenience, and was even known to vary +with her gowns.</p> + +<p>As for her husband, the flattery of women being as the breath of his +nostrils, it was only natural that the older and less attractive he +became, the lower he went in the social scale in search of it. The poor +little feet that had stepped so nimbly on the hearts of many frail ones, +began to spread in the vain attempt to support the Silenus-like body, +and, cramped in tight boots, carried their tottering owner into very +queer byways indeed. The beautiful nose swelled and grew purple, the +Hyperean curls, much thinned at the temples, were still carefully oiled +and arranged, and with the famous<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_5">{5}</a></span> whiskers became more hyacinthine in +hue with each advancing year. When I was a young man, this poor, +foolish, wicked old marquis was still strutting about Pall Mall, and +ogling the women, with a few other bucks of his own generation, padded, +laced, and dyed. I dare say there are bad old men still, but they are +bald, and have grey beards, and are somehow not so ridiculous as Lord +Belchamber and his peers were. He and his wife met but seldom, and +though he sometimes grew quite eloquent over the way she treated him, he +was not really unhappy; after all, he was leading just the same life he +always had, and if his companions were coarser and commoner, his taste +had coarsened too, and the dull, bloodshot eyes had lost their keenness +of vision and grown less critical. He outlived his son, and did not die +till after the Franco-Prussian war. Almost the only remark of a purely +sentimental nature he was ever known to make was on the subject of the +siege of Paris and the fall of the Empire. ‘Poor old Paris!’ he said. +‘I’ve had many a good time in Paris, though I did meet my wife there, +damn her! but I shouldn’t care to go there again, hanged if I should, +with everything so changed, and all that——’</p> + +<p>We shall have nothing more to do with him in this work, except to bury +him, which, by and by, we will do with befitting pomp. Of direct +influence he never had the smallest on any living creature, but who +shall say what mysterious legacy of evil tendencies he may have +bequeathed to his descendants? The question of heredity is very +fashionable just now, but remains not a little obscure; and perhaps it +is safer in the interests of morality that we should not know too +exactly how little responsibility we have for our bad actions, and how +much we can shuffle off on to our grandfathers and grandmothers. Whether +it was the result of heredity or education, or a mixture of the two, the +children of such a couple did not start in life with the best chance of +being quiet, reputable people, and the two who survived the disorders of +infancy were left to bring themselves up very much as fortune willed. +Lady Eva was a very pretty<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_6">{6}</a></span> girl who seldom saw her mother, left +entirely to French maids and governesses, and mainly educated on the +novels of that country, which she abstracted from her mother’s boudoir +and read on the sly, generally with the connivance of her instructress, +on condition that she passed them on to her. Lady Belchamber used +sometimes to see this official, when she thought of it, for five minutes +while her hair was being done.</p> + +<p>‘Lady Eva se comporte bien?’</p> + +<p>‘Parfaitement, ma’m la marquise.’</p> + +<p>‘Qu’est-ce qu’elle apprend? voyons.’</p> + +<p>‘Lady Eva étudie, en ce moment, comme géographie, l’Asie orientale, la +Chine, le Japon; comme histoire, le dix-septième siècle, les guerres de +Louis XIV., la guerre civile en Angleterre, la restauration de Charles +II.; comme langues, Italien, <i>I Promessi Sposi</i>, Allemand, la <i>Maria +Stuart</i> de Schiller, Français, <i>Le Cid</i> de Corneille; comme +mathématique——’</p> + +<p>‘Assez, assez! ne faites pas trop étudier cette p’tite, vous en ferez un +bas bleu. Elle va bien?’</p> + +<p>‘Parfaitement, milady. Désirez-vous voir Lady Eva?’</p> + +<p>‘Pas ce soir; je n’ai pas le temps.’</p> + +<p>Once, some one asked the little girl to give her mother a message. ‘I +will write to her,’ the child said, ‘it will be quicker.’ They were +living in the same house.</p> + +<p>When in due course she was presented and made her appearance in the +world, she was very much admired. At nineteen she was engaged to two men +simultaneously, and got out of the difficulty by running away with a +third, a rather shady hanger-on of her father, called Captain Morland, +who not long afterwards had to disappear from society, owing to an +unfortunate difficulty that he experienced in confining himself to the +strict laws of the game, at cards. Thenceforth they lived mostly abroad, +and little was heard of them. Lady Belchamber, who was not an unkind +woman, used to write to her daughter sometimes, and send her old dresses +and hats; and the old lord, when on the continent, would have the<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_7">{7}</a></span> +couple to live with him, and give them money. He had a sneaking kindness +for Morland, which he never quite got over, finding him a congenial +companion; and his son-in-law was very patient in listening to his +tender confidences. Lord Charmington, who was two years older than his +sister, had the better chance that comes to boys of being sent away to +school. Unfortunately for him, the one thing he did not inherit from his +parents was the naturally strong constitution that was common to them +both. Lady Belchamber, though herself a marvel of strength and vitality, +came of an extremely old family, of which the blood, enfeebled by much +marrying of cousins, had had time to run very thin indeed; and though +the Chambers stock was originally strong and healthy, the excesses of +the last three bearers of the title had not tended to the transmission +of a fine physique to their descendants.</p> + +<p>From his childhood poor Charmington was a rickety, feeble lad, and more +than once came within a tittle of sharing the fate of his younger +brothers, instead of surviving to be the father of our hero, in which +case this book would never have been written. If he could have stayed +out his time at Eton, it might have done much for him, for he was not +without some naturally kindly qualities, though he was as stupid as an +owl, and never could learn to spell the simplest words. In those days +there existed no ruthless law of superannuation, and he might have +remained contentedly in fourth form till he was nineteen, had it not +been for his unfortunate health: he was always ill, and always having to +be taken away and sent to the seaside, or abroad, in the care of any one +who could be got to go and look after him. This employment fell as often +as not to his future brother-in-law, Captain Morland, than whom a worse +companion for a growing lad could hardly be found, and where he could +be, Morland found him, and introduced him to his charge. By the time he +was twenty, the lad was an accomplished little rip, gambler, and +spendthrift, and had materially impaired his already feeble +constitution. He was bought a commission in the<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_8">{8}</a></span> household cavalry, but +at the end of a few years, having come to the end of everything—health, +money, credit, and the limits of his father’s patience—he was +thenceforward lost to the service of his country.</p> + +<p>After a severe hæmorrhage of the lungs, he was ordered to winter abroad, +and by way of retrenching and building up his strength, he selected Nice +as a quiet inexpensive winter resort, with the chance of a little +congenial amusement, in the nearness of the tables at Monte Carlo. Here +he found his sister and her husband (whose little trouble at the club +had befallen the year before) hanging on to the fringe of society. But +here, too, he encountered that veteran statesman, the Earl of Firth, who +with his wife and two daughters was recruiting his strength after his +retirement from public life at a villa in the neighbourhood. The +Morlands were established at Monaco, where the Firth party never set +foot, so Charmington had no difficulty in keeping his disreputable +brother-in-law out of sight of his new acquaintances. He began to +frequent the villa of the old Scottish peer with quite surprising +assiduity. Just what there was in either Lady Sarah Pagley or her +surroundings to attract a man like Charmington will always remain a +mystery. Perhaps the jaded, invalid young man found something of the +home atmosphere he had never known among these prosy folk; perhaps the +blameless dulness of their lives was rather restful to him; or it may be +that he took refuge with them from Morland’s incessant appeals for the +money of which he himself was so sorely in need. It has been suggested +that he paid court to Lady Sarah from mercenary motives, but to a man of +his tastes and traditions her modest £15,000 would have seemed a very +trifling price to receive for the surrender of his liberty; and if a +rich marriage had been his object, there were wealthier maidens +scattered along the Mediterranean shore, who would not have despised the +suit of a marquis’s only son. He himself explained his choice to a +wondering friend by saying that she was the woman most unlike his mother +that he had ever met.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_9">{9}</a></span></p> + +<p>With mere carnal charms the Ladies Pagley were somewhat scantily +equipped. They were both fairly well-grown young women, healthy and +vigorous; Lady Sarah, as she was the elder, was also slightly the taller +of the two. Both wore their smooth brown hair divided in the centre and +brushed plainly down behind their ears, a fashion from which Sarah has +never departed to this day. Both were badly dressed, and either, in +whatever part of the world she was met, would unhesitatingly be +pronounced to hail from the British Isles, by people who had never seen +an Englishwoman before. Sarah was religious, Susan political, each +following the bent of one parent, for Lord Firth had been a member of +several Cabinets, and divided his time between nursing his gout and +studying blue-books, whereas Lady Firth dosed her body with quack +medicines and her soul with evangelical theology. But the old lord had +the ingratitude to prefer the daughter who reflected her mother’s +tastes. ‘They are both dour women to tackle, my daughters,’ he would +say; ‘but Sally’s not unkindly in matters where religion is not in +question, whereas Susie has no bowels, none at all.’ Lady Susan was a +great talker, and loved argument for its own sake; but Lady Sarah was +reserved, silent, and really very shy for all the grimness of her +aspect. If it did not seem profane to think of beauty in connection with +either of them, who considered it so little, I should say that Susan was +the prettier of the two, having a better complexion than her sister, and +hair of a brighter, redder shade of brown.</p> + +<p>There never were two girls more predestined by nature for old maids, or +better fitted to meet the cold world single-handed; and yet they both +married, and married what is called ‘well,’ while many of their fairer +and more eager sisters were left ungathered on the stem. Susan was led +to the altar by a West Country baronet and M.P., Sir Charles Trafford, +while Sarah, to every one’s surprise, became in due time Lady +Charmington. If it will remain a puzzle what drew her husband to her, it +is still more insoluble what attraction she found in him. Old Lady +Firth, for all her piety and her<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_10">{10}</a></span> sermons, was not above a little +worldly gratification that her plain elder daughter at seven-and-twenty +should marry the heir to a marquisate and a historic house; but I +honestly think Lady Sarah was little swayed by these considerations. She +may have felt a thrill at the thought of the power her position would +one day put into her hands, but for its own sake she valued that +position very lightly. Perhaps poor Char’s weakness appealed to her +strength, and his wretched state of health stirred that pity that was so +carefully concealed in her proud heart. Perhaps her missionary zeal +awoke at the thought of plucking from the fire a brand that was already +little more than an ember. No doubt both these feelings worked for him, +but I am inclined to think that his most potent advocate was the fact +that he was the first man who had ever made love to her. No woman hears +those magic accents for the first time unmoved, and if she has reached +Lady Sarah’s age without the faintest breath from the wing of Romance, +the effect of them is not thereby lessened. Be that as it may, this sick +dissipated boy, who was three years her junior, and whose past life had +been made up of everything of which she most disapproved, succeeded +where a better man might have been very likely to fail, and they were +married with great splendour during the ensuing season in London, the +occasion being one of the few on which her husband’s parents were ever +seen together in public. Lord Firth and his son, Lord Corstorphine, +looked very sulky at the wedding, but Lady Firth was all tears and +benedictions, and old Belchamber, after much champagne at the breakfast, +became quite maudlin over the consideration of his son’s respectable +connections. ‘It’ll be the making of Char,’ he hiccoughed into the ear +of the sympathetic Lady Firth. ‘Ah, if I’d had such a chance, now! if +I’d married a different kind of woman, she might have done anything with +me——’ The lady with whom he had just been celebrating his silver +wedding was radiant in sky-blue silk and white lace flounces and a Paris +bonnet all Marabout feathers and humming-birds. ‘I don’t envy Char,’ she +wrote to her daughter, who did not<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_11">{11}</a></span> come over for the wedding. ‘<i>Dieu!</i> +what people those Firths! <i>Heureusement</i>, they won’t want to see much of +<i>me</i>.’</p> + +<p>Very likely Lord Belchamber was right, and Sarah might have made +something out of the unlikely material she had taken-in hand. Her +influence over Charmington was enormous, and he both loved and feared +her. She nursed him, ruled him, and generally watched over him, +protecting him alike from the scorn of her kinsfolk and the bad +influence of his own; she rigorously kept both wine and money from him, +doling them out in infinitesimal doses. If she allowed no questioning of +her authority, she accomplished the miracle of awakening some +glimmerings of self-respect in him, and she bolstered up his shattered +constitution so that he lived four years with her, during which she bore +him two sons; but his lungs were too seriously affected for the +imperfect science of the sixties to heal, and in spite of all her care +he did not live to be thirty, dying, as has already been said, while +that elderly Adonis, his father, was still figuratively wearing the +family coronet.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_12">{12}</a></span></p> + +<h2><a id="CHAPTER_II">CHAPTER II</a></h2> + +<p class="nind"><span class="smcap">The</span> world is like a huge theatrical company in which half the actors and +actresses have been cast for the wrong parts. There are heavy fathers +who ought to be playing the lover, and young men on whose downy chins +one seems to see the spectre of the grey beard that would be suitable to +their natures. Perhaps the hardest case is theirs who by their sex are +called upon to ‘have a swaggering and martial outside,’ ‘a gallant +curtle-axe upon their thigh,’ and yet, like Rosalind in her boy’s dress, +start and turn faint at the sight of blood. The right to be a coward is +one of the dearest prerogatives of woman. No man may be one with +impunity, and it is precisely the women who are the first to despise him +if he be. Those who are born with the gift of personal courage (and they +are happily the greater number) have no adequate idea of their blessing. +To be in harmony with one’s environment, to like the things one ought to +like—that surely is the supreme good. If that be so, then few people +have come into the arena of life less suitably equipped for the part +they had to play than the subject of this history.</p> + +<p>Charles Edwin William Augustus Chambers, Marquis and Earl of Belchamber, +Viscount Charmington, and Baron St. Edmunds and Chambers, for all his +imposing list of names and titles started in life without that crowning +gift—wanting which all effort is paralysed—a good conceit of himself. +And in fact, except for the gewgaw of his rank, which sat on him as +uneasily as a suit of his ancestral armour, he had not much that would +win him consideration from the people among whom his lot was cast. From +his father he inherited his feeble constitution, his irresolution and +want of moral courage,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_13">{13}</a></span> from his mother her sallow complexion and lack +of charm, her reserve and shyness, and the rigid conscience which a long +line of Covenanting ancestors had passed down to her, and which in him, +who had none of their counterbalancing force of character, tended always +to become morbid. In his babyhood he had been called Lord St. Edmunds, +as was the custom in the family for the eldest son’s eldest son; his +father in half derisive affection had abbreviated the title into +‘Sainty,’ and Sainty he always continued to be to all who were intimate +enough and to many who were not. He was only three when his father died, +and his baby brother, Arthur, was not yet two. Even in those early days +the contrast was strongly marked between the brothers. Sainty was a pale +nervous child who cried if spoken to suddenly, while Arthur was as fine +a pink and white fat baby as you could see in a picture-book, who crowed +and gurgled and clapped his hands and liked his bath and took kindly to +his food, so that the nurses adored him. When he had a stomach-ache or +was thwarted in his wishes he roared lustily for a minute or two and +then returned to his usual placidity, whereas poor Sainty if anything +‘put him out,’ as his nurse would say, whined and fretted, and kept up a +little sad bleating cry for hours.</p> + +<p>He could not remember his father, but with the help of the large +coloured portrait in uniform that stood on a gilt easel in the corner of +his mother’s room he had built up for himself a shadowy heroic figure, +strangely unlike poor Charmington, which in his imagination did duty for +this departed parent. He never spoke of him to any one but Arthur, but +to him he talked with such conviction of ‘Papa,’ that the child, not +very attentive and perhaps not greatly interested, gathered an +impression that the elder boy was drawing on his memory for his facts, +and indeed he almost thought so himself, until one day Lady Charmington, +hearing some such talk between the two, sharply rebuked poor Sainty for +telling falsehoods to his little brother. His earliest impression of his +mother was in her black dress with the gleaming white on head and throat +and wrists, a dress that lent a dignity to Lady Charmingto<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_14">{14}</a></span>n’s somewhat +commonplace figure. When she left off her cap, it was of the nature of a +blow to him. Though he could not have described his sensations, she +seemed somehow discrowned with her sleek, bare head.</p> + +<p>Grandpapa’s funeral was a different matter from these early fleeting +impressions. That he remembered clearly, for he was seven when it +happened, and had a little black suit of knickerbockers and black +stockings and gloves, and led Arthur by the hand similarly attired. +Every incident of that frightening, gloomy, yet strangely fascinating +and exciting day, remained engraved in his recollection. He remembered +the crowd in the churchyard, the murmur that greeted his own appearance, +the staggering of the bearers under that long heavy burthen, the gloom +of the church full of people in black, and the great yawning hole in the +chancel pavement. What he did not grasp until very long afterwards, and +then only most imperfectly and by degrees, was the difference the event +of that day made in his own position; but his mother realised it fully, +and indeed it made much more difference to her than to the meek little +boy accustomed from earliest infancy to swallow distasteful puddings and +nauseous drugs at her command, and anxiously to examine his conscience, +if some remnant of the old Adam ever led him to question her decrees. +Henceforth Lady Charmington entered into her kingdom, and it must be +confessed that on the whole she ruled it well and wisely, and entirely +in the interests of her children. Almost the only sensible thing the old +lord had ever done was to appoint her and her brother the guardians of +his grandchildren, and under the careful management of his +daughter-in-law, aided by the wise advice of Lord Corstorphine, the +property was nursed through his grandson’s long minority back to a +tolerably healthy condition.</p> + +<p>As to Lady Belchamber, nothing would have bored her more than being +cumbered in any way with the guardianship of her grandchildren. She +carried off what her daughter-in-law declared to be a most ridiculously +disproportionate<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_15">{15}</a></span> jointure, and the furniture of her private apartments, +in which some valuable china and cabinets, that she had certainly not +brought into the family, somehow found themselves included at the time +of the move. She even showed a decided inclination to keep the famous +emeralds which, as Lady Charmington said, everybody knew were heirlooms; +but these she was made to send back, by her second husband, the Duke of +Sunborough, one of the oldest and most faithful of her admirers, whom +she married just a year after her lord’s death. On the other hand, she +generously abandoned all claim to a damp and mouldy dower-house in which +she had a right to reside for life, which, considering that the duke had +a palace in London and five country seats, was very handsome of her. +Three generations of gambling and extravagance leave their mark on the +most imposing fortunes, and if the Belchamber estates did not come to +the hammer, it was due to the action of the last person who might have +been expected to save them, in marrying a hardheaded Scotswoman and +dying before his father. To get the estate into order was Lady +Charmington’s prime object in life. To this end she inaugurated a rigid +system of economy, and made a clean sweep of the heads of almost every +department under the old <i>régime</i>, toiling early and late to make +herself mistress of many details of which she was ignorant; for this, +she endured the dislike of the poor, whom she benefited in her own +autocratic manner, and much hostile comment from her equals. She was +rigidly just, and generous too in her own way; only prodigality and +waste she would not tolerate, nor look with a lenient eye on the small +peculations which those who serve the great come to regard as quite +within the pale of honesty.</p> + +<p>If the mother spared neither time nor labour that she might be able to +hand over his property to her son free of encumbrances when he came of +age, she was not less eager and indefatigable in her efforts to fit him +for the position she was making for him; and this task she found +incomparably the harder of the two. It was not that he was naughty or<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_16">{16}</a></span> +insubordinate. A meeker, more obedient child did not live. The +difficulty was far more intangible; it is easier to drive a slightly +pulling horse in crowded thoroughfares than one with so light a mouth +that he never will go properly up to his bit; and Lady Charmington had +not the blessed gift of light hands in conducting the education of a +child, whatever she might have on horseback. As a girl she had ridden a +good deal, and even hunted; and though she gave that up after her +marriage, she still found it possible to keep a more effectual eye on +all corners of the huge estate from her square seat on the back of a +substantial cob than from any other coign of vantage. No farmer ever +rode more diligently and thoroughly about his fields; and on these +excursions it was her pleasure that the boys, and especially Sainty, +should accompany her. Arthur had a natural seat, took to horses from the +first, and wanted to gallop his pony and make him jump before the family +coachman had thought fit to abandon the leading-rein. With poor Sainty +it was far otherwise. He rode, as he ate rice pudding, because he was +told to; but he was cold for an hour beforehand, and he sat his pony, as +his mother remarked, like a sack of potatoes. The smallest thing +unseated him; he was always rolling ignominiously off.</p> + +<p>On this and similar shortcomings, he received many admonitions from his +mother and uncle, from which the chief impression he derived was a +rooted belief in the immense superiority of his younger brother. ‘At the +worst there will always be Arthur.’ When and under what circumstances +had he overheard that remark? He never was quite sure that he had not +formulated it for himself. Be that as it might, it early became the +burthen to which his life set itself. Far from resenting the point of +view, he drew from it a certain consolation under his abiding sense of +his many imperfections. He was still quite a small boy when he decided +that his <i>rôle</i> in life would be to die young, and make way for the +younger brother who was so eminently fitted for the position that suited +himself so ill; and he found a<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_17">{17}</a></span> certain gloomy satisfaction in settling +the details of pathetic deathbed scenes. I fear an element in these +imaginings which was not without attraction for him, was the thought of +exhorting Arthur with his latest breath on matters in which his +brother’s conduct did not always square with his own more evangelical +standard, such as a certain looseness of statement, and somewhat lax +ideas of property. If Arthur could not find his own cap, or bat, or +riding-whip (and his things were generally tossed about the great house, +wherever he happened to be when he last used them), it was always less +trouble to take Sainty’s, which were sure to be in the right place, than +to go and look for his own. He also on occasion carried the juvenile +habit of untruth rather further than mere thoughtlessness warranted; but +he told his stories with so open a countenance, and such a fearless +gaze, that he was invariably believed, as against poor Sainty, whose +knitted brow and downcast eyes, while he sought in his mind for the +exact truth, had all the appearance of an effort after invention. +‘Arthur is very thoughtless and tiresome,’ Lady Charmington would say, +‘but there’s one comfort about him, I can always depend on his telling +me the truth if I ask him. I wish I could say the same for Sainty; I am +sometimes afraid he is rather sly. I try not to be hard on him, for he +is timid, and I don’t want to frighten him into telling untruths; but I +do wish he was a little more straightforward, and would look one in the +face when he talks.’</p> + +<p>Many such hints, all showing a like perspicacious insight into the +characters of her sons, were given by this conscientious lady to the +governess she had engaged to assist her in moulding their dispositions. +Alice Meakins was the daughter of the rector of Great Charmington, and +had the prime recommendation in her employer’s eyes of being her humble +slave and completely under her orders. Had she been a little less in awe +of Lady Charmington, and less impressed with the enormity of differing +from her, she might perhaps have enlightened her on many matters +concerning the little boys. Her mild rule, while it galled his more<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_18">{18}</a></span> +spirited brother, sat very lightly on Sainty, who worshipped the +governess as the most talented and accomplished of mortals. ‘But I like +her, I’m fond of her; I don’t <i>want</i> to do what she tells me not,’ he +pleaded to the indignant Arthur, as usual incensed by his brother’s want +of pluck, in refusing to join in some plot against the authority of +their instructress. ‘Ho, ho, Miss Moddlecoddle, you can’t ride, you’ve +got no seat and no hands; Bell said so. You’re jolly bad at games, and +you like to sit and suck up to an old governess, and do needlework with +her, like a beastly girl. I’m a man, and I shan’t do what she tells me. +What business has she to order me about? she is only a servant like the +others.’</p> + +<p>Sainty was shocked. ‘O Arthur! you do say <i>horrid</i> things,’ he said. It +was true that he did like sitting with the gentle Meakins, and acquiring +the modest arts of which she was the mistress. She had many little +manual dexterities such as governesses impart to children, whereby the +world is filled with innocent horrors, kettleholders in cross-stitch, +penwipers faintly resembling old women with cloth cloaks and petticoats, +and little black seeds for faces, and book-markers in the shape of +crosses with many steps, plaited of strips of gilt and coloured paper. +In all these manufactures Sainty soon became proficient. He also +illuminated texts, ‘Be thou faithful unto death,’ and ‘The greatest of +these is Charity,’ which were presented to Lady Charmington on her +birthday. On the subject of the texts and the little plaited crosses +Lady Charmington had a word to say to Miss Meakins in private, as being +rather too papistical in tendency; but she was not displeased with the +simple presents, on the whole, until her anxious maternal eye was led to +detect the danger that might lurk in cross-stitch by some petulant +remarks of Arthur’s, who wanted Sainty to come out and play Red Indians +in the long shrubbery. ‘Muvver,’ he cried, bursting into the boudoir, +where his mother was busy with some farm accounts, ‘isn’t Sainty howid? +He won’t come out, though he’s done his lessons, ‘cos he will stick in +and do beastly woolwork.’ One of Arthur’s many charms was a babyish +imperfection of<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_19">{19}</a></span> speech. He never could pronounce ‘th’ or ‘r,’ even when +quite grown up.</p> + +<p>‘What is it he’s doing?’ asked Lady Charmington.</p> + +<p>‘Oh, beastly woolwork; he’s got two-fwee fings he’s makin’, and he likes +to sit like a girl, instead of coming out and playing.’</p> + +<p>A shade of annoyance crossed the mother’s face. ‘I wish you wouldn’t use +such words as “beastly,” Arthur,’ she said severely, but the severity +was really addressed to the absent first-born and the effeminacy of his +tastes; and the schoolroom was presently visited by the mistress of the +house, and Sainty duly turned out to distasteful recreation. When he had +gone forth to be scalped by the fraternal savage, his mother turned to +the instructress. ‘I think, Alice,’ she said, holding up the offending +kettleholder, ‘that it is a pity, on the whole, to teach Sainty to work; +he’s quite sufficiently effeminate by nature, without having that side +of him encouraged. I will speak to him about it. I shall tell him I +don’t approve of his working; it’s not manly.’ She was surprised, when +she carried out this intention, by meeting with passionate tears and +protestations.</p> + +<p>‘O mother, I love my work; it’s the only thing I do enjoy, except +botany, and reading, and some lessons (not ‘rithmetic or spelling); and +I have to do so many things I <i>don’t</i> like, cricket and riding, +and—and—all the dreadful things that men and gentlemen have to do,’ +the little boy concluded, quoting a formula frequently used for his +encouragement.</p> + +<p>Though not habitually distrustful of her own judgment, nothing so +confirmed Lady Charmington in a view she adopted as any opposition to +it; and the kettleholders became taboo from that day forward. Poor +Sainty’s confession of dislike for the manlier sports that, as he said, +were considered a necessary part of the education of a gentleman, was +perhaps the most unfortunate argument he could have chosen, for it +naturally convinced his mother that the mischief lay deeper than she +supposed, and suggested to her the advisability of<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_20">{20}</a></span> transferring the +boys from petticoat government altogether; that is, of course, as far as +the subordinate powers were concerned. The particular petticoat that +typified her own sway remained in undisturbed possession of the throne +in all her plans for the future.</p> + +<p>‘I think the boys are getting too much for poor Miss Meakins,’ she said +to her brother, on his next visit. ‘She is an excellent girl, though a +little inclined to be high church; but they ought to be under a man, I +feel sure.’</p> + +<p>‘Don’t tell me that Sainty is becoming insubordinate?’ said Lord +Corstorphine.</p> + +<p>‘No; but Arthur hasn’t the smallest respect for her. With Sainty the +danger is of a different kind; he is perhaps <i>too</i> fond of women’s +society.’</p> + +<p>‘Not a precocious passion for the governess! I can’t believe that.’</p> + +<p>Lady Charmington looked resigned. ‘I don’t deny, Corstorphine,’ she +said, ‘that you have been a great help to me in the management of my +fatherless boys; that is why I am consulting you on the present +occasion. But it is no help to be flippant and funny. What I mean is +that Sainty is quite sufficiently inclined by nature to be a milksop, +without living perpetually with women, and adopting their ways. He likes +better than any game to sit indoors with Miss Meakins on fine days, and +do woolwork.’</p> + +<p>‘Have him out, Sarah, by all means,’ returned her brother. ‘I can’t help +being a little pleased at his liking reading. A Chambers who +occasionally opens a book, and is tolerably well behaved, will be an +agreeable variation of the type. But it’s bad his not wanting to be out, +and playing games; it isn’t natural.’</p> + +<p>Lord Corstorphine felt that he was as near normal as it was possible to +be, without becoming commonplace, and that those whose tastes differed +widely from his own must always be more or less blamably eccentric. +Still his greater commerce with the world had given him a wider +toleration than either of his sisters, who had been known to call him a<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_21">{21}</a></span> +Laodicean, and Sarah once went so far as to draw a parallel between her +brother and Gallio. But though she affected to be shocked at the +looseness of his views, his known moderation made her lean the more +confidently on his judgment. The knowledge that her opinion was backed +by one whom the world praised for common-sense, gave a pleasing security +that her own noble zeal was not hurrying her into extremes. It was +invariably she who initiated every change in the education of her sons. +But, though it may be doubted how she would have borne opposition from +her fellow-guardian, his agreement was always a comfort to her.</p> + +<p>So Alice Meakins, with her little crosses and penwipers, returned to the +paternal rectory, with the highest testimonials from her dear Lady +Charmington, to look out for another situation.</p> + +<p>Poor Sainty could not be comforted. To be sure, no one tried much to +comfort him. For the first time he felt a rebellious bitterness towards +his mother. Though he could imagine nothing so dashing as active +disobedience, he cherished a dark determination to be very cold and +reserved towards the new tutor, with the natural result that Miss +Meakins’s successor, a youth fresh from Oxford, and also of the children +of the clergy, conceived a great liking for Arthur, and favoured him +prodigiously.</p> + +<p>This young man, who had been selected mainly for his reputation as a +cricketer, left Lady Charmington nothing to desire in the matter of +sport, and was quite ready to ride any horse in her limited stable; nor +need she feel anxiety as to his holding extreme views in religious +matters. It is true he attended family prayers with exemplary +punctuality, and accompanied his charges to service twice on Sundays; +but she could detect no sign of the interest in matters ecclesiastical +which she looked for in a son of the Church, and his waistcoats and +riding-boots had a decidedly worldly air.</p> + +<p>Under Mr. Kirkpatrick, Sainty early proved the cynical dictum that life +were endurable but for its pleasures, the hated pastimes, in which his +sex and position in life inexorably<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_22">{22}</a></span> demanded that he should find +enjoyment. He stood like a martyr at the stake, to be bowled at with the +Englishman’s fetish, that terrible disc of solid leather which he knew +he should not hit, but which not infrequently hit him; and he would +unhesitatingly have indorsed Mr. Pinchbold’s remark that ‘the horse was +a fearful animal.’ He was so painstaking, however, and anxious to do +what was expected of him, that he might possibly have attained in time +to some sort of proficiency in these alien arts, had his efforts been +greeted with a little more encouragement, and a little less ridicule; +but the race is not yet extinct of those who hold that the best way to +teach a child to swim is to throw him into the water.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile a new terror arose on Sainty’s horizon. When Mr. Kirkpatrick +had been at Belchamber eighteen months, he one day intimated to Lady +Charmington that he had been offered a mastership in a public school, +and could not afford to remain much longer with his pupils. It was +therefore suggested that, as they were both presently to go to Eton, a +few years at a private school would not be undesirable as a preparation. +Even Arthur was a little daunted at the prospect, while rather +fascinated by it; but to Sainty it loomed black as the final end of all +brightness, closing in the vista of his life and blotting out the sun. +It seemed to him that each step in the <i>via dolorosa</i> of his existence +was fated to be more awful than the last. When his beloved Miss Meakins +had been replaced by the hated Kirkpatrick, he thought to have tasted +the dregs of bitterness; but now a new prospect had come to make life in +the familiar places that he loved with a catlike fidelity appear the one +thing desirable, even shadowed by the tutor and his cricket-ball. I +suppose it seemed a hard thing to our first parents when the Serpent was +introduced into Eden; but life in Paradise, even with a snake in the +garden, was a very different thing from the flaming sword that drove +them out into an unknown world of work and briars. Sainty said little to +earthly ears, but he prayed nightly with intense fervour that he might +die before the day<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_23">{23}</a></span> came to go to school, which seemed the only escape +to his poor little hunted mind.</p> + +<p>But there was another way, which, if he could have foreseen it, would +have taxed his courage with a far more genuine fright than that vague +abstraction, death, for which we all cry aloud so readily in our youth +when things do not go as we wish. Arthur went to school alone when the +time arrived, and this was how it came about.</p> + +<p>It was a beautiful day at the end of March. Mr. Kirkpatrick was to leave +at Easter, and the dreaded exodus was only a month away. It was a late +spring, and the snow still lay on the north side of the hedgerows. But +it had rained in the night, and there was that indefinable sense of +spring in the air that sometimes comes quite suddenly. The primroses +were beginning to gem the coppices, the birds to sing late in the long +twilights. Daffodils waved in the fields where the young lambs were +bleating.</p> + +<p>‘What are you and the boys going to do this afternoon, Mr. Kirkpatrick?’ +asked Lady Charmington at lunch.</p> + +<p>The tutor looked inquiringly at the boys. ‘I’ll do whatever they wish, +Lady Charmington. What should you like?’ he asked of Sainty.</p> + +<p>‘I should like to go to One-tree Wood, and get primroses,’ Sainty +answered, after the usual slight struggle that it always cost him to +express a wish or an opinion.</p> + +<p>‘Get Gwanmuvvers!’ burst in Arthur. ‘Bovver pwimwoses; you don’t care +about ’em, do you, Mr. Kirkpatrick? I want to wide; Bell says the +gwound’s in quite good order to-day, after the wain. We’ve hardly widden +at all lately, ‘cos it’s been so hard.’</p> + +<p>As usual, Arthur had his way, and poor Sainty was condemned to ride. +Generally he gained confidence when he had been out a little while, but +to-day somehow everything went wrong. He began by rolling off at the +hall door, because his stirrups were too long, and the pony moved on +unexpectedly while they were being taken up. He was much<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_24">{24}</a></span> chaffed for +this misadventure by his companions, and he did not like chaff. Then the +pony was fresh and inclined to shy, after the inaction of the long +frost, so that he had a bad time of it altogether; but he managed to +stick on somehow until they were on their way home.</p> + +<p>They had been round by Little Charmington, and their way lay through one +of the high woods. When they came to the gate that led into the park, +they found it locked.</p> + +<p>‘I never knew this gate locked before,’ said Kirkpatrick, pulling feebly +at it with his whip. ‘I don’t suppose either of you have got the key by +any chance?’</p> + +<p>‘Jaggins must have locked it. He’s got some young pheasants further up +the wood,’ said Arthur; ‘he told me so.’</p> + +<p>‘I suppose we must go back,’ said Kirkpatrick, ‘but it’s an awful long +way round. We shall be late for tea, which your mother doesn’t like, and +you’ve got some more work to do afterwards. There’s a gap in the hedge a +little way along here,’ he added more hopefully. ‘I suppose you couldn’t +jump the ditch? It would save us a good two miles, and it’s really +nothing of a jump.’</p> + +<p>‘Of course we can jump the ditch. Hurray! what fun!’ cried Arthur, and +without more words he wheeled his pony, put him at the gap, and the next +moment was careering about on the turf beyond, in a great state of +excitement and jubilation.</p> + +<p>‘You see, it’s quite easy,’ the tutor said, turning to Sainty, whose +pony was already beginning to fidget, excited by the trampling about on +snapping twigs and the rush past of the other. Sainty was very white.</p> + +<p>‘You know I can’t jump, Mr. Kirkpatrick,’ he said, gulping tears. ‘I’m +sure to fall off if I try; I always do.’</p> + +<p>‘Not you,’ the young man replied encouragingly. ‘You see your little +brother has done it. I should be ashamed to have him ride so much better +than me, if I were you.’ The poor man was rather in a fix, with one +pupil already across the obstacle and the other resolutely declining to +follow.</p> + +<p>‘See,’ he said, ‘I’ll give you a lead. It’s as easy as easy;<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_25">{25}</a></span> you’ve +only to sit well back, and give him his head,’ And so saying, he put his +horse at the gap, and followed Arthur into the park. ‘Come on,’ he +called.</p> + +<p>‘Jump, Sainty, jump,’ piped Arthur. ‘I wouldn’t be such a funk.’</p> + +<p>Whether Sainty would ever have found the courage to attempt the jump is +doubtful, if the pony at this stage of the proceedings had not decided +matters by bolting at the gap. But bothered and bewildered by the +tugging of his rider’s despairing hands, he swerved just at the jump, +and, slipping on the trodden earth where Kirkpatrick’s horse had taken +off, he came to the ground; then struggling to his feet, galloped off +through the wood by the road they had come.</p> + +<p>The young man was horror-stricken when he saw the accident; he was off +his horse, and by the side of the fallen boy in a second. Sainty was +unconscious, that was all he could tell.</p> + +<p>‘Now, Arthur,’ he cried to the younger boy, who was beginning to tremble +and cry, ‘this is the moment to show the stuff you’re made of. I must +stay here with Sainty, but you must get home across the park as hard as +you can go, so as to tell your mother what’s happened, and save her the +shock of seeing Donald come home without his rider. And then send people +here to carry Sainty in; he may be more hurt than we think.’</p> + +<p>Arthur waited for no more, but galloped off in the direction of the +house, glad to have something definite to do, instead of staring at poor +Sainty.</p> + +<p>Lady Charmington had come home sooner than she expected, and was taking +off her hat, when she saw Arthur come galloping across the park alone. +She looked with pride at the boy, thinking how well he sat his pony; and +she gave a little sigh at the half-formed thought that just crossed her +mind, ‘What a pity he wasn’t the elder!’ The next minute her heart stood +still; she had caught sight in the far distance of a speck, which as it +drew nearer she recognised with sickening terror as Sainty’s pony, +riderless, and<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_26">{26}</a></span> with his saddle turned under his belly. ‘Not <i>that</i> way, +my God! I did not mean <i>that</i>.’ Was it possible that God was punishing +her for her rebellious thought? could He have thought that she desired +the death of her first-born? And she prayed with all the intensity of +her soul that whatever had happened her boy might not die. ‘Maimed, +crippled, or an idiot, if so it must be; only let him live.’ This was +the cry of her heart, again and again repeated, as guided by the child, +she stumbled across the park with the men who were to bring him home. +Arthur could tell her little, except that Sainty had had a fall and was +hurt. Perhaps even then her child was lying dead, while she was wishing +in her sinful heart that his brother had his heritage.</p> + +<p>But Sainty was not dead, and did not die. The pony had kicked him in its +struggles to rise, and he had fainted. There were long nights and days +of pain to be borne, and he bore it as nervous people often do, who can +stand anything but anticipation.</p> + +<p>At first he made sure that the death he had asked for had come to him, +and even, one day, when he was a little better, attempted to bring off +one of the beautiful scenes with Arthur, which he had so often +rehearsed. But somehow it was not a great success. Arthur did not do his +part at all nicely. He only said, ‘Oh! bower, dear old Sainty. You ain’t +going to die; what’s ve good of jawing?’ and went off to more congenial +pursuits.</p> + +<p>Though his life was not in danger, Sainty’s injury was a grave one; the +hip was broken, and the great London surgeon who was called down, did +not conceal from Lady Charmington that the boy would probably always be +more or less lame.</p> + +<p>On one of his visits, Sainty astonished the great man not a little.</p> + +<p>‘Sir John,’ he said, ‘I want you to tell me something. Shall I ever be +able to walk and run again?’</p> + +<p>The famous surgeon had boys of his own, and his heart smote him at the +pathetic question. ‘Yes, my boy, yes,’ he<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_27">{27}</a></span> said; ‘certainly to walk. As +to running, oh! well, you won’t be very good at running, not for some +time; we mustn’t go too fast, not too fast, you know. Walking comes +first; we must get you on your legs first.’</p> + +<p>‘But I shan’t ever be able to play games, shall I? not like other boys, +I mean.’</p> + +<p>‘Oh! well, never’s a long word. I can’t say, I’m sure. Not for a long +while, I fear. But we never know, we never know——’</p> + +<p>‘Well, at any rate, I shan’t be able to ride, shall I?’ persisted the +patient.</p> + +<p>Poor Sir John hated to extinguish hope; but thus pushed into a corner, +he admitted, ‘Oh! well, ride, you know—I don’t know. I doubt if +<i>riding</i> would be advisable. My poor little man, if you must know, I’m +afraid you mustn’t count on riding again.’</p> + +<p>To his surprise, the boy heaved a sigh of unmistakable relief. ‘Ah! +well, that’s a comfort, anyhow,’ he said.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_28">{28}</a></span></p> + +<h2><a id="CHAPTER_III">CHAPTER III</a></h2> + +<p class="nind"><span class="smcap">Probably</span> nothing is less calculated to make a man feel at home in +another’s society than the knowledge that he owes him a debt which he +cannot pay. Custom enables a number of people to support this +awkwardness with tolerable equanimity, but I suspect that even the +habitual debtor feels a certain nameless uneasiness under his equable +shirt-front; while to a person whose boast has always been that +directness of gaze celebrated in the Village Blacksmith, to have to look +shiftily before the eye of a creditor must be peculiarly galling.</p> + +<p>Something of this consciousness had become the daily burthen of poor +Lady Charmington with regard to her first-born son. Certainly nothing +was further from claiming damages than Sainty’s attitude, for it never +entered his head to hold his mother in any way responsible for his +accident. But in the long weeks in which he lay so uncomplainingly +bearing pain, and the inaction which to young creatures is worse than +pain, she could not look at him without a very distinct twinge of +remorse. She was even glad to see the once forbidden needlework cheating +the weary hours of some of their dulness. Once when he thanked her for +the withdrawal of the interdict on this pastime, her breath caught in +her throat like a sob.</p> + +<p>‘You must find the time very heavy,’ she said, smoothing back the boy’s +hair with an unusually tender touch.</p> + +<p>‘Oh no!’ Sainty said, ‘I don’t. I can’t help thinking what a good thing +it was it happened to me and not to Arthur. Think how <i>he</i> would have +hated it. I’ve never minded keeping quiet. And then it’ll always be such +a good<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_29">{29}</a></span> excuse for not doing things. Before, when people said “Why can’t +he be like other boys?” there wasn’t anything to say. Now you can say +“Well, you see, poor boy, he’s lame; he met with an accident.”<span class="lftspc">’</span></p> + +<p>He delivered this piece of consolation quite seriously, and with no +ironic intention, but it may be doubted if it cheered his mother as much +as he intended.</p> + +<p>Poor Kirkpatrick, overwhelmed with remorse, had wished to give up his +public school mastership and devote himself to Sainty’s education, but +the sacrifice had not been accepted. Lady Charmington, who, in spite of +her hard head, was not without some very feminine weaknesses, could not +bear the sight of the young man who was incurably associated with the +most awful hour of her life.</p> + +<p>In her compunction, she made an attempt at regaining the services of +Miss Meakins, but the governess had without difficulty obtained a +situation in the household of one of those gorgeously dressed little +dark women who drive about the north side of Hyde Park in such +well-appointed carriages. They are of Lancaster Gate to-day, but who +knows if to-morrow they may not be giving laws to fashion from a palace +in Park Lane? Miss Meakins, with the stamp of the aristocracy upon her, +was quite an important person in this opulent Tyburnian mansion and the +beautiful villa at Roehampton, with its velvet lawns and blazing +parterres.</p> + +<p>‘Tell us about the little marquis and his brother, and the big park at +Belchamber, and the deer,’ her little charges would ask of her, as they +walked on Wimbledon Common. They had large eyes, and beautiful gentle +manners, and that look of ineffable world-weariness that is common to +the children of their race. Sainty would have been astonished to know +what an object of interest he was to these other children.</p> + +<p>It must have been her uneasy desire for compensation that made Lady +Charmington give to a suggestion of her sister-in-law that she and her +‘fatherless boy’ should pay Belchamber a visit, a very different +reception from that which<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_30">{30}</a></span> she would otherwise have accorded to it. Lady +Eva had lost the embarrassing Morland, and was inclined to return to her +native land and see what she could get out of her kinsfolk. She went +first to her mother, who received her very graciously, and was really +pleased to see her. Her daughter brought the duchess a whiff of her +beloved Paris, and entertained her immensely with anecdotes of a world +quite unlike that in which she herself had formerly figured. The younger +lady, finding her noble relatives in the Faubourg rather inclined to +cold-shoulder her, had gone in for being a sort of Muse, and surrounded +herself with all the youngest and most modern of the new school of poets +and painters. She wore indecent clothes, with a rope of turquoises round +her waist, and lay on a white bearskin, smoking a narghilé, while they +recited their verses to her. They spoke of her as ‘la petite Morland’ +and ‘la belle Eve.’ Her portrait by a young American of genius had been +the great <i>clou</i> of the salon, she told her astonished step-father. ‘It +really was <i>épatant</i>; he painted me at full length on the sofa in +straight perspective, my feet away from you, and my head hanging over +the end, so that my face looks out at you upside down. I have my +turquoises in my teeth, and the whole is lit by Chinese lanterns. It is +amazing <i>de vérité</i>, and will make his reputation.’</p> + +<p>‘And what about yours?’ asked the duke, who thought he was rather a wit.</p> + +<p>The duchess was much amused with this talk, and all went well, until she +and her daughter happened unfortunately to fix their affections on the +same young man, who was a good deal the junior of either, when a violent +quarrel ensued, and Sunborough House having become much too hot to hold +her, Lady Eva was seized with a sentimental desire to ‘show the home of +her childhood to her boy,’ and wrote intimating this wish to her +sister-in-law. Lady Charmington knew very little of the lady, beyond the +fact that she had made an unfortunate marriage and was now a widow with +an only son. The early surroundings of this boy must have been +deplor<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_31">{31}</a></span>able; but while she trembled for the effect he might have upon +her sons, she licked her lips at the thought of the influence she might +be privileged to acquire over him. Lady Eva’s cleverly insinuated hint +that she did not find the atmosphere of her mother’s house congenial, +did much to open the doors of Belchamber to her; but perhaps her best +ally was the thought that his cousin might be a companion to Sainty +during Arthur’s absence. Sainty at least was not likely to get any harm +from unfortunate lads who had been brought up in an atmosphere of +papistry or atheism—the two words meant much the same to Lady +Charmington—and then who could tell what they might be able to do for +<i>him</i>!</p> + +<p>Claude Morland was between two and three years older than Sainty and +extraordinarily grown up for his age. He was a handsome boy, but of +quite a different type of beauty from Arthur, who had the fair curls and +florid complexion of the Chambers family, whereas Claude had inherited +his colourless white skin, thick, straight black hair, and large dreamy +eyes from his French ancestors. He was not unlike what his grandmother +had been as a girl, but with a certain heaviness of make and feature +that came from his lamented father, and might easily become coarseness +as he grew older. He seemed to Sainty like some strongly scented +hothouse flower, white with a whiteness in which there was no purity, +and sweet with a strong sweetness that already suggested some subtle +hint of decay. As the flowers which his cousin recalled to him were +among the things he did not like, his first feeling towards him had been +one of vague repulsion; but to a naturally shy and silent person, any +one with Claude’s ready flow of talk and perfect self-possession must +prove attractive in the long-run. Then Claude had charming manners when +he chose. To Sainty, accustomed to Arthur’s scornful affection and +undisguised contempt, the little attentions and deferential politeness +of this older boy were bewildering, but strangely pleasant. Claude’s +smile was a caress, the grasp of his hand an embrace; in later years a<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_32">{32}</a></span> +lady once said of him that she always felt as if he had said something +she ought to resent when he asked her how she did. But at thirteen this +latent sensuality only made him like some charming feline creature that +liked to be stroked and well fed, to lie in the sun and purr. A boy who +spoke French as easily as English, and German and Italian a little, and +read mysterious foreign books for pleasure, could not fail to be +impressive to a small home-grown cousin; while the discovery that this +gifted creature had never played cricket in his life, and, though an +excellent rider, had not the smallest wish to hunt, made him at once +sympathetic and puzzling.</p> + +<p>‘Uncle Cor hunts,’ Sainty said, ‘and Arthur is dying to, as soon as ever +he is allowed. <i>I</i> can’t, of course; but then I shall never ride any +more. But all the men I know hunt—our neighbours Mr. Hawley at Hawley +Park and Sir Watkin Potkin at the Grange, and everybody, even the +farmers, when they can afford to. I thought all men who rode wanted to +hunt as a matter of course.’</p> + +<p>‘Well, <i>I</i> don’t want to,’ Claude answered. ‘I like riding, and the +<i>manége</i>, and all that; a gentleman should of course be a good horseman. +But to get up early, and gallop all day across country after a wretched +little vermin, <i>merci cela ne me dit rien</i>.’</p> + +<p>‘Ah! you’re sorry for the poor fox; I’m glad of that,’ said Sainty. ‘I +can’t help feeling it’s cruel. I think of all it must feel when it hears +the dogs getting nearer, and knows it is out of breath and can’t run +much farther. And yet very good men hunt, even clergymen. None of our +own clergy, because mother doesn’t approve of it; but some of those from +the other side of the county, who, I believe, are quite good men. I +asked Uncle Cor, who is very kind to animals, about it, but he said if +it were not for hunting, the foxes would all have been exterminated long +ago, and he didn’t suppose they’d have liked that any better.’</p> + +<p>‘There is certainly something in that,’ replied his cousin gravely; ‘but +I’m afraid I wasn’t considering the matter from the fox’s point of view. +I hate getting tired, and wet, and<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_33">{33}</a></span> muddy, and to kill a wretched little +yellow animal doesn’t seem worth so much fuss and trouble. <i>Voilà tout.</i> +In France, if the foxes eat the poultry, they shoot them; it is much +more simple.’</p> + +<p>‘Then what do you like to do in the way of exercise and games and that?’ +asked Sainty.</p> + +<p>‘I like the lawn tennis fairly well,’ said Claude. ‘It is not such a +good game as the real tennis, the <i>jeu de paume</i>. I have played that a +little, but not much; it was too expensive; but lawn tennis is very +well. That, and riding, and fencing have been my principal amusements. +But we have moved about so much; my mother is very restless. We have +never stayed anywhere long enough for me to settle down and really take +to anything seriously.’</p> + +<p>‘And cricket?’ asked Sainty, almost under his breath; ‘have you never +played cricket?’</p> + +<p>‘<i>Mon Dieu!</i> no. A game that takes three days to play! Those stupid +stepsons of grandmamma took me to see a match at—what do you call +it?—“Lord’s,” when I was in London. It went on all day, and nothing +happened. I yawned myself hoarse. I can never do anything for more than +two hours at a time.’</p> + +<p>Here was some one who was not apologetic or ashamed that he could not +play cricket, who spoke of it even with contempt, as of a pastime for +fools. Sainty was dumbfoundered. He wondered what Arthur would say to +such heresy. What Arthur did say when presently he came home, was that +his cousin was a ‘bounder,’ and ‘like a beastly foreigner.’ It was a +curious fact that though Claude acquired a considerable influence for +harm over Arthur, the latter always continued to speak slightingly of +him, and never really liked him; whereas Sainty, who was not influenced +by him in the least, and after the first discoveries of superficial +agreement, found that they differed essentially in their views on almost +every subject, cherished a sneaking regard for his cousin, which died +hard even when Claude had done his best to kill it. Arthur’s mind could +accept nothing that was not<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_34">{34}</a></span> traditional; and this surprising outcome of +shady foreign watering-places and Parisian <i>ateliers</i> lay altogether +outside of his traditions.</p> + +<p>Their aunt was as much of a surprise to the boys as their cousin. Lady +Eva modified herself considerably, with a view to conciliating her pious +sister-in-law; but in spite of extra tuckers, the first sight of her +when dressed for dinner was a severe shock to Sainty, accustomed to the +modest <i>décolletages</i> of the neighbouring clergywomen who dined from +time to time with Lady Charmington, and the little square of his +mother’s neck, which barely accommodated the large oblong locket of +black enamel, like a baby’s coffin, with which she decorated herself for +these festive occasions.</p> + +<p>Luckily for Lady Eva, Lady Charmington was not of the intimate order of +women, and never invaded a guest’s bedroom, or she might have been a +little scandalised by the tone of some of the literature she found +there; but she would probably have been still more bewildered, as she +had kept up scarcely a bowing acquaintance with even ordinary French. ‘I +have read Madame Craven’s <i>Récit d’une Sœur</i>,’ she said, ‘but I read few +novels in any language; it does not seem to me very profitable. I was +once recommended Feuillet’s <i>Histoire de Sibylle</i> as quite +unobjectionable, but I found it very papistical. It did <i>me</i> no harm, +but I shouldn’t have given it to any young person to read in whom I was +interested.’</p> + +<p>‘I don’t remember to have read either of the <i>romans</i> you mention,’ said +her sister-in-law wearily.</p> + +<p>The two women found it increasingly difficult to talk to each other; +neither of them seemed to take the faintest interest in anything which +occupied the other. Lady Eva dwelt much on the disadvantages of her +bringing-up, finding that a subject on which her hostess was much +inclined to be sympathetic, and also on her maternal anxieties about her +boy’s future. She and Claude laughed a great deal at the good lady +behind her back, and smoked a great many cigarettes together in the long +shrubbery, when Sainty was<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_35">{35}</a></span> having his daily drive, and Lady Charmington +was busy about her farms. Arthur caught them at it one day, but was +bribed to silence by being lured into participation in the crime.</p> + +<p>‘Tell me, Eva,’ said Lady Charmington, when the ladies were sitting +alone together, ‘you are not, I trust, a Catholic, are you?’</p> + +<p>‘No; oh no!’ answered her sister-in-law, with perfect truth; though she +might have added that she had at one time been a very devout one, and +had since tried several other <i>cultes</i>, of which the last had been some +queer Parisian form of esoteric Buddhism. ‘Oh no! I have seen too much +of Romanism; I have lived abroad too much.’</p> + +<p>Lady Charmington was delighted. ‘I have no doubt they tried to pervert +you,’ she said, fairly beaming on this martyr to the faith.</p> + +<p>‘Tried!’ repeated Lady Eva with an eloquent gesture.</p> + +<p>‘And your boy?’ continued Lady Charmington. ‘He must have been much +exposed in those countries. I trust you have managed to keep his faith +untouched?’</p> + +<p>‘I have done my best,’ said Lady Eva meekly. ‘Poor boy! he has had to +knock about the world very young, and to see and hear much that he +should not. I have felt that he had only his poor weak mother to stand +between him and—and—well—all sorts of things. He has not had the +advantages of your dear boys, Sarah—a good home, and peaceful, virtuous +surroundings, nor such a good mother, I’m afraid.’ And Lady Eva cast +down her fine eyes, on the lids of which she had not been able to deny +herself a faint tinge of blue, on learning that Lord Corstorphine was +expected, though she had been trying not to paint at Belchamber. ‘You +know how my own youth was neglected,’ she added presently. ‘But I had +rather not talk of that. After all, the duchess is my mother, and in her +own way has meant to be kind to me, I think. Only, I have dreamt of +something very different for my Claude. Such influences as he finds here +are exactly what I have wished for him, and what I have all too seldom +been able to give him.’</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_36">{36}</a></span></p> + +<p>‘Well, now we have got him here, we must try and keep him, and see what +we can do for him,’ said Lady Charmington, much gratified. ‘Have you +thought at all what you are going to do with him? You are not going back +to France?’</p> + +<p>‘Oh no! I want to stay in England—<i>at home</i>’; and Lady Eva gazed +tenderly at her surroundings in a manner which hinted plainly that an +invitation to consider Belchamber in that light might not be unwelcome. +Lady Charmington, however, was in no hurry to give it, but she debated +in her own mind many plans for the benefit of her nephew. She got but +little encouragement from her brother, who by no means seemed inclined +to take a friendly view of these interlopers.</p> + +<p>‘That’s a horrible woman,’ he remarked, with brutal frankness of the +‘belle Morland’; ‘and just the sort I should have thought you would have +hated, Sarah.’</p> + +<p>‘I can’t honestly say I exactly like her, Cor,’ his sister answered; +‘but I’m sorry for her and for the boy. Think of her deplorable +bringing-up; think what a mother she has had, and what a husband! The +poor body seems to have some glimmerings of a desire for better things, +if she had any one to take her by the hand; and I must say it’s to her +credit to have kept by her faith, exposed as she has been to the darts +of the enemy. But what touches me most about her is that she evidently +wants to do well by her boy. She’s not a bad mother, whatever else she +may be; and, after all, she’s poor Char’s sister, you know.’</p> + +<p>Lady Charmington very seldom delivered herself of so long a speech, and +still more rarely made any allusion to her dead husband. Corstorphine +was surprised and touched. Perhaps some likeness to her brother in Lady +Eva, some trick of speech, or expression that recalled him, had gone to +the not very accessible heart of her sister-in-law, and reinforced the +adroit flattery which had been offered to her pet prejudices. Perhaps +mother’s heart really spoke to mother’s heart in some language he did +not understand; the woman, with all her faults, might have a genuine +wish to do the best<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_37">{37}</a></span> for her brat. He could have checked his sister’s +nascent inclination to befriend her husband’s kinsfolk with a word, but +it seemed an ungracious task. After all, Sarah was not too often in a +melting mood, and if she could do something for this wretched lad, whose +best chance was that he was fatherless, why should he seek to restrain +her?</p> + +<p>‘I don’t like the boy either,’ he couldn’t help saying; ‘he’s a deal too +smooth and civil spoken. He’s no business to have such finished manners +at thirteen, and be such an accomplished little man of the world. But if +you think you can do anything to prevent his turning out such a +blackguard as his deceased parent, pray do; it’s a Christian act. All I +say is, consider whether he is likely to harm your own boys in any way.’</p> + +<p>‘I’ve thought very much of that. Do you suppose it wasn’t my first +thought?’ his sister answered. ‘But one mustn’t let anxiety for one’s +own stand in the way of snatching a brand from the burning. Something +tells me this boy has not been sent here for nothing.’</p> + +<p>‘Well,’ said Corstorphine, ‘and what particular form of charity do you +think he was sent for?’</p> + +<p>Lady Charmington ignored the scoff. ‘I was thinking whether I mightn’t +offer to send him to Eton, if he could be got in,’ she said; ‘he won’t +be fourteen till November. I know his mother can’t afford it. Then he is +very gentle with Sainty, and the child seems to like him; and I thought +if later on Sir John thought Sainty could go to Eton, it might be a help +to him to have a cousin who had been there a year or two, and could look +after him a little. He can never be quite like other boys, you know.’</p> + +<p>Corstorphine smiled grimly. It tickled his not unkindly cynicism to find +his pious sister had so human a thought for her own offspring nestled +under her zeal for her nephew’s soul.</p> + +<p>‘Well, I agree,’ he said, ‘that the best chance the youth can have is to +see as little as possible of his mother and grandmother. Perhaps if he +gets well kicked at Eton, and you<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_38">{38}</a></span> have him here mostly for his +holidays, he may not turn out so ill. It would take an 18-horse power +profligate to corrupt Sainty, it is true; but how about Arthur?’</p> + +<p>‘Arthur doesn’t like Claude; he makes no secret of it; so I don’t think +he can do <i>him</i> any harm. Besides, when the boys are at home I have them +so constantly under my own eye, I should know in a minute; and by the +time Arthur goes to Eton, Claude will be almost leaving.’</p> + +<p>‘Or if he turns out badly, he may even have left,’ said Lord +Corstorphine.</p> + +<p>So the matter was broached to Lady Eva, who, you may be sure, was +profuse in a mother’s blessings and tears. She was fond of her son in a +way, and honestly wanted the best that was to be had for him in life. +She had been ruefully reflecting that she would never be able to send +him to a good school, except at the cost of decided privations to +herself; and there was no doubt he would be dreadfully in her way in +London.</p> + +<p>Lord Corstorphine proposed himself for a Sunday to a great friend among +the Eton masters, and found that his host, having an unexpected vacancy +for the next half, was delighted to do a good turn to any one in whom he +was interested. The duchess, when she heard what was on foot, suddenly +insisted on helping, and promised to pay half of her grandson’s +expenses; and though her contribution was frequently several terms in +arrear, she generally paid up in the end, unless she had been unusually +unlucky at cards.</p> + +<p>So, though Lady Eva had failed to extract from her sister-in-law that +general invitation to regard Belchamber as her country-home, which she +had hoped for, she left for town with a comfortable feeling that her +visit had not been wasted. Claude was practically off her hands; he +would go to Eton at no expense to her, and spend most of his holidays at +Belchamber. ‘Dear Belchamber, where poor Char and I spent our happy +childhood, and of which I have always carried the picture in my heart, +through all my wanderings,’ she said to Lady Charmington the day before +her departure.</p> + +<p>‘Indeed,’ said Sarah, with a little dry cough, ‘I always<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_39">{39}</a></span> understood +from poor Char that he had hardly ever been here as a child. He said, +when we first came here in the old lord’s time, that he hoped his son +wouldn’t feel such a stranger here as he did, when he grew up.’</p> + +<p>‘Ah well,’ said Lady Eva hurriedly, ‘my happiest times, almost the +<i>only</i> happy ones of my neglected childhood were here, so I suppose they +bulk large in my memory. I have so little reason to remember most of my +youth with pleasure.’</p> + +<p>‘You said, Aunt Eva,’ Arthur burst in, ‘vat you wemembered every corner +of ve place, blindfold, but you soon lost your way even in ve shrubbery, +and you thought One-tree Wood was the other side of the village.’</p> + +<p>‘Ah, traitor!’ cried his aunt, playfully embracing him, ‘have you so +little gallantry as to try to convict a lady of making mistakes?’</p> + +<p>‘You were a little rash, dear mamma,’ Claude said to her afterwards, ‘in +remembering your happy childhood at Belchamber so well, unless you took +a little more trouble to get up the subject.’ Claude for his part was +quite willing to go to Eton and try how he liked it. Almost the only +principle that had been early instilled into him was that it was always +worth while to accept anything expensive that could be enjoyed at +another person’s expense. It was rather absurd, no doubt, for so +finished a gentleman to go to school; but experience had taught him that +it was always quite easy to get sent away from educational +establishments, if one did not happen to like them; and what was the use +of his precocious knowledge of the world if it did not insure him an +easy victory over such simple people as schoolmasters and schoolboys? As +a matter of fact his astuteness did save him from paying the extreme +penalty for many peccadilloes that would have cut short the career of +less sophisticated youths under ‘Henry’s holy shade.’ His tutor’s +attitude towards him was a curious alternation of attraction and +distrust. But though never cordially liked by either boys or masters, he +was still there, as an overgrown youth in ‘lower division,’ when Sainty +hobbled into the school, a pale, gloomy little boy with an iron<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_40">{40}</a></span> boot +and a stick, and was even keeping a precarious footing when Arthur +appeared a year later, and of course took the place by storm with his +frank and friendly manners, hatred of books, love of games, and +perfectly obvious and understandable type of beauty.</p> + +<p>Whether Claude really did much for his cousins on their arrival at Eton +may be doubted, but he certainly managed to impress Sainty with the +belief that he had been of incalculable service to him. To Claude, +Sainty meant Belchamber with all its comforts, horses to ride, pheasants +to shoot, good food, luxurious quarters, and presents at Christmas; +things his shelterless childhood had taught him to consider in a way +that boys to whom they had always been matters of course could not +understand. It never occurred to Sainty that his cousin’s attentions +proceeded from anything but a naturally kind heart compassionating the +limitations of a cripple and an invalid. He soon learned to disapprove +of Claude, and to dread his influence over Arthur, and on several +occasions screwed himself up almost with torture to the point of +speaking very plainly to his senior, a thing especially difficult among +boys; and the indulgent good nature with which his strictures were +received, where they might easily have been resented, gave him an +uncomfortable sense of obligation towards one to whom his conscience +forced him to say such disagreeable things in return for uniform +kindness and affection.</p> + +<p>‘Dear Sainty,’ Claude would say, ‘you do look so sweet when you’re angry +and solemn, for all the world like an old hen with all her feathers up +in defence of her chick. Of course I’m a wicked unprincipled hawk, but I +promise not to devour your bantling.’ He generally managed to refer +again to these conversations when Arthur was present, knowing that +nothing enraged the younger brother so much as the idea that Sainty, for +whom he always entertained the sublimest contempt, had dared to give +himself the airs of looking after him.</p> + +<p>It early dawned on Sainty that a loving heart was not an unmixed +blessing, unless one had the gift of imposing on<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_41">{41}</a></span>e’s views on the object +of one’s affection. Had he not been fond of Claude, it would be nothing +to him that he disapproved of him; if he did not love Arthur, it would +not have been a daily grief to him to see so clearly what his brother +ought and ought not to do, while he was destitute of the smallest shred +of influence over his actions.</p> + +<p>‘You know, dear,’ Claude said to him once, ‘there is nothing so easy as +to get rid of me. I am horribly <i>mal vu</i> by the authorities. If tutor +hadn’t stuck up for me like a brick, I should have been sacked long ago; +he has told me pretty plainly that if there are any more rows he shall +say he thinks they had better take me away. A hint to him that I am +corrupting his pet lamb, and a word to your mother, and neither Eton nor +Belchamber will be troubled with me much longer.’</p> + +<p>Such a speech hurt Sainty like a lash. ‘Don’t you see,’ he cried, ‘that +it is just the knowledge of what you say that makes it impossible for me +to do anything? I am helpless.’</p> + +<p>See? Of course Claude saw; no one better. ‘Dear generous old boy!’ he +said, with one of his sudden pretty changes of manner, throwing an arm +lightly round his cousin’s shoulder; ‘who should know what an angel you +are, so well as your poor scamp of a cousin, who owes everything to +you?’</p> + +<p>‘Don’t,’ Sainty said, wincing; ‘you do things you know I hate, and teach +Arthur to do them, and then you manage to make me feel a brute, and put +me in the wrong.’</p> + +<p>Claude shrugged his shoulders, almost the last of his little foreign +tricks of manner that he had not lost at Eton. ‘You are impossible, dear +Saint,’ he said, and went his way, quite secure that what he had let +fall of the ease with which his cousin could get rid of him would +effectually tie his hands.</p> + +<p>The day came, however, when without any intervention of a schoolfellow, +the measure of Claude Morland’s ill-fame overflowed, and the College of +the Blessed Mary numbered him no longer among her children.</p> + +<p>That summer half was ‘long remembered’ at Eton (almost<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_42">{42}</a></span> eighteen months) +for what Claude called a ‘great massacre of the innocents.’ We are not +concerned at this distance of time to inquire into the nature of this +old story. As usual, it was not the most guilty who were sent away; +there were angry mothers in many counties of England who declared their +darlings had been most unjustly used, and that ‘there was a boy called +Morland who was much worse than poor Tom, Dick, or Harry, who had only +had to leave at the end of the half, and with no blame attached to him.’ +‘Claude was more or less mixed up in rather a painful affair,’ his tutor +wrote to Lord Corstorphine. ‘He did not know how much he was to blame, +but it would be best for the boy himself if his friends were to remove +him. Personally he liked him, but ...’; and Sainty tried hard not to +feel a certain relief at his cousin’s departure. He atoned for this +unchristian want of sympathy by making the best of the matter to his +mother and guardian, and begging that it should make no difference in +the culprit’s footing at Belchamber. What he never mentioned at home was +that Arthur had come very near being implicated, and that he, Sainty, +had strained his conscience to the utmost, in solemnly pledging his word +to his tutor for his brother’s innocence. Arthur accepted this as he did +everything else from Sainty. ‘What is vere to make a fuss about?’ he +said. ‘I’d have done as much for you, or for vat matter, for any over +chap who wasn’t my bwover. You jaw about your conscience, and not being +sure, and tell me to see what I’ve made you do. I don’t call that lying. +Of course, if a fellow’s asked point-blank if anover fellow’s done a +fing, he’s <i>got</i> to say he hasn’t. Don’t be such a pwig.’</p> + +<p>Sainty did not stay very long at Eton himself. In spite of constant +staying out, and much sick-leave, he really was not strong enough for +the life there; nor was it a great grief to him to go. He did not make +friends easily; his shy reserved manner, his studious habits, and +inability for athletics, not less than his austerely high standard of +ethics which his minor found so unnecessary, were not calculated to make +him popular with his schoolfellows; and he resented their<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_43">{43}</a></span> familiar +abbreviation of his title into ‘Belcher.’ He stayed long enough to see +Arthur launched on a course of prosperity, and in a fair way to become a +‘swell,’ and then sang his <i>Nunc dimittis</i>. Arthur remained, alone of +the three, and flourished like a green bay-tree. He did just enough work +to get through his various examinations with a little cribbing, and +found plenty of people ready to do all the rest for him. He was quite +selfish, self-indulgent, easy-going, good-natured, and happy, and was as +popular with the masters as with the boys. The elastic code of schoolboy +honour fitted him like a glove, and he had the makings in him of a +first-rate cricketer.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_44">{44}</a></span></p> + +<h2><a id="CHAPTER_IV">CHAPTER IV</a></h2> + +<p class="nind"><span class="smcap">Lord Corstorphine</span> had been an Oxford man, but some curious lingering +dread of Puseyism made Lady Charmington send Sainty to Cambridge. She +gave a moment’s anxious thought to the vicinity of Newmarket, but, as +she truly said, that hardly seemed a danger to Sainty; and as Arthur was +to read for the army when he left Eton, there was no question of the +University for him.</p> + +<p>Sainty went to college, as he did most things, from the habit of +obedience, but with no great hope of personal enjoyment. Anticipation to +him was rarely pleasurable; he had not the sanguine temperament. He +looked on Cambridge as a larger Eton, a new field for unpopularity and +isolation in the midst of a crowd, but he soon began to be aware of an +atmosphere of wider toleration than he had known at school.</p> + +<p>It is true he was a dreary failure among his peers, the gilded youth who +went to Newmarket, kept hunters, and spent their evenings at the +card-table; and he was ignominiously blackballed for a certain +fashionable dining-club for which some one was so ill-advised as to put +him up. His college, however, was large enough to contain men of all +sorts, and among some of the more thoughtful he found congenial society +and kindly appreciation, especially in the little knot of undergraduates +who gathered round a young don called Gerald Newby.</p> + +<p>Sainty was just ripe for some one to worship, and Newby supplied the +object beautifully. In all his reserved, unhappy boyhood, he had never +known the joy of that falling in friendship, so to speak, which is one +of youth’s happiest<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_45">{45}</a></span> prerogatives. The only two companions for whom he +had felt much affection, his cousin and his brother, had certainly given +him more pain than pleasure. The generous delights of an enthusiastic +admiration had hitherto been withheld from him. This young man, +sufficiently his senior to speak to his troubled soul with a certain +authority, yet near enough to his own age for discussion on equal terms, +excited such a feeling in the highest degree.</p> + +<p>It is difficult for older people not to smile at very young men’s +estimates of themselves or of one another. Newby had opinions, splendid +opinions, on all sorts of subjects, which his disciple imbibed with +rapture. Sainty took his young mentor quite seriously, and Gerald, it +need hardly be said, took himself quite seriously; and between them they +were sublimely earnest and high-toned, and perhaps, if the truth must be +told, just a trifle priggish.</p> + +<p>For one thing, of course, Sainty had ‘doubts.’ It is not to be supposed +that a youth with a morbid conscience, a tender heart, a keen mind and +delicate health, reared in Lady Charmington’s school of extreme +Calvinistic theology, should have reached the age of eighteen without +many searchings of heart.</p> + +<p>Little as this profane page may seem the place for the discussion of +such subjects, it would be impossible to give an adequate notion of +Sainty’s life at Cambridge or his relations with Gerald Newby, without a +passing reference to the topics that kept them from their beds far into +the small hours of many a chilly morning.</p> + +<p>Young men of Gerald Newby’s stamp can conceive of nothing that is not +the better for being ‘threshed out,’ as he would have called it. He held +that if the old creeds were ‘outworn,’ it was no reason for abandoning +faith—that there was to be evolution in belief as in other things; and +he had dreams of an universal Church freed from strangling dogmas, in +which all sincere seekers after truth should meet in a common +brotherhood. Perhaps he was a little vague as to what was to be left as +the object of belief, when every<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_46">{46}</a></span>thing had been eliminated in which the +controversially inclined could find matter for discussion, but that did +not trouble him in the least.</p> + +<p>‘What we want,’ he said to Sainty, ‘is more light. All churches in all +ages have been alike in the mistake of endeavouring to stifle discussion +of their doctrines. Discussion is the breath of life; unquestioning +acceptance is death.’</p> + +<p>‘But once one begins questioning things, one is so apt to find one +doesn’t believe them——’</p> + +<p>‘Then let them go. Depend upon it, what won’t bear the investigation of +reason cannot be worth keeping. The truth, and the truth only, must +emerge clearer and purer from every test to which it is submitted; and +it is the truth we want. Why, when in all other departments of knowledge +our understanding becomes truer and stronger every year, should we seek +to stultify ourselves and shrink from all growth in the highest science +of all, that which deals with the fount of all knowledge, and the spring +of all conduct?’</p> + +<p>‘But suppose,’ Sainty asked, ‘one should find in the end that one +believes nothing?’</p> + +<p>‘Then believe nothing,’ said Newby grandly. ‘But I won’t, I can’t, +suppose any such thing; it is belief that comes of inquiry, not the +negation of belief.’</p> + +<p>Sainty was very much impressed. He had never before had any one to whom +he could unburthen himself on these subjects. His mother, he knew well, +would have revolted in horror from any questioning of the doctrines she +herself accepted, and his uncle would not have approached the discussion +in that serious spirit which alone he thought befitting. But the lads +who assembled evening after evening in Newby’s rooms had no angelic fear +of treading on anything, and talked everlastingly on all subjects, +religious doubt or belief among the rest. If they found the world out of +joint they by no means shared Hamlet’s distress at being ‘born to set it +right,’ or doubted for a moment their perfect ability to do so. These +boys who so confidently settled the<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_47">{47}</a></span> affairs of the nation, the world, +the universe, are getting middle-aged men now, hard-working public +officials, clergymen, schoolmasters, and would probably smile at their +own youthful enthusiasms. Many of them are married and fathers of +families. Newby himself is senior dean of the college, and a very +different person from the ardent apostle of universal belief and +brotherhood to whom Sainty brought so many of his perplexities.</p> + +<p>Belchamber spent an immense amount of time in the young don’s +comfortable rooms. A kind of sensual austerity marked the place, +something cloistral and monastic, yet with a touch of art and luxury. +Pale autumnal sunlight, or the soft glow of shaded lamps, lingered +lovingly on the backs of well-bound books, some large framed photographs +of early Italian Madonnas, and a reproduction of a Neapolitan bronze. A +great many teacups reflected the fire, while a permanent faint smell of +tobacco just gave a masculine character to the mellow warmth of the +atmosphere. Several armchairs and a huge sofa seemed always trying, by +the sad colour and severe pattern of their coverings, to conceal the +fact of their depth and softness, just as their owner, who had a +handsome refined face and a well-knit frame, affected a slouch and wore +shabby clothes to show he was not vain.</p> + +<p>If Sainty poured himself out to Gerald when they were alone, he took but +little share in the general discussions, when other people were present. +To express himself was always a difficulty to him; he lay, as it were, +on the margin of the pool of talk, into which one eager speaker after +another dashed past him while he was still trying to summon courage for +the plunge. It would sometimes happen that at the end of a long evening +he had not opened his mouth, and he was taken to task more than once on +the subject by his friend. ‘You really should try and talk more; men +take your silence for ungraciousness. It looks as if you didn’t think +them even worth disagreeing with, you know. Locke asked me to-day if you +weren’t very proud; he said you sat all the time he was talking about +the essential Christianity of Shelley’s point of<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_48">{48}</a></span> view, the other night, +with a little supercilious expression which said plainer than words that +you thought him a fool.’</p> + +<p>‘Oh dear! and I was so much interested,’ Sainty cried. ‘I had nothing +particular to say about it; to tell the truth, I had never thought of +Shelley exactly from that point of view, but I liked it all so much.’</p> + +<p>‘Well, you should have told him so; you see, you didn’t convey that +impression to Locke.’</p> + +<p>Gerald was by no means always tender with his proselyte. He had great +belief in his own powers of sympathy—(‘I understand,’ he used to say in +a meaning way to those who laid bare their difficulties to him)—but he +was quite capable of ‘smiting friendly and reproving’ when the occasion +seemed to demand it. ‘I shouldn’t be your friend, if I didn’t say ...’ +was a favourite formula with him, and he constantly invited an equal +frankness in others, though it is doubtful how he would have liked the +invitation to be accepted.</p> + +<p>‘I have been thinking a good deal,’ he said, pausing in the act of +making tea, and turning to Sainty with the kettle in one hand, ‘about +what you said the other day of shunning uncongenial society. Of course +there is a great deal of truth in it, and nothing obliges one to live +habitually with people with whom one has nothing in common, but one has +a duty to the outside world as well as to oneself.’</p> + +<p>‘I can no more be myself with certain people,’ Sainty objected, ‘than I +can write my own handwriting on paper I don’t like.’</p> + +<p>‘Of course we all feel that,’ responded Gerald rather brutally, ‘but +there are two things to consider: in the first place, there’s the danger +to one’s own character of getting narrow and cliquey; and in the second, +unless you have something to do with men who are your inferiors in aim +or culture, how are you to influence them for better things?’</p> + +<p>‘I don’t say they are my inferiors,’ said Sainty humbly; ‘I only say +they are so unlike me in their habits and point of view that I can’t +talk to them. They may be quite as good<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_49">{49}</a></span> fellows as I am; probably they +think themselves much better——’</p> + +<p>‘Yes, but <i>you</i> don’t think so; you know you don’t,’ insisted his mentor +sternly. ‘Ah! you are looking at that Giotto; it’s from the Arena Chapel +at Padua; it’s a jolly thing, isn’t it? The meekness of the Virgin’s +expression is so wonderful. Those fellows lost so much of the religious +feeling when they ceased to be archaic. Probably you don’t cordially +like or approve even of all the fellows you meet here. I don’t +altogether myself. But it is one of my principles to welcome all sorts +of men. It is not only that I think they may get good from us, but they +teach us too. We must try to be broad, to keep our sympathies open on +all sides, to be in touch with every kind of person, if we hope to do +any good.’</p> + +<p>‘You are like St. Paul,’ said Sainty quite seriously; ‘it is very +wonderful of you. I wish I was more adaptable, but people shut me up +so.’</p> + +<p>Newby smilingly deprecated the likeness to St. Paul, but in his heart he +thought it quite true. ‘Take Parsons, for instance,’ he said; ‘do you +suppose I am not often shocked by things he says? Yet I think he keeps +us fresh, as it were; he is bracing, stimulating, useful, if only as +keeping alive in us the wholesome reprobation of some of the views he +thinks it necessary to advocate. And look at the matter from his point +of view. It is far better he should come here, and find his own level, +and meet with wholesome disagreement, than be driven into thinking +himself a social pariah persecuted for his opinions, or surround himself +with a little set of duller men, who would take what he says for gospel, +and on whom his influence would be wholly bad.’</p> + +<p>‘I don’t like Ned Parsons,’ said Sainty simply. ‘I know he’s clever and +amusing and all that, but I think he’s rather a beast.’</p> + +<p>They were interrupted by the arrival of several undergraduates, +including the subject of their discussion, the pursuit of which had +therefore to be postponed to a more fitting opportunity.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_50">{50}</a></span></p> + +<p>‘Yes, Newby,’ said Parsons, settling himself luxuriously in the deepest +armchair, ‘I will take a cup of tea, though I should prefer a whisky and +soda. And what might we be going to improve ourselves with to-night? the +religious opinions of Swinburne, or the relation of the Ego to the +non-Ego?’</p> + +<p>‘You are incurably flippant, Ned,’ said Gerald, with an indulgent smile.</p> + +<p>‘Here we all are, burning to be enlightened,’ continued Parsons. ‘Pray +don’t deny us the tonic of stimulating conversation.’</p> + +<p>‘I’ve been wondering,’ innocently struck in a large rowing man, whom Ned +described as having ‘aspirations after higher things,’ ‘what it is that +keeps us all together, when we’ve so little in common, and I’ve come to +the conclusion it must be our sense of humour.’</p> + +<p>‘Quite right, Og; no doubt it is,’ said Parsons approvingly. ‘And you +and Newby are specially rich in it; and so is Sainty over there in the +corner, though he is funny by stealth and blushes to find it fame.’</p> + +<p>The room was growing full of smoke and of the buzz of voices; Newby was +holding forth to a small knot of admirers. ‘The Radicalism of Mill,’ he +was saying, ‘is as dead as the dodo; all the things that were vital to +his generation have been attained——’</p> + +<p>‘How about female suffrage?’ Parsons asked.</p> + +<p>‘But there is a newer Radicalism,’ Gerald went on, without paying any +attention, ‘which is not incompatible with Imperialism in its best +forms——’</p> + +<p>‘All Radicalism,’ said the rowing man sententiously, with the air of +making a valuable contribution to contemporary thought, ‘tends to +Socialism——’</p> + +<p>‘Well, yes, in a way you may say it does,’ assented Newby politely; ‘but +that in my mind is not altogether an objection. The word Socialism used +to be a bugbear to frighten children with; but there is a new Socialism +as there is a new Radicalism. If you come to think of it, all +interference by<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_51">{51}</a></span> the State is a form of Socialism; it is the community +at work for the good of the community, instead of the individual making +weak and isolated effort for his own good——’</p> + +<p>‘Poor dear Mill!’ interjected Ringwood, a young man who in those days +would have been called ‘æsthetic,’ ‘it is a pity he is so <i>vieux jeu</i>; +he had such a nice refined face, and learned Greek as a baby, and it was +so nice and unconventional of him to want women in parliament. Perhaps +in time parliament may come to be all women, and men be free to look +after things that really matter.’</p> + +<p>‘Such as old china,’ said Parsons.</p> + +<p>‘Women,’ said the rowing man, ‘should stick to woman’s province; her +home and children should be enough for any woman.’</p> + +<p>‘And suppose she hasn’t got any?’ asked Ned.</p> + +<p>‘But I see what Ringwood means,’ said the rowing man. ‘Of course +politics are very important and all that; far be it from me to deny it. +For my part I’m a Conservative, and I don’t care who knows it. But the +thing that really matters is no doubt the intellectual life.’</p> + +<p>Even Newby smiled discreetly.</p> + +<p>‘No doubt, no doubt,’ he said. ‘There is a great deal in what you say; +but it is essential that politics should not be left to inferior men, or +what becomes of the nation? Look at America with her venal professional +politicians, and see what it has brought her to. Depend upon it, it is +the intellectual element in parliament that leavens the lump. Our +thinkers must not shut themselves up from public life; we must go down +into the arena and put the result of our thought into action, if we hope +to do any good in our generation.’</p> + +<p>This magnificent sentiment was applauded as it deserved to be, but Newby +had not nearly had his innings. He had much more to say about the new +Radicalism and the new Socialism, and he talked so beautifully of the +wickedness of being a hermit that Sainty resolved to widen his horizon +by asking Ned Parsons to lunch next day, and proceeded at once to ‘put +the result of his thought into action.’</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_52">{52}</a></span></p> + +<p>It was not often that he indulged in the luxury of entertaining. He had +none of that genial desire for presiding which to many a man makes the +top of his own table such an exciting position; moreover, he had been +trained in the practice of the most careful economy, and had been +accustomed to hear his mother condemn unnecessary profusion as hardly +less sinful than irreligion.</p> + +<p>The question of his allowance had been carefully discussed between his +guardians, and the sum eventually decided on, although it would have +been treated as quite inadequate by most young men of his position, +seemed to him so ridiculously large that he was always endeavouring to +conceal the amount of it from his poorer companions. He did so entirely +from a feeling of delicacy; but it need hardly be said that his motives +were frequently misconstrued, and he was firmly believed by many to be +of a penurious and miserly disposition. As a matter of fact, if little +of it went in ostentatious hospitality, he spent still less upon +himself. Arthur early discovered that his brother was ‘a safer draw for +cash than the mater,’ and Claude, if he asked for help less often and +with more circumlocution, also found Sainty a convenient banker. Lady +Eva’s son was studying with a well-known coach for diplomacy, and though +he lived with his mamma, ‘found life in London,’ as he wrote to his +cousin, ‘horribly expensive.’ ‘I wear my gloves till people look +sympathetic when they shake hands with me, thinking I am in mourning, +and should as soon think of taking a hansom as a coach and four. But +cigarettes I must have; they are literally the breath of my nostrils, +and no matter how skilfully I hide them, mamma will find them and smoke +them when I’m out. If it were not for Sunborough House, I believe I +should starve. How, when, and where my revered parent feeds I am wholly +unable to discover; but there is never anything to eat at home. Luckily, +I am in high favour with grandmamma. I tell her she is the most +beautiful woman in London, and that if I wasn’t her grandson I should be +frantically in love with her, and she swallows it all. We are the best +of friends, but I<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_53">{53}</a></span> don’t get much out of her, except food and an +occasional back seat in her opera-box; and of course I have to make her +little presents <i>de temps en temps</i>. I ask myself, my dear Saint, how on +earth all the young men I see about, smiling and spruce, contrive to +live in this wicked costly place. They can’t <i>all</i> be millionaires.’ +This was the burthen of many letters. Belchamber smiled indulgently; he +couldn’t help being amused by them; they were certainly better reading +than the ill-spelt scrawls in which Arthur announced he was ‘infernal +hard-up.’ ‘What with subscriptions, and one thing and another, a fellow +had such lots of expenses at Eton, it was perfectly beastly, and the +mater kept him so precious tight, and always seemed to think because you +were at school you were a kid, and had no need of money.’ Unlike as were +their styles, the upshot of all the letters was the same: the youthful +writer was in pressing need of funds, and would ‘dear old Sainty’ kindly +supply the deficiency? And ‘dear old Sainty’ usually did.</p> + +<p>It is no doubt a very bad thing to be in want of money, but it is almost +worse to be the quarry at which the impecunious let fly all their +shafts; to know when you see a beloved handwriting on an envelope, that +it is hunger and not love that has set the pen travelling, and dictated +the letter that lies within. It is an experience that only comes to most +of us later in life; boys of Sainty’s age are not often called upon to +taste that half humorous bitterness. This was one of the few troubles +about which Sainty did not consult Gerald Newby. He knew instinctively +that his virtuous friend would have little sympathy with his supplying +the funds of luxury and extravagance. The double drain, of which neither +the amount nor the recurrence could ever be accurately foretold, kept +the boy perpetually anxious about money matters. Perhaps it really did +tend to make him, as people thought, unduly careful in his daily +expenditure; and, though he took infinite pains to conceal the fact, he +liked to be able to help humbler unfortunates than his brother or +cousin.</p> + +<p>Another eccentricity which showed his unfitness for the<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_54">{54}</a></span> state of life +to which he had the misfortune to be born, was his exaggerated +propensity for work; he had a real aptitude for scholarship, a love of +erudition for its own sake. No pains seemed too great to him, no +research too profound, for the illustration of a curious expression or +the elucidation of an obscure passage. There was a danger that his +health, never robust, might suffer from such close application. ‘If you +were a poor student,’ Newby said to him, ‘with your way to make in the +world, having come up from Glasgow with a bag of oatmeal, I should think +it most meritorious of you to peg away as you do, but for <i>you</i> to go +injuring your health by overwork is worse than unnecessary—it’s wrong.’</p> + +<p>‘My health does not seem to me such an unusually fine specimen that all +risk of injury to it must be avoided at any cost,’ Sainty answered. +‘Besides, what am I to do, if I don’t work? I know few people, and the +men I do know are all busy. I can’t play games or ride; when I am not +working I loaf, and you are always inveighing against loafing as the +root of all evil.’</p> + +<p>‘You should come out more, have more air,’ persisted Gerald.</p> + +<p>‘In the summer I am out a good deal, as you know,’ Sainty answered, ‘but +at this time of year I can’t sit out, and I can only do a very moderate +amount of walking without getting tired.’</p> + +<p>‘Why don’t you start a cart and pony?’ his friend asked.</p> + +<p>Sainty looked scared. ‘It costs such a lot to keep a cart and pony,’ he +said. ‘I do hire one sometimes,’</p> + +<p>‘What nonsense!’ Newby protested. ‘In your position it’s absurd to talk +as if you couldn’t afford a trifling thing like that. That’s the sort of +thing that makes fellows say you are screwy——’ He stopped rather +abruptly, having said more than he intended.</p> + +<p>Sainty froze instantly. ‘Oh! they say that, do they?’ he said, with an +expression which would have recalled Lady Charmington to Newby, had he +enjoyed the privilege of her<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_55">{55}</a></span> acquaintance. ‘Perhaps I am the best judge +of what I can afford.’</p> + +<p>Like many people who are theoretically in favour of independence, Gerald +resented it in his disciples. ‘For all your false air of humility,’ he +said, ‘one has only to scratch you to find the aristocrat.’</p> + +<p>It seemed to Sainty one more proof of the irony of fate that even such +qualities as his application to study and careful ordering of life’s +economy, which would have been held as highest virtues in many of his +fellow-students, by a curious process of inversion became almost faults +in him, faults too for which he must be rebuked by the mouth of Gerald +Newby, the great apostle of industry and frugality, and the one person +in the University whose praise would have been sweet and valuable to +him.</p> + +<p>‘The things you reproach me with are hardly aristocratic vices,’ he +said, with a sad little smile; ‘but are you quite consistent? You +lecture Parsons on his laziness, and Ringwood on his extravagance, and +then you come and try to drive me into being an idler and a spendthrift, +who have no gifts in those directions.’</p> + +<p>‘Of course, if you resent advice,’ Newby said, ‘I’m sorry; I have no +business to <i>lecture</i> you at all.’</p> + +<p>‘Ah Gerald!’ said Sainty, stretching a protesting hand; but Mentor was +nettled and would not immediately be mollified. It was on the tip of +Sainty’s tongue to explain his need of economy, but the story of his +mother’s long struggle to restore its solvency to their house seemed too +sacred and intimate to be told even to his dearest friend. The unveiling +of his own soul was only a personal immodesty, but his mother’s thrift +and Arthur’s premature dissipation could not be touched upon without a +sense of disloyalty to them from which he shrank.</p> + +<p>‘Let us go and get a trap and have a drive,’ he said.</p> + +<p>‘Thanks; I’m busy; I’m afraid I haven’t time,’ Newby said stiffly. ‘Did +you think I was hinting that I wanted to be taken out driving?’ and the +offended sage strode across<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_56">{56}</a></span> the court to his own rooms. Sainty heard +the man in the rooms below him, to whom a scholarship was a dire +necessity, being dragged forth to football by clamorous companions who +would take no denial. ‘Well, I won’t go and drive in an east wind and +get neuralgia all alone,’ he concluded, as he turned again to his table +piled up with learned commentaries.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_57">{57}</a></span></p> + +<h2><a id="CHAPTER_V">CHAPTER V</a></h2> + +<p class="nind"><span class="smcap">In</span> spite of his untoward mania for study, or rather because of it, the +years spent at Cambridge were the happiest of Sainty’s life. He allowed +himself to be dissuaded from going in for a scholarship, which he had +much wished to do, on the ground that, as he would certainly have got +it, it was grossly unfair to men to whom it was of real importance. +Balked in this ambition, he concentrated his efforts on his degree, but +here he encountered a new difficulty.</p> + +<p>It happened that his second year at the University was also the +twenty-first of his life, a coincidence which to most of his +fellow-students would have been productive of no derangement; but it +became apparent that in the very middle of the long vacation, just when +he hoped to go up to Cambridge and do his most valuable and undisturbed +work for the tripos, he had got to be present at a horrible function +known as ‘coming of age.’</p> + +<p>Nothing like serious hospitality on a large scale had been attempted at +Belchamber during the two-thirds of his life in which he had been the +nominal head of his family, but Lady Charmington was conscientiously +anxious that this event should lack no befitting pomp and ceremony. +Unfortunately, fourteen years of ceaseless watchfulness and economy are +not a good training for lavish display when the time demands it; so the +poor lady found herself much exercised in mind over many details, and +not a little perturbed at the thought of what it was all going to cost. +By no means a diffuse or prolific correspondent at ordinary times, she +began early in the May term to rain letters upon her son about the +selection of the house party for the great occasion. ‘Your Uncle<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_58">{58}</a></span> Cor,’ +she would write one week, ‘says that we must ask your grandmother and +the duke. Of course I am only anxious to do what is right, and I suppose +we must have them, though the duchess has never shown any particular +interest in you or Arthur. Tell me what <i>you</i> think about it.’ The next +it would be, ‘I am told there must be a ball, that there has always been +a coming-of-age ball; the county will expect it. Such things are not +much in my line, as you know, but I shouldn’t like anything to be +wanting that ought to be done, or that people expect.’</p> + +<p>To Sainty the whole thing loomed an unmitigated horror. What pleasing +anticipations, for instance, could the prospect of a ball awaken in a +young man, one of whose legs was shorter than the other, and to whom a +highly polished floor was nothing but a danger? He came to dread these +letters of his mother, each one of which contained some new detail of +the approaching martyrdom; such alarming obligations as the necessity of +a speech at the tenants’ dinner sprang suddenly on him at the turn of a +page, and left him gasping.</p> + +<p>‘You have rather a cold nature,’ his mother wrote, ‘not very +imaginative, so I don’t feel I need fear your being carried off your +balance by all this fuss. If you were excitable and emotional like +Arthur, I should feel more anxious. In your case the danger is more that +you will take the whole thing as a matter of course, and not realise +fully the importance of this epoch in your life, and all the new +responsibilities it entails on you.’ Characteristic passages like the +above, scattered up and down the letters, seemed to give Sainty the +measure of his exact knowledge of his mother, and cast a flickering +light into the depths of her abysmal ignorance of him. The sense of a +somewhat unfair advantage bred in him by these revelations of his +superior insight brought into his love for her an element of almost +pitying tenderness which alone was wanting to rivet the chains of his +early acquired habit of obedience to her will.</p> + +<p>‘Are you afraid of your mother?’ Gerald Newby asked<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_59">{59}</a></span> him once, with some +scorn, in reply to his repeated assertion of the impossibility of going +counter to her wishes.</p> + +<p>‘I am very fond of her,’ Sainty answered, with gentle dignity. He had an +almost painful intuition of her sacrifices, her hopes, her frustrate +ambitions for him, and of the disappointment he must inevitably be to +her; he probably read into her not very complex emotions, fine shades of +sensibility from his own consciousness, after the manner of +tender-hearted ladies with their dogs, which made his sympathy for her a +little exaggerated. It was this habit of deference to her lightest wish +that sent him forth sorely against his will to make a solemn call on a +youth whom Lady Charmington had indicated for this attention. ‘My friend +Lady Eccleston has been staying here,’ she wrote, ‘with her daughter, +and I have asked them to come in August for your coming of age. She +tells me her son Thomas is at Cambridge. I didn’t know he had left +Harrow, but it seems he has been at the University two terms. She said +it would be very kind of you to call on him, and I hope you will, as his +mother is a friend of mine. If you find the young man agreeable, you +might ask him to come with his mother and sister in the vacation. <i>A +propos</i>, of course you will ask any of your own friends you would like; +we shall want some young men; there will be Cissy Eccleston and the two +de Lissac girls—only let me know in good time how many you ask.’</p> + +<p>On his way to show a grudging civility to Tommy Eccleston, Belchamber +revolved in his mind his mother’s parting injunction to provide a band +of youths for the feast. Luckily, here lay one ready indicated to his +hand, but as he ran over the restricted roll-call of his intimates, they +did not strike him as ornamental. Young Lord Springald and Sir Vaux +Hunter and their friends would have been the very people for the +occasion. They would have been voted ‘nice, gentlemanly young fellows,’ +or ‘fine, high-spirited lads,’ according as they were shy and dull, or +noisy and rowdy; but then, unfortunately, he did not know them. He could +not ask men whom he had spent two years in avoiding, and who had<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_60">{60}</a></span> +blackballed him for their club, but his terrible habit of appreciating +other people’s points of view showed him how unsuitable his own friends +would seem in the eyes of the duke and duchess. Gerald of course he +wanted, and Gerald would be at home and imposing anywhere. His uncle +Corstorphine at least, who had many friends among the intelligent +obscure, could be trusted to appreciate Gerald; but he inwardly hoped +that his friend might not select Lady Charmington as the recipient of +his views on revealed religion. Apart from Newby, his progress towards +the compilation of a list had been purely one of elimination up to the +time of his arrival at Mr. Eccleston’s lodgings. In response to his +knock, the voice of some one who evidently spoke with a jersey over his +head made muffled answer from an inner apartment.</p> + +<p>‘All right, damn you, wait a sec., there’s no hurry. I’m changing,’ and +a moment after the owner of the rooms appeared, a pleasant commonplace +pink youth struggling into a college blazer, with one shoe on and the +other dangling by its strings from his teeth.</p> + +<p>‘Hulloa! beg pardon,’ he remarked; ‘I thought you were Johnson, who was +coming to go down to the river with me. I thought as he was so quiet he +was probably smashing something,’ and he held out a blistered palm of +welcome.</p> + +<p>‘Oh! er—how d’ye do,’ said Sainty, laying his own in it with no +unnecessary cordiality. ‘My name’s Belchamber. My mother asked me to +call on you; she knows your mother, don’t you know. I should have come +sooner, but I didn’t know you were up.’</p> + +<p>‘Oh, it doesn’t matter; awfully good of you,’ answered Tommy. ‘Sit down, +won’t you; have some lunch?’ A piece of cold pressed beef and a boxed +tongue, with a pot of marmalade, showed that the host had himself +recently partaken of that meal.</p> + +<p>‘No thanks, I’ve had lunch,’ said Sainty. ‘But I oughtn’t to keep you; +you are just going out.’</p> + +<p>‘Oh no, not at all; there’s no hurry; I haven’t got to<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_61">{61}</a></span> be at the river +for half an hour. Besides, I’m waiting for Johnson; he said he’d come +and go down with me.’</p> + +<p>Then there was a moment of uneasy silence, broken with an effort by +Sainty.</p> + +<p>‘Your mother and sister have been staying with my mother,’ he remarked.</p> + +<p>‘No, really?’ said Tommy, with the faintest possible show of interest. +‘My mother stays about a lot; she’s awfully popular.’</p> + +<p>There was another pause, during which he finished putting on his shoes.</p> + +<p>‘I say, are you <i>sure</i> you won’t have some lunch?’ he cried suddenly, +with quite a show of eagerness. ‘Do. I’m afraid I haven’t got any cake +or anything, ‘cos I’m in training. Have a whisky and soda, won’t you?’</p> + +<p>‘No thanks, really not; I’ve just lunched. But I’m sure I’m keeping you +in.’</p> + +<p>‘Oh, that’s all right,’ Tommy responded genially, and added, not very +consistently, ‘I can’t think where that ass can be?’</p> + +<p>The conversation seemed in danger of collapsing altogether, when the +long-looked-for appearance of Johnson came as a welcome relief to both.</p> + +<p>‘Tommy, you brute, why ain’t you ready?’</p> + +<p>‘Well, I like that, when I’ve been waiting half an hour for you.’</p> + +<p>Sainty got up.</p> + +<p>‘Well, I mustn’t keep you,’ he said.</p> + +<p>‘Beg pardon; didn’t know you’d got any one here,’ said Johnson.</p> + +<p>‘Oh! Lord Belchamber—Mr. Johnson,’ said Eccleston, getting very red +over the fearful embarrassment of an introduction. Then to Sainty, who +remained standing, ‘Must you go? Awfully good of you to come; wish you’d +have had some lunch.’</p> + +<p>‘Good-bye,’ Sainty said. ‘I hope you’ll come and see me—D, Old Court. +Come to lunch or tea or something; or look me up in the evening if it +suits you better.’</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_62">{62}</a></span></p> + +<p>Sainty reported this conversation verbatim to Newby.</p> + +<p>‘You see,’ he said, ‘how hopeless it is for me to try and be gracious to +people with whom I have nothing in common. If you could have seen how +hard that poor boy struggled to look pleased to see me, and the grimness +with which I sat and scowled upon him, you would have felt sorry for us +both; you couldn’t have helped it.’</p> + +<p>‘Of course, if your idea of being gracious is to sit and scowl at +people——’ Newby said.</p> + +<p>‘I didn’t mean to; I wanted to wreathe my unfortunate features in +smiles, but it was not a success. I am sure I feel as kindly towards my +fellow-creatures as most people do; but I approach them with invincible +terror; and there is no such sure way of making a dog bite you, as to +think he is going to.’</p> + +<p>‘Then don’t think so,’ Newby said. ‘Have you <i>no</i> control over your +apprehensions? Strengthen yourself in any way you like. If you can do it +in no other way, say to yourself that you are a great personage and that +most men will be only too glad of your attentions.’</p> + +<p>‘Oh! but <i>that</i> is a way that I should <i>not</i> like,’ Sainty cried in +horror; ‘the one thing that finishes me completely is any idea that +people may think <i>I</i> think they could want to know me for such a +reason.’</p> + +<p>‘<span class="lftspc">“</span>The idea that people may think that you think,”<span class="lftspc">’</span> Gerald repeated. ‘My +dear Belchamber, this is very morbid. Do try and be simple.’ Like all +elaborately synthetical people, Newby was always preaching simplicity +and a return to nature.</p> + +<p>‘And the sad part of this individual failure,’ Sainty continued, ‘is +that I particularly wanted it to be a success. I had a purpose in +calling.’</p> + +<p>‘And what dark designs had you on this innocent fresher?’</p> + +<p>‘My mother told me to ask him to the horrible business in August; his +people are coming. By the way, she suggests that I should provide other +victims, and I can’t think of any one who would not be hopelessly +inappropriate and<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_63">{63}</a></span> bored to death. None of our friends <i>could</i> take the +thing seriously, except, perhaps, Og.’</p> + +<p>‘Well, he’s no use to you, as Providence having unkindly made him nearly +your twin, he has got, in a small way, the same business on, at home, +and <i>he</i> takes it seriously enough, I promise you. I happen to know, +because he has done me the honour to ask me to stay for it.’</p> + +<p>Sainty gave the cry of a thing in pain. ‘You haven’t accepted?’</p> + +<p>‘Well, I didn’t commit myself; I’m really not quite sure yet where I +shall be this Long. I rather want to go abroad, and perhaps do some +climbing. Holmes and Collinson want me to coach them part of the time, +and I thought we might combine the reading and the exercise, and drop +down to the Italian lakes in the autumn.’</p> + +<p>‘And I had so counted on your being there, Gerald,’ Sainty said. ‘You +are just the one person I did want. I felt there would be something +human about it all if I had you with me.’</p> + +<p>‘You never said so, you know,’ Newby interjected.</p> + +<p>Sainty felt the hot pricking sensation at the back of his eyes which was +the nearest he ever got to tears. He had so intensely desired that +Gerald should be at Belchamber in August, that it had not occurred to +him to put his desire into words; they had talked the subject over so +often that he took it for granted his friend would know that he looked +for his help on the occasion.</p> + +<p>‘I thought—’ he began, ‘I hoped—I suppose you would feel——’ He +couldn’t express just what he meant at the moment.</p> + +<p>‘You see, you didn’t ask me,’ Newby persisted, ‘whereas Og did.’</p> + +<p>‘Oh! go to Og, or Switzerland, or Hell, as far as I’m concerned,’ Sainty +broke out.</p> + +<p>Gerald laid a kind restraining hand upon his shoulder. ‘My dear boy, you +needn’t lose your temper and swear at me,’ he said; ‘I haven’t said I +wouldn’t come. I only said<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_64">{64}</a></span> you hadn’t asked me, and I couldn’t be +expected to assume that I was invited to your coming of age, unless you +said something about it.’</p> + +<p>Sainty was trembling all over; his little gust of passion had passed and +left him humbled and ashamed. How could he have spoken so to his friend?</p> + +<p>‘Oh! forgive me,’ he cried. ‘I suppose I felt in my heart such a need of +you, that I couldn’t but fancy you would know it.’</p> + +<p>Newby coughed uneasily. ‘For Heaven’s sake, don’t let us be +sentimental,’ he said, in his little, prim, dry manner.</p> + +<p>‘My mother says I am cold and unimaginative,’ Sainty answered sadly, +‘and you accuse me of hysteria. You can’t both be right; but anyway, I +suppose <i>I’m</i> wrong. After all, why should I assume that just because I +wanted you I was certain to get you? I haven’t so often got what I +wanted in life. I should have remembered that though you are nearly +everything to me, I am to you only one of a hundred men your kindness +has helped.’</p> + +<p>Gerald smiled. Like all Englishmen he had been frightened by the +indecency of a glimpse of naked emotion, but he was always prepared to +accept any amount of solid adulation soberly offered.</p> + +<p>‘You make too much of anything I may have been able to do for you,’ he +said graciously. ‘And affection is a great gift; I’m sure I’m very proud +that you like me and feel I have been of some use to you. I have no +doubt I can manage to make it fit in.’</p> + +<p>Sainty was profusely grateful; he really felt that Gerald had conferred +a tremendous favour on him, which is probably what Newby meant he should +feel.</p> + +<p>His other invitations were less successful. Even Ringwood, whom at last +he decided to ask, though he knew his mother and Arthur would say he was +an affected ass, had pledged himself to the rival celebration.</p> + +<p>Tommy Eccleston, to be sure, accepted. ‘Oh, thanks!’ he said, ‘very good +of you; I shall like it awfully.’</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_65">{65}</a></span></p> + +<p>So Sainty wrote and announced this meagre harvest to Lady Charmington, +who forthwith responded: ‘Do you mean to say that out of all the young +men you must know at Cambridge, you can only get two? Try and find two +more, or we shall be more women than men. Johnny Trafford is coming, and +I have asked Algy Montgomery, and of course there will be Claude, but +none of the other Trafford boys can come, and I know so few young men. +You see, we are such a lot of women. There is grandmamma (my mother, I +mean), and your Aunt Susie, and Lady Eccleston and her daughter, and +Alice de Lissac writes that her husband, she is sure, won’t come, so +there are three more women. And now the duchess insists on my asking +Lady Deans, whom I don’t know, and your Aunt Eva wants to bring a friend +of hers. I counted on your having lots of friends you would want asked, +or I should not have agreed.’</p> + +<p>At last, in despair, Sainty had recourse to Tommy Eccleston again, who +seemed sociable and friendly, and was the only person who had accepted +with anything like cordiality. ‘You haven’t got any friend you’d like to +bring, have you?’ Sainty asked.</p> + +<p>‘I think Johnson would come, if he was asked,’ said Tommy thoughtfully. +‘You see, between you and me, he’s rather sweet on my sister.’</p> + +<p>It only wanted two days to the end of the term, when the list was +finally completed in the most unexpected manner.</p> + +<p>Sainty was hobbling disconsolately across the court one evening, when he +almost ran into Parsons. Since he had invited this gentleman to lunch as +an attempt at greater catholicity, they had frequently met, and +something like friendship might by a little stretch of imagination be +said to exist between them. Sainty, feeling how very little strain their +intercourse would bear, was always careful not to tighten it unduly.</p> + +<p>‘I hear you are coming of age,’ Ned remarked, ‘and have got a regular +corroboree in honour of the event at the family fried-fish shop. I can’t +think why you haven’t asked me.’</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_66">{66}</a></span></p> + +<p>The intention was evidently humorous, but Sainty was a little taken +aback. The fact was that Parsons was the only man of whom he saw +anything like as much, whom he had not tried as the possible fourth +demanded by the necessity for sexual symmetry.</p> + +<p>‘Should you care about it?’ he asked, a little doubtfully.</p> + +<p>‘My dear fellow,’ Ned answered candidly, ‘don’t ask a poor devil like me +to a place like Belchamber; I should be ludicrously out of place. +Besides, you know, you don’t really like me. Of course I was only +joking.’</p> + +<p>Sainty was touched. Perhaps he had done Ned injustice. He certainly had +never been very civil to him, and Parsons had borne no malice.</p> + +<p>‘Will you come?’ he said.</p> + +<p>‘Do you mean it?’ said Ned. ‘Of course I will.’</p> + +<p>As Sainty wrote to announce this last recruit to Lady Charmington, he +could not help smiling at the thought of three out of the four who were +to represent his chosen intimates and cronies on the great occasion.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_67">{67}</a></span></p> + +<h2><a id="CHAPTER_VI">CHAPTER VI</a></h2> + +<p class="nind"><span class="smcap">During</span> the long years of Sainty’s minority there had been but a moderate +establishment kept at Belchamber. Lady Charmington had been anxious the +boys should be brought up there, and have the early associations which +alone make a place a home, though it would have been simpler and much +more comfortable to have lived in the dower-house, and some of her +relations had blamed her for not doing so.</p> + +<p>Sainty had hardly ever been into the great central body of the house, +where what were called the State Apartments seemed only to exist to be +shown to tourists by the housekeeper. A whole wing of guests’ and +servants’ rooms had been permanently closed, and was only occasionally +aired and inspected. Sometimes, when the boys were little, they had +played at hide-and-seek in the long vista of empty chambers; but for the +most part the family lived entirely in the west wing, much like royal +pensioners to whom a set of apartments had been granted in some unused +palace. Sainty had exactly the intense love for the place, not unmixed +with awe, which might have been felt by the child of a custodian. His +mother’s long habit of unquestioned and unquestioning authority, not +less than her constant inculcation of a sense of stewardship and +responsibility to a certain abstraction known as ‘the estate,’ had +combined with his natural modesty and self-effacement to eliminate all +sensation of personal ownership.</p> + +<p>In the stable one pair of carriage horses, Lady Charmington’s cobs and +favourite hack, the boys’ old ponies, and a riding horse or two, had +sufficed for all their needs; and old Bell the coachman had never wanted +more than the groom<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_68">{68}</a></span> and a couple of stable-lads under him, cheerfully +doing much of the work himself. The butler, who had been with them +fourteen years, was perhaps rather practical than ornamental, but could +turn his hand to anything, and the two footmen were lads from Lady +Charmington’s own bible-class in the village, released by their +proficiency in the scriptures from the necessity of following the +plough, to wear the badge of servitude upon their shining buttons. The +housekeeper and her ladyship’s maid held sound evangelical views, and +the morals and health of the under-servants were looked after with equal +care and sternness. Lady Charmington was thoroughly versed in the +spiritual state of the odd man, and could have told without a moment’s +hesitation the date of the third housemaid’s confirmation, or when the +scullery-maid last had a quinsy.</p> + +<p>Now, however, all was to be changed. Sainty came home to an atmosphere +of expansion and innovation. He found his uncle, Lord Corstorphine—whom +in future we must remember to call Lord Firth, the old earl having been +dead some years at the date of his grandson’s majority—in constant +consultation with his mother, consultations in which, to his extreme +embarrassment, he was expected to take part. He discovered that he had +absolutely no views as to the proper functions of a groom of the +chambers, or the relative undesirability of keeping a lot of young men +unemployed when you were alone, or having extra liveries into which, on +the occasion of a large party, temporary hirelings could be hastily +inducted; about whom, as Lady Charmington truly remarked, you could know +nothing, and who might steal the spoons and flirt with the maids. Old +carriages that had not seen the light of day for years were dragged from +their retirement and unveiled before him, while all the horse-dealers in +the county brought animals for his inspection of every shade of +unfitness for the duty of drawing them. Lord Firth’s political +engagements made his presence necessarily intermittent; he could but +seldom be there; and in his absence Lady Charmington would look +anxiously at her son, hoping for some expression of opinion from him, +but Sainty’s ignorance was only equalled<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_69">{69}</a></span> by his indifference. He tried +in vain to care whether, supposing the carriages were worth doing up at +all, they should be sent to London or confided to a provincial +renovator.</p> + +<p>As to the horses, as Bell scornfully told him, he ‘had never knowed one +end of a ‘oss from the other.’ On general principles he was on the side +of the least expenditure. If he had said what he really felt, it would +have been ‘Why need we live any differently because I shall be +twenty-one next month than we did when I was twenty? We have always had +all we wanted; why spend all this money on things that are not going to +give me the smallest pleasure—rather the reverse?’ But these are the +things one must not say. He looked at his mother’s wistful face and +strove manfully to show the interest in all these questions which was +expected of him.</p> + +<p>Arthur, when presently he came home, having just left Eton for good, +flung himself into the whole business with very different gusto. The +spending of money, either his own or other people’s, was always a +genuine pleasure to this young man, and the horse-coping afforded +opportunities for displaying to an admiring audience a knowingness quite +amazing in one so young, and a pair of irreproachable riding-breeches. +Once when Sainty was walking in the shrubbery that masked the +stable-yard he overheard the dealer from Great Charmington expressing +himself to Bell with a freedom in which he would not have indulged had +he known who was behind the wall.</p> + +<p>‘I’d a deal rather have to do with Lord Arthur,’ he was saying, ‘than +with either my lord or my lady. His lordship, he don’t want no horse at +all; Lady Charmington, she knows a good horse when she sees ‘im, but she +don’t want to pay for ‘im; but Lord Arthur, he wants a good article, and +he’s willing to pay a good price. He’s a gentleman, he is.’</p> + +<p>‘Ah!’ answered Bell, ‘it’s a pity ’e wasn’t the eldest; ’e’d ’ave made +something like a markis, ’e would.’</p> + +<p>It was the old old story; the one thing poor Sainty seemed able to do +was to stand between his younger brother and<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_70">{70}</a></span> the position for which the +very stablemen saw his superior fitness.</p> + +<p>Arthur had been allowed to stay at Eton over his nineteenth birthday +that he might once more represent his school at Lord’s. A finer-looking +young fellow it would have been hard to find at this time, tall and fair +and ruddy, of athletic proportions and agreeable manners, a most +attractive personality, and as Sainty felt sadly, admiringly, but +without a touch of envy, a most complete contrast to his elder brother. +No one but Sainty, and he only imperfectly, knew the selfishness, the +carnal appetites, the imperious need of enjoyment, the lack of moral +sense, that lay beneath that smiling surface, or suspected the rock of +primitive obstinacy above which the floating growth of apparent +pliability waved so prettily in the tides of circumstance. Arthur had +not been at home a week before the usual demand for money made its +appearance. There is no doubt the younger brother had been extremely +useful to the elder just then; his happy presence had eased the strain +between Lady Charmington’s strenuous eagerness and Sainty’s +incompetence, and lent quite a spice of amusement to the fearful +upheaval in house and stable. The boys were together in what had been +their common sitting-room ever since it had been their schoolroom. +Sainty had had thoughts of asking for a study of his own, having much +need of somewhere to work undisturbed; but it seemed ungracious to ask +for the one thing that would have added to his comfort, when so much was +being done for him that gave him no pleasure whatever.</p> + +<p>Arthur, arrayed in a new pair of yellow boots, spotless white +‘flannels,’ and a lovely pink shirt, was whistling the airs from the +latest musical farce while oiling his favourite bat and sadly shaking +the table at which Sainty was trying to write a treatise on Epictetus.</p> + +<p>‘I don’t suppose, dear old boy,’ he said suavely, ‘that you could oblige +your little bwuvver with a small sum of money?’</p> + +<p>Sainty looked up quickly. ‘Why, Arthur,’ he said, rather sternly, ‘I +heard you tell mother you didn’t owe a penny<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_71">{71}</a></span> now. You know she offered +to pay any debts you had at Eton when you left, and you said you had +given her a complete list.’</p> + +<p>‘So I did, poor dear, and it made her hair curl. I even took my bill and +sat down quickly and wrote fifty,’ which was a hint I had got from the +passage of scripture she had read to us at prayers, so as to have a +little to go on with; but the fact is, dear boy, I’ve been cursedly +unlucky——’</p> + +<p>‘Arthur! you haven’t been betting?’</p> + +<p>‘Yes; you see that’s just what I have been doing. Damn it all, Sainty, +don’t look as if I’d been robbing a church. Every fellow has a little +something on his favourite horse: it’s not a crime.’</p> + +<p>Sainty stared aghast. He had often wondered how Arthur managed to get +rid of so much money at Eton, where, as he knew, though the boys were +absurdly extravagant, the opportunities for spending were not unlimited. +Now he understood, and a bottomless gulf seemed to open at his feet.</p> + +<p>‘Of course it’s only a temporary thing,’ Arthur went on. ‘I made a good +thing over Ascot, but I’ve been unlucky with the Eclipse; one can’t +always win, you know. Unfortunately these things have to be paid up, +don’t yer know. My bookie’s a very good sort of chap, but he’s got to +pay his losses, and he naturally wants his money. You can call it a +loan, if you like. I’ve got a splendid tip for the Leger——’</p> + +<p>Sainty looked down at his paper. Epictetus seemed to have gone a long +way off and become suddenly very unimportant since he had looked up from +it. He knew how useless it would be to expostulate; but he wanted time +to adjust his mind to this new terror.</p> + +<p>‘How did you come to know <i>how</i> to bet?’ he asked; ‘I mean the machinery +of the thing. Who introduced you to a bookmaker?’</p> + +<p>Arthur laughed aloud. ‘Upon my word I don’t remember,’ he said; ‘but I +assure you it’s not difficult. Half the fellows I know have a book on +all the meetings. I rather think it was Claude told me of this chap; +he’s a very good sort. The<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_72">{72}</a></span> man I went to before when I won a pony over +the Derby wrote and said my telegram had come too late. I wasn’t going +to stand that kind of thing, so I cut him, naturally——’</p> + +<p>Of course Arthur got what he wanted; it wasn’t, as it happened, a very +large sum. But Sainty was left with an abiding dread. He wondered +sometimes how it was that he saw so clearly the dangers that menaced his +brother, while Arthur himself remained so sublimely unconscious and +untroubled. The mention of Claude’s name in the matter, too, had +reawakened an old anxiety. He had supposed that after his cousin left +Eton Arthur would not be likely to have much to do with him except at +Belchamber, and under his own eye. Claude’s was an influence he +particularly dreaded for his brother, and it was evident that they had +at least been corresponding. He wondered if he ought to say anything to +his cousin about it, but he remembered the small effect such +interference on his part had always produced.</p> + +<p>The Morlands were among the first to arrive for the coming-of-age +festivities. Lady Eva had said, when she proposed it, that there must be +heaps of things to attend to, and she should love to be of use. It need +hardly be said that she was not. Her notion of offering assistance was +to look in when Lady Charmington was busy, and say, ‘Dear Sarah, I see I +should be dreadfully in the way just now; you will do much better +without poor silly me. I will take a book out under the trees.’</p> + +<p>Claude, on the other hand, was extraordinarily helpful. He was capable, +when it suited him, of taking immense pains, and he had a genius for +order and detail which was of incalculable service to his aunt and +cousin. He helped Lady Charmington and the housekeeper to arrange the +long disused rooms, he settled who should occupy each, and wrote out +lists of every kind of thing and person, in a beautiful, neat, clear +little handwriting. He was gay, tactful, amusing, good-humoured. Sainty +was overcome with gratitude, and felt it more than ever impossible to +take this smiling, affectionate person to task for such a little thing +as introducing<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_73">{73}</a></span> Arthur to a bookmaker. After all, it was not his <i>first</i> +introduction to a gentleman of that profession, and apparently all his +cousin had done was to substitute an honest for a dishonest member of +the ring.</p> + +<p>Claude’s attentions to his grandmother had not proved fruitless, for +when he failed, no one quite knew why, to pass his examinations for +diplomacy, she had persuaded the duke to take him as his private +secretary; and his experiences in that capacity made him now of +incalculable use in coping with the new groom of the chambers, a young +man of Olympian beauty, with a sepulchral voice and manner, who had been +the duchess’s footman, and in keeping the peace between him and the +butler, who regarded this recent acquisition with unconcealed distrust +and aversion. The establishment was now more or less on its new footing, +the unwieldy machine beginning to act, with much creaking and groaning +and a need of all the oil that Claude and Sainty could supply between +them.</p> + +<p>Old Lady Firth had been for some time installed in the warmest spare +bedroom in the family wing, with her maid next door to her, and her son +came down as soon as the session was over, giving up the ‘Twelfth’ with +a sad heart, but promising himself to fly to the golf-links and moors of +his native land as soon as he had done this last duty for his ward. +Sainty appreciated the sacrifice his uncle was making for him, and much +wanted to thank him for it, but only succeeded in feeling and looking +embarrassed.</p> + +<p>‘I’m sure it’s very good-natured of you coming here for this boring +business, Uncle Cor,’ he said suddenly one evening. ‘I feel sure you’d +rather be in the north.’</p> + +<p>‘I don’t know, my dear boy,’ answered his uncle patronisingly, ‘why you +should not give me credit for a natural interest in being present on +what is really rather a big occasion in your life.’</p> + +<p>‘It is so ungracious of Sainty,’ said Lady Charmington, ‘to persist on +looking on the whole thing merely as a bore, when we are all doing our +utmost to mark our sense of the event.’</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_74">{74}</a></span></p> + +<p>My dear mother,’ Sainty cried, ‘don’t think I don’t appreciate——’</p> + +<p>‘Oh, I don’t want to be thanked,’ his mother made haste to interrupt; +‘nor, I’m sure, does your uncle. We are only doing what we feel is our +duty; but it would be pleasant to know you took a little interest. I +believe no one takes so little interest in your coming of age as you do +yourself.’</p> + +<p>‘It does sometimes seem about the worst thing I could have done,’ Sainty +said bitterly, a remark not calculated to soothe his mother’s +susceptibilities. He wondered why, whenever he tried to express any +kindly feeling, it always appeared that he had said something +disagreeable, with the result that by the end of the conversation he +generally had actually done so.</p> + +<p>‘Who comes to-morrow, Aunt Sarah?’ inquired Claude tactfully. ‘I declare +I’ve forgotten, though we went through them only this morning.’</p> + +<p>‘Let me see,’ said Lady Charmington, swiftly reabsorbed in her duties as +mistress of the house; ‘Ecclestons, three; de Lissacs, three; my sister +Susan and Johnny, two; and a young man Firth has asked, Mr. Pryor. Algy +Montgomery has written that he can’t come till Monday; he will come with +his father and the duchess and the Rugbies. When do your Cambridge +friends come, Sainty?’</p> + +<p>‘Johnson comes to-morrow with the Ecclestons, mother: he’s Tommy +Eccleston’s friend more than mine; Parsons on Monday; Gerald Newby, I’m +afraid not till Tuesday.’</p> + +<p>It will be seen that a tolerably large party was being gathered +together. The actual festivities were to occupy two days—Wednesday, +which was Sainty’s birthday, and the following day; and not only was +Belchamber being once more filled with guests, but Hawley and the +Grange, and even some bigger houses further afield were preparing to +bring over large contingents for the garden party and ball.</p> + +<p>‘Do you think we had better dine in the big dining-room to-morrow +night?’ Lady Charmington asked.</p> + +<p>‘Oh, not till Monday,’ Sainty pleaded; ‘surely that’ll be<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_75">{75}</a></span> time enough, +mother. This room is quite big enough for to-morrow’s dinner.’</p> + +<p>Lady Firth, who was dreading the draughts in the great banqueting-hall, +and secretly wondering if she would not dine upstairs the first night it +was used, and let the rest of the party air it for her, was strongly of +Sainty’s opinion.</p> + +<p>‘Do let’s stay a family party as long as we can,’ said Lady Eva. ‘With +mamma’s advent on Monday we shall inevitably become very <i>mondain</i>. Who +are all these smart people she has insisted on adding to the party?’</p> + +<p>‘The Nonsuches are cousins and old friends,’ Lady Charmington answered +grimly; ‘but your mother wished Lord and Lady Dalsany asked, and Lady +Deans; I confess I don’t quite see why. I suppose she thought she would +be bored here unless she provided her own company.’</p> + +<p>Lady Eva laughed as if her sister-in-law had said something witty.</p> + +<p>‘Oh! is Vere Deans coming? That will be nice!’ exclaimed a young lady +who had come with Lady Eva. Amy Winston dabbled in literature, and spelt +her name Aimée. She always wore black, white, or yellow, and still +looked remarkably handsome in the evening. ‘She is a dear, and so +clever,’ Lady Eva had said of her; ‘writes, you know, and dresses so +well on simply nothing. You would love her.’</p> + +<p>If Lady Charmington did love Miss Winston, she disguised the feeling +with perfect success. ‘Is Lady Deans a friend of yours?’ she asked +coldly.</p> + +<p>‘Oh no!’ said Miss Winston; but I’m simply dying to know her. She’s so +handsome, and has such splendid jewels, and they say she’s so wicked.’</p> + +<p>‘I hope not,’ Lady Charmington returned, with an increase of severity; +‘but if she were, it seems a strange reason for wishing to know her.’</p> + +<p>Every day now some of the renovated carriages rolled up from the +station, bringing recruits to the house party, in one of whom the reader +will be pleased to recognise an old friend. The Mrs. de Lissac, of whom +mention has several times been<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_76">{76}</a></span> made, was no other than Sainty’s former +governess, Miss Meakins. Outwardly in rustle of silks and flash of +diamonds, and the deference with which the world treated her, Alice de +Lissac was a very different person from Alice Meakins, but inwardly she +was just the same kindly, tender, sentimental creature as ever. Riches, +which have such a corroding effect on some people, had left that shy +gentle heart quite untouched; they represented to her only delightful +means of doing good to her less fortunate brethren, and she was still +wondering why all the great ones of the earth were so kind to a poor +humble little creature like herself. It has been related in a former +chapter how this kind lady had entered the service of a Jewish family, +when she left Belchamber, as governess to two little girls.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Isaacs, her new employer, was a little, fiery, black-eyed woman of +immense social ambition, which grew with the steady growth of her +husband’s carefully accumulated wealth. She would have been the Napoleon +of London society, had she only lived, so instinctively did she grasp +the market value of her possessions in the exchange to which she brought +them. She had already effected the removal of the family from Lancaster +Gate to Grosvenor Square, and the metamorphosis of Isaacs into de +Lissac, when Death, who, alas! is no respecter of even the largest +fortunes, put a term to all her hopes. It seemed as though the very +energy that spurred her to ever fresh exertions was a fever burning in +her blood, and sapping while it stimulated her vital forces. Poor Madame +de Lissac!—as she insisted on being called—she died within sight of +the goal. To the end she fought her illness, and would stand with +trembling limbs and head aching under the weight of a huge tiara, while +the names of half the peerage shouted in her staircase gave her strength +to bear the pain that was killing her. Her widower remarked truly, +between his sobs, that it ‘would have been a comfort to Rachel’ to have +seen the cards that snowed on the hall table for days after the funeral.</p> + +<p>He, poor man, cared little for all this. He had been glad Rachel should +have it, just as he liked to give her superb<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_77">{77}</a></span> presents on her birthday, +and anything else his money could buy for her. Personally, his interest +was in his work; he did not like the great people who had eaten his food +and been rude to him. After a hard day in the city, he wanted his carpet +slippers, a big strong cigar, and a volume of Schiller by the fire, or +perhaps a sonata by Mozart or Beethoven.</p> + +<p>Alice Meakins was an angel in the bereaved household; the little girls +adored her, and gradually Mr. de Lissac found that he could not do +without her. The girls were just coming to an age when most of all they +needed the care of a mother; if she, of whom they were all so fond, +abandoned them, what would become of them? Poor Alice had a terrible +struggle. She was sincerely attached to the good man who had been the +most generous and considerate of employers, and she loved her charges +with all her heart. The great luxurious easy house had been the kindest +home to her. How could she turn away from all this warmth and affection? +‘You know—you know how I respect, how I love you, if I may say so,’ +cried the poor girl, with tears in her eyes; ‘and I’d lay down my life +for the children. But oh! Mr. de Lissac, feeling as I do about things, I +couldn’t marry any one who wasn’t a Christian.’</p> + +<p>And now the most wonderful thing came to pass. Her principles inspired +this shyest and humblest of human beings, who blushed if she had to +correct a pupil’s mistake, and to whom a difference of opinion was +almost a physical pain, with something of the spirit of the early +martyrs. She herself always considered that she had been miraculously +aided; perhaps a certain pagan divinity, whose assistance she would have +made haste to repudiate, counted for something in the matter. But +certain it is, that she was the means of leading a whole family after +her into the fold, and it may be imagined the excitement she was to Lady +Charmington under the circumstances. Mr. de Lissac had not been a very +fervent Jew, and he made a most unenthusiastic Christian; but he was +nominally converted. Instead of not attending the synagogue, he now +stayed away from church, and that satisfied his not very exacting +helpmate, to whom the permission to bring up<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_78">{78}</a></span> her stepdaughters in her +own faith gave the last brimming happiness in her cup of blessing. They +at least supplied all the warmth and devotion she demanded. An eminent +co-religionist of her husband’s, in the city, remarked to a friend: +‘Isaacs can shanshe his name, and shanshe his religion, but he cannot +shanshe his nose.’ Neither could he change his habits. He accompanied +his wife once to the rectory, and once to Belchamber, where the +rejoicing of the angels embarrassed him to the point of regretting that +he had not stayed in the wilderness; but his wife mostly made her +excursions to the scenes of her youth without him, and the present +occasion was no exception to the rule.</p> + +<p>Mrs. de Lissac was always fluttered and excited when she came to +Belchamber, and Sainty’s coming of age was just the sort of occasion to +appeal to her imagination. The young ladies were fine-looking girls: the +eldest, Gemma, whose biblical name Jemima had been thus abbreviated +about the time of the removal to Mayfair, was tall and slight, with a +clear olive paleness and almond eyes. Nora was more like her father, +shorter, and with more pronounced features, but with her mother’s +brilliant colour and black burning orbs. They were both a marked +contrast to Cissy Eccleston, who was the fairest, pinkest, and whitest +creature imaginable, with a little button of a nose, a more refined +etherealised edition of her brother Thomas. Lady Eccleston, too, had +been fair, but had grown a little red and wrinkled with time. She had an +astonishingly slight and youthful figure, with rather an elderly face. +Her hair, having a choice in the matter, had very naturally elected to +stay young with her waist rather than grow old with her countenance; +indeed, its adherence to the party of youth seemed to become more marked +with each succeeding year.</p> + +<p>This lady was slightly known to Sainty as a rather unlikely friend of +his mother; she was, in point of fact, of the nature of a favourite sin +to Lady Charmington. Her late husband, Sir Thomas Eccleston, K.C.B., had +been a permanent official in one of the Government offices, and had left +her with a<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_79">{79}</a></span> moderate competence, and a colossal visiting-list. She was +essentially in and of London, a Belgravian to the marrow of her bones. +Nothing but insufficiency of income could have prevented her living in +Eaton Square. As it was, she worshipped at its temple, the church of St. +Peter, and lived as immediately round the corner as her means permitted. +She shopped in Sloane Street, she had her books from Westerton’s, she +visited a ward in St. George’s Hospital; she also took a fashionable +interest in a poor East-end parish. In short, she mingled religion and +philanthropy with the punctual performance of her immense social duties +in exactly the proportion demanded by the society of which she was a +living, breathing, integral part. Much in so mundane a personage was at +first rather alarming to Lady Charmington; but they met in the committee +rooms of charity, who, among the multitude of sins she covers, could +surely spare a corner of her mantle for the few venial transgressions of +such a respectable devotee as Lady Eccleston. The very worldliness of +her relations made her a powerful factor for good works. She might +always be confidently relied upon for a duchess or minor royalty to head +a list of patronesses, or a rich friend ready to lend a big house for +drawing-room meetings; and even her deplorable habit of asking +theatrical people to dinner on Sundays had been proved to have its good +side, the professional gentlemen and ladies being very useful in giving +their services in aid of many deserving funds. No one was a more +practical hand at organising bazaars, concerts, tableaux, the various +conduits which brought to the objects of her own interest the +fertilising stream of other people’s money. She and Mrs. de Lissac and +their families had travelled from town together. Alice was made for Lady +Eccleston, who feasted at her expense, used her carriage, copied her +bonnets, directed her charities, and revised her visiting-list. They +were allies in many good works. The girls adored Cissy as only dark +girls can adore a creature composed of rose-leaves and sunlight, though +they were a little shocked at the triviality of her ideals, and the way +she occasionally spoke of her mother.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_80">{80}</a></span></p> + +<p>The visitors arrived about tea-time. Five o’clock tea had never been the +institution at Belchamber that it is in most country-houses, the +domestic altar where the high priestess makes her little daily sacrifice +of blue spirit flame and fragrant herb. Lady Charmington did not drink +tea as an everyday thing; being a rigid abstainer, she kept it for a +stimulant when she was tired, which was not often. When there was +company, a tray of half-cold cups ready poured out used to be handed +round by one of the footmen, the other following with cream and sugar, +and the butler bringing up the rear with a plate of bread and butter and +some spongecakes in a silver basket.</p> + +<p>For the present party, the wonderful Claude had brought about a charming +revolution. A pleasant table with its white cloth and gleaming silver +was spread under the cedars, at which he and Arthur and Aimée Winston +dispensed good things to the tired and dusty travellers.</p> + +<p>‘How good tea is after a journey,’ Lady Eccleston remarked, beaming on +the company.</p> + +<p>‘I never touch it,’ said Lady Firth, with a shudder; ‘it is destruction +to the nerves. This habit of five o’clock tea is having the most +deplorable effect on the younger generation. My maid, who has been with +me five-and-twenty years, always brings me a glass of taraxacum and hops +at half-past four; it is wonderfully strengthening.’</p> + +<p>‘Oh dear! it is very dreadful of me to like tea so much,’ cried poor +Lady Eccleston. ‘And I so agree with you, dear Lady Firth; we do all +live on our nerves so much, too much, nowadays. I declare now you put it +like that, I shall be quite afraid to drink it; but taraxacum——’</p> + +<p>‘Let me send for some for you,’ said Lady Firth earnestly; ‘you can’t +think the good it does you. I gave some to the dear bishop of +Griqualand, after that drawing-room meeting at my house, when he spoke +for two hours and a half, and was quite exhausted.’</p> + +<p>Hardly was Lady Eccleston able to escape the proffered<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_81">{81}</a></span> refreshment by +tender and well-timed inquiries after the dear bishop and his mission.</p> + +<p>Sainty, by reason of his lameness, was not expected to hand about +eatables. He sat, as he usually did, a little drawn back from the circle +about the table, talking little, noticing everything—Lady Eccleston’s +striving after cheap popularity, Mrs. de Lissac’s parted lips as she +listened to his mother, for whom she had retained all her old +reverential admiration, his uncle Firth’s bored expression as his Aunt +Susan Trafford held forth on some small bill that had been too hastily +passed at the end of the session, and the easy grace with which Claude +moved about among the groups, dispensing sugar or fruit, and saying +little laughing nothings to every one. ‘Really, he is marvellous,’ +Sainty thought; ‘it is impossible not to love him.’ Claude was solemn, +brief, and official with Sir John Trafford, the young M.P., knowing and +mysterious with Austin Pryor of the Stock Exchange, playful with Arthur, +<i>empressé</i> with the young ladies, and kindly civil to Tommy Eccleston +and Johnson, who were very shy, while always ready to fill the teapot +for Miss Winston, or hand a third cup to Lady Susan, who, like all great +talkers, was a thirsty soul.</p> + +<p>But something else seemed vaguely perceptible to Sainty, watching from +his low chair under the cedars, a sense of some secret bond or +understanding between his cousin and the tea-maker. What gives these +sudden intuitions? What silent, mysterious voice speaks to what inner +sense, when with all our outward senses we are receiving quite different +impressions? Claude failed in no shade of pretty deferential politeness +to Miss Winston; his manner had just that touch of insolence which it +had to all women, and which many of them take as a compliment. They were +the centre of a large party, and bathed in the clear golden light of a +summer afternoon. Sainty intercepted no meaning glance between them, no +contact of monitory fingers, yet he felt as if a curtain had been +momentarily withdrawn from some secret thing that he should not have +seen.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_82">{82}</a></span></p> + +<p>He roused himself with a start that was almost guilty, to find that Miss +Eccleston, who was sitting near him, had addressed a remark to him which +he had not heard.</p> + +<p>‘I beg your pardon,’ he said; ‘I didn’t know you were speaking to me.’ +Cissy laughed a little, clear, bubbling laugh.</p> + +<p>‘You were a thousand miles away,’ she said. ‘I wonder what you were +thinking of; but I am not so indiscreet as to ask; it was evidently none +of the present company. I hope I haven’t broken into some important +thing you were thinking out. I’m told you’re awfully clever and deep, +and read a lot.’</p> + +<p>‘You mustn’t believe all the harm you hear of people,’ Sainty said, with +a weak attempt at persiflage. He was thinking how pretty this fresh +young creature was, the childish face shaded by a great hat, the small +head rising flower-like from among the laces at her throat. No young +monk in his cloister had had less to do with girls than Sainty; it was a +curious fact that in his generation there were none in the family. Lady +Susan Trafford, like her sister and Lady Macbeth, had ‘brought forth men +children only.’ No early intimacy with sisters or girl cousins had +taught him any of their ways.</p> + +<p>‘You must have had a hot journey down,’ he remarked politely.</p> + +<p>‘Oh! it was unbearable,’ cried Cissy; ‘the carriage was like a furnace. +You can’t think how fresh and sweet it all seems here, after London.’</p> + +<p>‘We were on the Montagues’ yacht for Cowes, and did Goodwood from it; +you can’t think how delightful it was,’ said Lady Eccleston in a +slightly raised voice to Lady Eva. ‘They wanted us to go on a cruise +with them afterwards, but there were so many things I had to see to, I +was obliged to go back to town for a day or two before coming here, and +I wouldn’t have missed <i>this</i> visit for anything.’</p> + +<p>Cissy drew her chair a little nearer to Sainty, and dropped<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_83">{83}</a></span> her voice +to a confidential whisper. ‘Isn’t that like mamma? She heard me say we +had come from London, and all that was put in for fear you should think +we had stayed in town after the season was over.’</p> + +<p>‘For fear <i>I</i> should think?’ Sainty repeated, slightly bewildered.</p> + +<p>‘Oh! you or any one else,’ said Cissy. ‘Mamma would die if any one +thought she hadn’t more invitations than she could accept. I do wish she +wouldn’t listen to me when I’m talking to men; it makes me furious.’</p> + +<p>‘I’m sure you never say anything you would mind her hearing,’ said +Sainty rather priggishly.</p> + +<p>‘I wouldn’t answer for that, you know,’ rejoined Cissy, with an arch +expression of something not unlike contempt.</p> + +<p>If Sainty had been old Lady Firth, he could not have felt himself more +outside the sphere of the ordinary attraction of man to maid. When his +eye rested with admiration on Cissy Eccleston, his first thought had +been what a charming couple she and Arthur would make. He thought it +very kind of this pretty young lady to take pity on his disabilities, +but he felt that it was hard on her to be left to talk to him; he didn’t +want to monopolise her, and he looked round to see if some more suitable +companion were not within reach. As if in answer to his thought, Claude +came towards them at the moment.</p> + +<p>‘It is cooler now, Miss Eccleston,’ he said. ‘Some of us are going to +the kitchen-garden in search of gooseberries; do you care to come, or do +you despise gooseberries?’</p> + +<p>Cissy rose with alacrity. ‘I love ’em,’ she said simply.</p> + +<p>Sainty was quite inconsistently annoyed at the sight of the two standing +there before him. Had Arthur or one of the other boys come for her, he +would have been glad, but he felt on a sudden that in the light of what +he had half surprised between his cousin and Miss Winston, Claude had no +right to come making eyes at this fair young creature. An impulse +stirred in him to snatch her away, to save her from he did not quite +know what. He rose too.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_84">{84}</a></span> ‘I am sure Miss Eccleston is tired,’ he said; +‘it’s a long way to the kitchen-garden; she had much better come in and +rest.’</p> + +<p>‘Oh, I’m never tired, except when I’m bored,’ said Cissy.</p> + +<p>‘I know who <i>is</i> tired,’ said Claude, with affectionate solicitude. ‘You +look quite done up, old chap; you ought to lie down before dinner. +Remember you’ve a lot before you.’ Sainty saw in a second how silly and +unreasonable he was being.</p> + +<p>‘Yes, you’re right,’ he said; ‘I am tired. I’ll go in.’</p> + +<p>Claude and Cissy moved off in the rear of the little procession of young +people that was beginning to stream across the lawn, and Sainty stood a +moment watching them. As he turned towards the house, he saw Miss +Winston, who had not gone with the others, also looking after the +retreating couple.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_85">{85}</a></span></p> + +<h2><a id="CHAPTER_VII">CHAPTER VII</a></h2> + +<p class="nind"><span class="smcap">The</span> Duchess of Sunborough had not revisited her former home since she +left it after the death of her first husband. Sainty had paid one or two +duty visits to his grandmother on the rare occasions of his being in +London, sometimes with his mother, sometimes alone. He had always found +the duchess smiling and debonair, very civil and entirely indifferent, a +most mysterious personality, both in her strange spurious youthfulness +and her entire detachment from family ties. She returned on the present +occasion as cheerful, as amiable, and as unembarrassed as though she +were paying a first visit to some distant acquaintances, in a place that +was entirely new to her. She was accompanied by her husband, his eldest +son and daughter-in-law, Lord and Lady Rugby, and one of his younger +sons, Algernon Montgomery, a young officer in the Life Guards. The duke +was a well-preserved, clean-shaven, spick-and-span old gentleman, whom +people were fond of citing as a typical nobleman, and indeed among the +dukes he made a very creditable appearance. Had he been the senior +partner of some large commercial house he would have passed unobserved +in a crowd of equally respectable-looking contemporaries on any suburban +railway. In his youth he had been a gambler and a rake, and had made his +first wife (the mother of his children) thoroughly unhappy by his +devotion to many ladies, chief among whom had been his present duchess; +but having at seventy outgrown his taste for youthful pleasures, he was +spoken of as a pillar of the State and a model of all the virtues. In +the year of Belchamber’s majority, a Tory government, of which his grace +was an inconspicuous<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_86">{86}</a></span> ornament, was busy making Great Britain what she +is among the nations. The Chamberses, as far as they had a political +creed, belonged, it is needless to say, to the same party. Lord Firth’s +family, on the other hand, had always been Whigs, and the old lord, as +well as the present one, had been a member of more than one Liberal +cabinet. It was Lady Susan in her younger days who had given vent to the +sentiment that she would as soon have married the footman as a +Conservative; but a recent cataclysm among the Liberals had driven this +ardent lady as well as her cooler brother into antagonism to their own +party, though they had not as yet been absorbed into the other. There +was a political flirtation going on between the duke and Lord Firth, who +found themselves in novel agreement as to the line their young relative +ought to take in politics. ‘When the Union is threatened, all minor +differences must be sunk,’ the duke said graciously; ‘when the ship has +sprung a leak, no matter what are our views of the way she should be +sailed, we must all take a hand at the pumps’; which made Claude call +his revered chief the ‘Pompier.’</p> + +<p>The guests were assembled before dinner in the great saloon, which even +in August had a chilly suggestion of not being habitually used.</p> + +<p>‘I hope,’ Lord Firth said, with an inviting side glance at his nephew, +‘that Belchamber will be able to help Hawley’s election. I don’t know +exactly what his views are——’ and here he paused long enough to give +Sainty an opportunity of making a profession of faith if he were so +minded. Nothing, however, was further from Sainty’s intention.</p> + +<p>‘I think Mr. Hawley’s election quite safe,’ he said; ‘it is fifty years +since the county returned anything but a Conservative,’ and he moved +away to take Ned Parsons, who had arrived since the other guests had +gone to dress, and present him to Lady Charmington.</p> + +<p>Sainty had been a little apprehensive how Ned would fit into the +picture. Parsons had grafted on to the slovenliness that was either +natural or affected at Cambridge a rather<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_87">{87}</a></span> aggressive splendour; though +a rebel tuft waved defiance on his crown, and his shirt-front was a +little crumpled, his collar and tie were of the moment, his pumps were +new and glossy, and he wore a gardenia in his buttonhole. Lady +Charmington was talking to Lord and Lady Rugby. Lord Rugby was +explaining with tactful grace that it was lucky Sainty had been born in +the summer, otherwise he, as a M.F.H., could not possibly have been +present on the occasion. From Easter to the beginning of the cub-hunting +he was, so to speak, at leisure, and had nothing to do but talk of last +winter’s hunting. Lady Rugby, though also a keen sportswoman, was +capable of other forms of amusement, and said for her part she liked a +‘bit of season,’ but ‘poor Rug was so bored in London it was a terror to +see him.’ She was dressed with the uncompromising neatness affected by +hunting-ladies; her complexion had that bricky tint that results from +much exposure to the weather at the covert side, and fashion decreeing +undulation, her naturally straight brown hair was crimped into a series +of little ridges and furrows, whose hardness of outline and mathematical +regularity suggested corrugated iron. Somewhat to Sainty’s surprise, Ned +fell into easy conversation with this horsey person, rather suggesting, +though he did not actually say it, that he spent his life in the saddle.</p> + +<p>But now the duchess appeared in all her glory, and dinner being +announced, Sainty offered his arm to his grandmother and headed the long +procession to the dining-hall.</p> + +<p>‘Well, my dear boy,’ she began, when they were seated, ‘and how have you +been lately? You don’t look strong; you must take care of yourself. What +do you drink? you look as if you wanted red wine. My doctor has put me +upon whisky. I hate it, but he says I am <i>goutteuse</i>. They call +everything gout nowadays; too silly, isn’t it?’</p> + +<p>‘I am sorry you haven’t been well, gr——’</p> + +<p>Sainty paused, and ‘grandmother’ died in his throat. It seemed so +ludicrously inappropriate to this festive apparition at his side. He +glanced with quite a new tenderness to<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_88">{88}</a></span> where old Lady Firth sat huddled +in shawls and then back to the lady on his right. Above the thick +frizzle of sherry-coloured chestnut that descended to the carefully +pencilled brows shone one of the duchess’s smaller tiaras—the great +Sunborough family crown was being kept for the ball on Thursday—the +little nose gleamed unnaturally white between the tired eyes heavily +rimmed with paint and the puffy cushions beneath them that merged into +the vivid carmine of the cheeks. The wrinkles under the chin were +gathered tightly into a great collar of diamonds and pearls sewn on a +broad black velvet. Below it the shoulders sloped away in their still +beautiful curves, displaying to the world with the indifference of long +habit their great expanse of lustreless pallor. The little of her +grace’s dress that was visible above the line of the table-cloth was of +a delicate peach colour embroidered in silver, and a huge bunch of +purple orchids cut with an almost brutal contrast against the excessive +whiteness of the flesh. She sat erect, placid, exhaling a faint +sweetness, not unlike the idol of some monstrous worship.</p> + +<p>‘Do you like the smell of my <i>verveine</i>?’ she asked. ‘I think every +woman should have her own <i>parfum</i>. I have it sewn into all my +<i>corsages</i>. I never could bear strong coarse scents. My daughter has +rather brutalised herself, and is quite capable of using patchouli. +Horror!’</p> + +<p>‘I’m afraid I don’t like scent at all,’ Sainty avowed penitently; ‘it +makes me feel rather sick always.’</p> + +<p>‘And now, tell me who every one is,’ continued the duchess affably. ‘Who +is the champagne blonde with the iridescent perlage trimming next your +brother?’</p> + +<p>‘That is Lady Eccleston,’ said Sainty.</p> + +<p>‘Oh! of course, she has been at Sunborough House at parties; one sees +her everywhere. I ought to have remembered her’; and the duchess sent a +gracious smile towards Lady Eccleston. ‘And the pretty girl that Claude +is flirting with is her daughter—one can see the likeness. <i>Elle est +très bien, la jeune fille</i>; charming. Madame de Lissac I know:<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_89">{89}</a></span> she is +<i>richissime</i> and very generous; and your mother tells me she was your +governess once; that is very romantic. The black girls are not her +daughters, <i>n’est-ce pas</i>?’</p> + +<p>‘Her step-daughters.’</p> + +<p>‘Ah yes. And the men? Pryor I know; they say he is making money and will +get on. The pink boy is <i>encore</i> a (what did you say?) Eccleston. They +resemble each other like peas, that family. And the untidy young man who +is amusing Aimée Winston so much? By the way, how came <i>she</i> here? With +your Aunt Eva, of course. She is not a nice girl.’</p> + +<p>The duchess delivered this condemnation with a most majestic air of +virtue. ‘I do not like a girl to be talked about,’ she continued; +‘afterwards, <i>je ne dis pas</i>; but before marriage a girl cannot be too +careful. She always succeeds with men, however. The duke declares she is +very clever; and one can see she is pleasing Mr.—— Who did you say he +was?’</p> + +<p>‘He is a Cambridge friend of mine; his name is Parsons.’</p> + +<p>‘He seems a nice fellow,’ Lady Rugby cut in from the other side of +Sainty. ‘I wonder if he is anything to do with the Leicestershire +Parsonses. My old uncle, Sir Tom Whittaker, who hunted the Scratchley +for years, married a widow, and one of her daughters married a Parsons. +I know it used to be a great joke in the family because he was a Parson, +don’t yer know.’</p> + +<p>‘I couldn’t say, I’m sure,’ Sainty answered; ‘you will have to ask him.’ +Really, Ned was fitting in beautifully, and if only his relationship to +Lady Whittaker could be established, he felt he need trouble no more +about him.</p> + +<p>The duchess yawned. ‘They are all charming, no doubt,’ she said; ‘but, +my dear boy, none of these people give much <i>éclat</i> to your coming of +age. I felt you must have a few people whose names people would know, +just to put into the <i>Morning Post</i>. And your mother has lived so long +out of the world she knows no one—but no one. I believe she is angry +with me for insisting on the Dalsanies and Vere Deans;<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_90">{90}</a></span> but I am used to +that; she has always been angry with me.’ This was getting on dangerous +ground.</p> + +<p>‘It is very good of you to take an interest,’ Sainty said in his +stiffest manner; but the duchess did not in the least wish to be treated +as family; she thought it <i>was</i> good of her.</p> + +<p>‘Oh! <i>du tout</i>,’ she said suavely. ‘Besides, it was not all unselfish. +Ella Dalsany plays piquet with me, and Dalsany takes a very good hand in +the duke’s whist. I suppose,’ she added tentatively, ‘your mother would +not allow a baccarat?’</p> + +<p>‘Good gracious!’ cried Sainty, much alarmed, ‘I don’t suppose there is a +card in the house.’</p> + +<p>‘Oh, I always travel with my little box,’ said his grandmother. ‘But we +must respect the prejudices of the <i>châtelaine</i>; we will only play +whist.’ This was before the days of the tyranny of bridge.</p> + +<p>The duchess glanced at Sir John Trafford, who was sitting at her right, +and seeing his attention engaged by the lady whom he had taken in, she +leaned a little towards her grandson, and sinking her voice +confidentially she murmured, ‘When I knew that your cousin here was +coming, I felt it was only kind to ask the Dalsanies; and if Ella had +her cavalier, then poor Dalsany must have <i>la belle comtesse</i> to amuse +him; he couldn’t be left out in the cold, poor dear.’</p> + +<p>‘Scandal, Hélo,’ Lady Rugby called out—(the duchess liked the younger +members of her family to call her by her Christian name). ‘When you have +on that expression, and I can’t hear what you say, I always know you are +taking away some one’s character.’</p> + +<p>‘Whose character is the duchess taking away?’ asked Sir John; ‘not mine, +I hope’; and this struck her grace as so humorous that she almost +choked.</p> + +<p>Sainty sat bewildered and vaguely pained. In the mouth of an old woman, +and that old woman his dead father’s mother, the playful innuendoes, +which to the duchess seemed only the ordinary small change of +dinner-table talk, struck him as signs of a monstrous depravity. He +glanced round the great room with its ceiling by La Guerre, and heavy +gilt<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_91">{91}</a></span> decorations, and the rows of portraits by Vandyke and Lely, down +the long table with its lights and flowers and massive plate, at the two +rows of flushed, eagerly talking people stretching away on either hand, +and his heart failed him. He wondered sadly why Ned Parsons, who was one +of six children in a little shabby rectory, and the de Lissac girls, +whose grandfather was said to have been a rag and bone merchant, should +seem perfectly at home among all these splendours, while he, the founder +of the feast, the owner of the house, who had been born and bred in it, +felt so curiously ill at ease at the head of his own table. Arthur, just +fresh from school, was chattering away to Lady Eccleston and Nora de +Lissac, between whom he sat, with the ease and assurance of an old +London diner-out. It was neither birth, breeding, nor custom, then, +which made people feel at home in society. Whence came this horrible +sensation of being out of place? After all, these people, who together +produced such a dazzling effect of glittering festivity, were +individually nothing but relations, old friends, undergraduates, +schoolboys. His mother, his grandmother, his uncle Cor, his aunts, his +former governess, his cousins, his brother; he had sat down with each +and all of them to a score of meals without feeling like the lady in +<i>Comus</i>. He feared it was very snobbish of him to be so disagreeably +affected by dining in an unaccustomed room and with an unusual number of +guests. Perhaps it was the duchess, with her shocking old shoulders and +naughty hints, and the little scent bags sewn into her bodice, who +brought such a disturbing atmosphere of the great world into his life. +If so, how much worse was it going to be next day, when she would be +reinforced by these threatened strangers of her own undoubted fashion +and loose morality? The thought of all these guilty married people, +cynically invited ‘for’ each other, filled him with horror. No doubt he +exaggerated, and took the whole matter more tragically than the +circumstances warranted, but he was very young and very unsophisticated, +and things that were not right appeared to him terribly and<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_92">{92}</a></span> +portentously wrong. He felt as though the home of his mother, of his own +innocent childhood, were being turned into a house of ill fame.</p> + +<p>But Tuesday, if it brought this last brimming influx of unwelcome +strangers, brought with them one supreme compensation in the person of +Gerald Newby. Gerald, who was making a cross-country journey, was +arriving at a different station from the other guests, several miles in +an opposite direction, and Sainty decided to drive his own confidential +pony to meet his friend. His mother looked grave when she heard of it, +and asked if he did not think it would be more civil for him to be there +to receive the Dalsanies and Lady Deans. ‘Oh no, mother; the last person +they would care to see is their host,’ Sainty said. ‘You will be here, +and Uncle Cor has promised to be about; he knows them all. I shan’t be +missed.’</p> + +<p>For once Sainty had his way, and drove off rejoicing in his escape. He +was generally nervous of driving alone, his lameness making him so +helpless in case of an accident; but to-day, that his conversation with +his friend might be quite free, he would not even take a groom with him. +He had so much to say to Gerald, so much which he could say to no one +else, that he wanted to pour it all out unchecked by fear of listening +ears. As he drove to the little roadside station in the shimmering heat +of the August afternoon, by great fields of waving corn, and under the +thick sleepy woods knee-deep in fern where he could hear the pheasants +scuttling and clucking, he felt a weight lifted off his heart; now at +last he would have some one to talk to, some one who understood. The +train was late, and the flies bothered the pony dreadfully, but at last +the long wait came to an end, and Newby, bronzed by foreign suns and +very cindery and dusty, emerged smiling from the station, and climbed +into the cart beside him.</p> + +<p>‘Oh! you have come yourself,’ he said; ‘that was very kind. Where’s your +man?’</p> + +<p>‘I came alone,’ Sainty answered; ‘I wanted to talk. I<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_93">{93}</a></span> wanted you all to +myself, and your portmanteau must sit behind; there was no room for the +groom.’ Something in Gerald’s face made him add playfully, ‘Did you +expect a coach and four? Am I not receiving you with sufficient +ceremony?’</p> + +<p>‘Oh, <i>me</i>!’ said Newby, with a little deprecating gesture of quite false +humility.</p> + +<p>Sainty wanted to hear all that his friend had been doing, of the +countries he had visited, the walks he had taken, the peaks he had +climbed; but for once Newby did not seem to be inclined to talk about +himself. He leaned back, beaming lazily on the passing landscape.</p> + +<p>‘After all,’ he said, ‘one may go where one will, to the grandest of +Swiss peaks, or the sunlight and flowers of Italy, but there is nothing +like this English country in the summer; it is so prosperous, so +established, at once homelike and ineffably high-bred, like the best of +our old landed aristocracy.’</p> + +<p>‘O Lord!’ Sainty cried. ‘That same landed aristocracy is smothering +<i>me</i>. Wait till you see the awful specimens who have come together to +rejoice in a new recruit to their ranks.’ And he launched out into a +tirade, as enthusiastic young people will, on the barbarism of the +English upper classes, their want of education and refinement, their +inability to appreciate intellectual pleasures, their low standard of +morality, and, above all, their entire self-satisfaction and conviction +of their own perfect rightness.’</p> + +<p>‘Look at the duke,’ he said; ‘there’s a man who owns the finest private +library in England. I don’t believe he knows even its chief treasures by +name. If it was sold to-morrow, and the shelves fronted with sham +book-backs, like the doors in the library at Belchamber, it wouldn’t +make the smallest difference to him. Rugby could keep his collection of +riding and driving-whips in them; I am told it is unique. He is a kind +of centaur; he can, and will, recount to you every run of last winter, +without omitting a fence or a ditch; but if you ask him the simplest +question about the history or archæology of the<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_94">{94}</a></span> country he hunts over, +he will stare at you as if you were a madman. What have I in common with +such people? By what curious freak of nature have I been born among +them?’</p> + +<p>‘Lord Rugby is the Duke of Sunborough’s eldest son, isn’t he?’ asked +Newby. ‘And the present duchess, if I’m not mistaken, is your +grandmother. I like to know who the people are that I’m going to meet.’</p> + +<p>‘My grandmother!’ said Sainty tragically. ‘Well, she’s my father’s +mother, and I mustn’t say how she affects me; but oh! heavens, Gerald, +wait till you see her! And she has asked some other people, whom I don’t +even know, but who all seem to be in love with each other’s wives, and +to have to be asked to meet each other as you would engaged couples. It +sickens me, I tell you. It’s an atmosphere I can’t breathe.’</p> + +<p>Somehow Newby, whom he had often heard give vent to sentiments of a +lofty and republican purity, and in whose mouth a favourite phrase was +‘the aristocracy of intellect,’ did not seem to enter as sympathetically +into his feelings as he had hoped. He continued smiling peacefully on +the prospect around him.</p> + +<p>‘And where do you begin?’ he asked presently, a little inconsequently.</p> + +<p>‘Where do I begin? How do you mean?’ Sainty stammered.</p> + +<p>‘I mean your property, your land. When do we come to your boundary?’</p> + +<p>‘Oh! the property,’ Sainty answered. ‘It’s pretty well all Belchamber +all the way, except just for a bit on the left of the road soon after we +started, where the Hawley woods cut in, in a sort of wedge.’</p> + +<p>Gerald nodded placidly, as if the thought gave him pleasure.</p> + +<p>‘I expect you’re tired after your journey, this hot weather,’ Sainty +said, finding his friend so languid. ‘Shall we shirk all the crowd, and +go and have some tea in the schoolroom when we get in?’</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_95">{95}</a></span></p> + +<p>‘Whatever you say, my dear boy,’ Newby agreed. ‘I am entirely in your +hands.’</p> + +<p>Sainty was aware of the slightest, most impalpable change in his +friend’s manner towards himself, just the faintest tinge of something +that might almost be called deferential in a person so naturally +authoritative as Newby; and this seemed to accentuate itself with every +acre of Chambers land across which they drove. It made him vaguely +uncomfortable; his denunciation of his peers seemed somehow to dwindle +and lose force in such an unfostering atmosphere. He had still a great +deal on his heart of which he longed to unburthen himself, but Gerald +was perversely interested in the size of the park and the number of +deer, and paid but a polite and perfunctory attention to his host’s +exposition of the sins of the British aristocracy. Later on, when they +joined the rest of the party, and Sainty, having been himself presented +to the newcomers, proceeded to perform the same office for Newby, he +noted with terror something that in any one else he would almost have +called obsequious in his friend’s attitude. He resolutely shut his eyes +to it; it was of course out of the question that a person of Newby’s +commanding intellect and noble independence of character could be in any +way affected by the mere baubles of wealth or rank in the people with +whom he came in contact. He wondered he could be so snobbish as to think +of such a thing, even to deny it; but he couldn’t help seeing that +Gerald’s manner to the duke and even his uncle Firth and Lord Dalsany +was not absolutely frank and unembarrassed.</p> + +<p>‘He is trying to make himself agreeable for my sake,’ Sainty thought. ‘A +man whose whole life has been spent in a bracing atmosphere of noble +thought cannot feel <i>at home</i> in the exhausted receiver that is called +“society”; but if he only knew how much better he appears with his own +natural manner, though it <i>is</i> a little dictatorial, he would not try +and soften it even for the sake of being civil to my guests.’ What with +trying not to observe that Newby smiled and bowed too much, and not to +watch for indications of the<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_96">{96}</a></span> good understanding at which his +grandmother had hinted as existing between certain members of the party, +Sainty spent an even more miserable evening than he had done the night +before.</p> + +<p>When the duke and Lord Nonsuch had smoked their elderly cigars and gone +to bed, he succeeded in persuading Newby that he was tired, and leaving +the rest of the party listening to Lord Dalsany’s Irish stories, he +accompanied his friend to his room, bent on having out the rest of the +talk of which he had been defrauded in the afternoon.</p> + +<p>‘It is awful, simply awful!’ he burst out, as he shut the door, ‘all +this horrible display and waste of money! I feel like Nero, sitting +through these long steamy dinners with too much to eat and too much to +drink, and thinking of the thousands of starving people who could be fed +for months on the money we waste on a meal.’</p> + +<p>‘That is very good of you, my dear lad,’ Newby answered, stretching +himself luxuriously in the armchair which he wheeled up to the open +window, ‘but not at all what Nero would have felt.’</p> + +<p>‘Don’t laugh at me, Gerald,’ Sainty said piteously. ‘I know it’s absurd +to rant and be highflown; but it nauseated me to hear Lady Deans talking +about these new clubs and restaurants and saying what a mercy it was to +have some place where one could get decent food. I thought of that woman +never spending less than a pound on her dinner, and thinking it was a +merit, while people were starving a few streets off. My bookseller told +me he wanted her to buy a six-shilling book the other day, and she said +she couldn’t afford it, she should get it from the library.’</p> + +<p>‘That tall lady on your left with the black pearls was the Countess +Deans then, whom one hears so much about,’ said Newby. ‘I didn’t catch +her name when you introduced me, but I thought it was she from her +photographs, though they don’t do her justice.’</p> + +<p>‘Grandmamma says she and Lord Dalsany are <i>au mieux</i>. Good God! what +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_97">{97}</a></span>does she mean? And that Lady Dalsany——Faugh! I can’t stir about this +dirt. Is this just their silly way of talking, or are they all really +people whom decent folk oughtn’t to ask into their houses?’</p> + +<p>‘Oh, you exaggerate,’ said Gerald, waving his hand gently. ‘You have +lived the life of an anchorite. These Londoners have their shibboleths, +and understand each other; the badinage of a great city is not meant to +be taken literally,’</p> + +<p>‘What <i>you</i> must think of it all!’ cried Sainty affectionately. He had +an uneasy feeling that Newby was not as much horrified as he ought to +be. ‘I hoped,’ he went on, ‘that you might have found some congenial +companionship in my uncle; but Uncle Cor disappoints me. When he gets +with all these smart people, he seems to sink to their level. I can’t +make him out. Seeing him to-night you would never guess what real +convictions he has. I have looked up to him all my life, but this +evening he appeared frivolous and cynical; I could hardly believe it was +he talking.’</p> + +<p>‘I thought Lord Firth charming,’ Gerald replied, with real conviction. +‘His talk seemed to me in just the right tone of easy playfulness for +light social intercourse, with ladies present. He was not in his place +in the House of Lords; nothing called for a profession of faith.’</p> + +<p>‘And I hate all this Unionist business,’ Sainty continued. ‘I never +thought I should live to see Uncle Cor, who has always been a Liberal, +and from whom I imbibed all my own politics till I met you, making up to +that old Tory duke. They tried to get some expression of agreement out +of me last night, but I wouldn’t say what was expected of me. You know +I’m a Radical, and a Home Ruler.’</p> + +<p>‘That is all very well for <i>me</i>,’ Gerald answered, ‘but, my dear child, +doesn’t it seem a little absurd in <i>your</i> position? Oh, don’t mistake +me. I don’t want you to deny your convictions, but there are so many +things one believes without flourishing them in the face of the public. +You wouldn’t, for instance, care to tell your mother just how you feel +about the doctrines of revealed religion——’</p> + +<p>Sainty drooped with discouragement. ‘It is true; it is<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_98">{98}</a></span> hideously true,’ +he said. ‘One is tied and bound with the chain of a hundred shams. Shall +I never be able to say what I really think? To-morrow, for instance, +nothing would content my mother but that the performances should begin +with a sort of thanksgiving service at Great Charmington. It is meant as +a solemn dedication of me. If I were really brave and honest, I should +refuse, but I think it would break my mother’s heart.’</p> + +<p>‘You are quite right, quite right; and why <i>should</i> you refuse? I am +sure you <i>do</i> dedicate yourself to the principle of good which rules the +universe. What more do you mean, what more need you mean?’</p> + +<p>‘My mother will take it as meaning much more, and I know that she does, +and so will Mrs. de Lissac and her dear old father; they will look on it +as giving in a solemn adherence to all their doctrines.’</p> + +<p>‘You take things too seriously, my Sainty,’ said Gerald, with an +indulgent smile.</p> + +<p>‘But it is you who have always exhorted me to take things seriously; I +have heard you inveigh a hundred times against the careless flippancy +that is the curse of our generation.’</p> + +<p>‘Good heavens!’ said Newby, suppressing a yawn; ‘have I invented a +Frankenstein monster, who is going to turn and devour me?’</p> + +<p>‘I don’t know you to-night, Gerald,’ Sainty said reproachfully. ‘You are +like my uncle; you seem changed somehow. Surely if there is ever a time +for serious thought and serious talk, it is the vigil of one’s +twenty-first birthday.’</p> + +<p>‘Ah yes,’ said Newby solemnly. ‘Don’t think I minimise the importance of +all to-morrow means to you. You are coming into your kingdom, and must +rule it wisely and well; but I don’t want you to make your first +appearance in arms tilting at windmills, my dear fellow, and alienating +all the people who are your natural allies.’</p> + +<p>‘I wanted to consult you,’ Sainty said, ‘about my speech to the tenants, +but you are tired and sleepy; it is a shame to keep you up.’</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_99">{99}</a></span></p> + +<p>‘Not at all, not at all,’ said Newby politely, with the most transparent +effort at interest.</p> + +<p>‘I was going to show you some heads I had put together, but I think I +won’t bother you; there is only just one thing I want to ask you. Ought +I to tell them what I really think and feel about things, about Home +Rule, for instance? Some sort of utterance will be expected of me about +politics, I feel sure.’</p> + +<p>‘Your uncle was talking most sensibly to me after dinner about that very +thing. “My family,” he said, “have always been Liberals, but this is a +Conservative county, and the agricultural population is always +Conservative. I have had, as you know, to differ from the chiefs of my +own party. It is a painful position. Luckily for Belchamber, he has not +been required to make the choice that I have found so hard; he inherits +his politics as he inherits his estate, both, I flatter myself, the +better for a little enlightened handling by his mother and myself. He +will not be a worse statesman for having come under some Liberal +influences in his youth.” It struck me as admirable.’</p> + +<p>‘Then you would have me be merely colourless, indulge in a few +platitudes, instead of saying what I think?’</p> + +<p>‘What good could you effect by starting in to preach Radicalism to a +tentful of Conservative farmers merry with beef and ale, supported on +one side by a duke who is a member of a Tory government, and on the +other by a Unionist earl?’</p> + +<p>Sainty sighed. ‘You know it is always fatally easy to me to hold my +tongue and let people think that I agree with them,’ he said bitterly; +‘courage has never been my strong point.’ He had looked to his friend +for counsel, for support, for the strength to tell the truth in the face +of all the world, the strength in which he felt himself so sadly +lacking. He left him baffled and discouraged, and all at sea as to what +he would do and say on the morrow.</p> + +<p>As he passed down the long corridor of bedrooms, he saw the last door +before the staircase open noiselessly a very little<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_100">{100}</a></span> way, as if some one +were looking out. When he came quite near to it, it was swiftly, but +still silently, closed again. The hinted scandals that had oppressed him +came crowding to his mind, thoughts of shameful, illicit things being +done in the great silent, dark house. He could not resist the curiosity +that made him lift his candle and read the name on the little ticket on +the door: it was Miss Winston’s.</p> + +<p>Sainty and Arthur still kept the rooms they had occupied as boys, which, +with the old schoolroom and another that had once been the tutor’s and +was now Claude’s, formed a small pavilion adjoining the west wing, and +consequently at the opposite extremity of the house from the guest +chambers. To regain his own room he had to cross the whole great central +part, now black and quiet as the grave. Just as he reached the door that +shut off the family wing, he heard some one behind it. No doubt the +tapping of his stick had warned whoever it was of his approach, for as +he opened it he saw a figure swiftly vanish into the room on the right. +His first impulse was to pass on and take no notice; then it struck him +that it might be a thief, and with the sudden courage of nervous people +he went into the room holding his light high, and cried ‘Who’s there?’ +He found himself face to face with his cousin. The stable clock struck +two at the moment.</p> + +<p>‘Good heavens! Sainty,’ said Claude, with an uneasy laugh, ‘who expected +to find <i>you</i> prowling about the house at this unearthly hour?’</p> + +<p>‘I have been sitting up talking to Newby,’ Sainty said rather sternly. +‘What are <i>you</i> doing dodging into rooms in the dark?’</p> + +<p>‘We have only just left the smoking-room. I came in here to get a book +to take up to your friend Parsons; he said he should like to see it.’</p> + +<p>‘Your candle is out; shall I give you a light?’ said Sainty.</p> + +<p>‘So it is,’ said Claude; ‘the draught from the door, no doubt. How lucky +I met you. Good-night, dear old man.’</p> + +<p>‘Good-night,’ said Sainty.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_101">{101}</a></span></p> + +<h2><a id="CHAPTER_VIII">CHAPTER VIII</a></h2> + +<p class="nind"><span class="smcap">Whether</span> or not there was truth in what Lady Charmington had said, that +no one took so little interest in the festivities of his coming of age +as Sainty himself, it certainly came about that hardly any one took so +little part in them.</p> + +<p>The memory of his birthday remained with him as a shifting +phantasmagoria of painful images that partook of the nature of a +nightmare. To be the principal figure in any pageant must always have a +charm for the imagination of youth, if combined with the ability to play +the part becomingly; but it is a very different matter for one conscious +in every nerve of his own inadequacy to be set up a butt for +disappointment, and a peep-show for ridicule.</p> + +<p>The day had begun with a message from his mother that she would like to +see him before prayers. He found her in her private sitting-room, where +the picture of his father which he had worshipped as a child was +enthroned on its gilt easel in the corner. Lady Charmington was clean +and cool from her morning toilet, her hair even smoother and tighter +than usual. She was dressed in her Sunday black silk, and seated in a +high-backed chair beside a little table, with the air of a priestess at +the altar. Her large serviceable hands were crossed on the Bible on her +lap. They had big knuckles and many rings, some of which, having been +her late husband’s, were more massive than is usual in a woman’s. +Sainty’s quick eye noticed that a signet she habitually wore was not +among them. He also saw that on the table beside her was an imposing +pile of ledgers, a small morocco box, and a book which, from its being +bound in black with depressing-looking soft flaps folding over the edges +of the leaves, he rightly conjectured to be a work of devotion.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_102">{102}</a></span></p> + +<p>Lady Charmington was not a demonstrative woman, and she was a very shy +one. She drew her son towards her, and gravely kissed him on the brow, +by no means a daily occurrence or matter of course between them; then +she plunged rather nervously into a little speech she had prepared for +the occasion.</p> + +<p>‘This is a solemn day for both you and me, Belchamber’ (he noticed that +she did not call him by the familiar nickname), ‘and one to which I have +long looked forward. I have worked hard,’ and she glanced at the pile of +account-books beside her, ‘in your interests. God forgive me if it is +wrong, but I fear it is not without pride that I come to you to-day to +give an account of my stewardship.’</p> + +<p>Sainty gently pressed his mother’s hand, which he still held. ‘Dearest +mother,’ he said, ‘I know well how hard you have worked, and all you +have done for me. I assure you I appreciate——’ But Lady Charmington +withdrew her hand, and held it up in deprecation.</p> + +<p>‘I do not wish to boast or to be thanked,’ she said, ‘but I think I may +truly say I have spared neither time nor labour. It has been my object +to be able to hand over the estate to you free of debt and unencumbered, +and I can do so. To-day my stewardship ends.’</p> + +<p>‘But oh, mother!’ Sainty broke in, ‘it mustn’t end to-day, nor, I hope, +for many days to come. You know how utterly inexperienced I am, and then +I have got to go back to Cambridge till I have taken my degree. You +won’t refuse to go on looking after everything just as you have always +done, will you?’</p> + +<p>Lady Charmington had lost the thread of her discourse; she looked rather +anxiously at her son.</p> + +<p>‘We have no time to-day to go into accounts,’ she said; ‘but some day, +when all these people have gone, you must give me an hour or two, and we +will go through everything.’</p> + +<p>‘Very well,’ said Sainty.</p> + +<p>‘Before we go down,’ his mother went on, ‘I must wish you many happy +returns, which I haven’t done yet, and give<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_103">{103}</a></span> you my little presents. The +new set of harness for your cart is with the other things; you saw that: +Arthur says your old one is a disgrace; but, besides that, here is your +father’s signet-ring, which I want you to wear,’ and she produced from +the morocco case the ring he had missed from her finger. ‘And this is a +little book I want you to use every morning and evening; you will find +it very helpful.’</p> + +<p>Sainty just touched the ring with his lips before he slipped it on his +finger, and glanced with passionate tenderness at the simpering image in +the corner. Then he began turning over the leaves of the little book +with its limp cover that reminded him of French plums. He was wondering +if honesty obliged him to say that he did not use such aids to devotion, +did not, in fact, very often pray at all. Finally, he decided that he +had not the courage to say anything of the sort, so he accepted the +volume without much enthusiasm, and put it in his pocket. Then, +detaining his mother as she was preparing to leave the room, ‘I want to +tell you, mother,’ he said, ‘that, though I don’t <i>say</i> much, I do +really value all you have done for me, and been to me, and Uncle Cor +too. Between you, you have almost done away with the disadvantage that +every boy must be under who has no father.’</p> + +<p>Lady Charmington was faintly stirred—probably she was pleased.</p> + +<p>‘There are many things, my son, that I should like different about you,’ +she said, ‘and especially I wish you stronger. But no one can say you +have ever been anything but a good boy.’ They went downstairs, both a +little moved by having performed the operation so difficult to the +British race, of displaying feeling.</p> + +<p>At breakfast the question had arisen of which of the party would attend +the service at Great Charmington parish church. This part of the +proceedings did not seem to find favour among most of the company, and +Lady Charmington’s brow grew dark as one after another excused himself. +The duchess was of course out of the question, as she seldom appeared +before lunch, her elaborate construction being a thing of time<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_104">{104}</a></span> and +caution. To Lord Nonsuch, communion after breakfast was nothing short of +sacrilege; he was a leading light in the High Church party, and this was +his first appearance at Belchamber since a memorable occasion many years +before, when he had said Lady Charmington was an Erastian, and she had +called him a Jesuit.</p> + +<p>‘<i>I</i> should <i>love</i> it, dear Sarah,’ said Lady Eva, ‘but a poor literary +hack’s time is not her own. I <i>must</i> work this morning, to be free this +afternoon.’</p> + +<p>‘What has your mother got to do?’ asked Cissy of Claude. ‘Is she writing +a book?’</p> + +<p>‘Didn’t you know mamma was “Maidie,” who does “the girls’ tea-table” in +the <i>Looking-glass</i>? She has very nearly got the sack because she never +gets her article ready in time; but she takes herself very seriously as +a journalist, I assure you.’</p> + +<p>The Dalsanies were Roman Catholics, and Lady Deans nothing in +particular; and Gerald Newby, when he found that the people of higher +rank were shirking, discovered that he had letters to write which could +not be put off; but the climax of Lady Charmington’s displeasure was +reached when Arthur announced he would rather stay at home and play +lawn-tennis with Parsons. Lord Firth had not intended to go, but he +sacrificed himself to mollify his sister. His religion was of that +comfortable, rational kind in which there is more state than church, and +which is first cousin to agnosticism, but infinitely more respectable. +He took a great interest in the distribution of bishoprics and the +proper conduct of the service, which, however, he rarely felt called on +to attend, except in such cathedrals and college chapels as gratified +his fastidious taste and fondness for sacred music.</p> + +<p>Finally, a dozen people had been got together, and made a sufficiently +imposing appearance. Old Lady Firth, Mrs. de Lissac and the girls, and +Lady Eccleston went as a matter of course. Claude went to please his +aunt, Cissy because Claude did, Johnson because Cissy did, and Tommy +because his mother told him to. ‘I never have <i>any</i> trouble about church +with my boys,’ Lady Eccleston said. ‘I never have<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_105">{105}</a></span> <i>made</i> them go, even +when they were little. I let them play tennis or do whatever they like, +till the time comes; if I’ve time I play with them. Then I just +cheerfully say “Now, boys, who’s for church?” and they nearly always +say, “All right, mother, we’ll go,” unless they’re ill.’</p> + +<p>Lady Charmington, sore over Arthur’s defection, was in no mood to admire +the success of this plan. ‘Do you mean to say you play lawn-tennis on +Sunday?’ she asked frigidly; and Lady Eccleston discovered she ‘must fly +and put her bonnet on, or she’d be late.’</p> + +<p>Through the service in the church, and the subsequent ceremony of +presenting him with a silver salver and an address from the tradesmen of +Great Charmington, the headache with which Sainty had most inopportunely +begun the day grew steadily worse. The thought of all these poor men +putting their hard-earned pounds together to give a great ugly useless +thing to him, who had already so much more than he wanted, unmanned him; +the tears were in his eyes as he tried to thank them. Nor was he less +cruelly embarrassed by the discovery that the guests in the house had +all thought it necessary to come laden with gifts. In his life no one +but his mother and uncle had ever given him anything; he was not +accustomed to presents, and received them with an awkward sense of +obligation.</p> + +<p>Belchamber being peculiarly rich in beautiful old plate, Arthur +presented him with a huge heraldic claret-jug of monumental hideousness, +for which long afterwards he paid the bill, when settling his brother’s +debts. The duchess gave him a cabinet inlaid after the manner of +Sheraton, in which a whole army of tumblers and sodawater-bottles, +lemon-squeezers, spirit-cases, and cigar-boxes rose and sank and +manœuvred with incredible ingenuity on innumerable springs. Down to Lady +Eccleston, who brought the latest fashionable invention for tearing the +leaves of his beloved books, no one was missing from the list; even Lady +Deans and the Dalsanies contributed their tale of paper-knives and +cigarette-cases.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_106">{106}</a></span></p> + +<p>The only person whose gift showed any care or knowledge of Sainty’s +tastes and wants was Claude, who had taken the trouble to get from Paris +a really beautiful cane, a true Malacca, strong enough to be a support, +with tortoiseshell crutch encrusted with little gold stars, and an +indiarubber shoe to prevent its slipping on the floors of the house. +Sainty flushed with pleasure at sight of the charming thing, which +seemed to adorn his lameness with a certain elegance. He wondered why +his cousin, who was full of such pretty little cares and tendernesses, +should be so wanting in moral sense. His heart yearned over him. ‘Ah +Claude,’ he said, and could say no more.</p> + +<p>‘Dear old boy,’ said Claude, pressing his hand, ‘what do I not owe you? +There is nothing that a pauper like me can give to <i>you</i>; but such as it +is my little present brings real affection and heartfelt wishes for your +happiness.’</p> + +<p>Sainty’s head was by this time aching cruelly, his temples throbbing +like sledge-hammers; he was feeling worn out mentally and physically, +ravaged by conflicting emotions. Having what was very rare with him, a +slight flush, he looked less ill than usual, and nobody thought of his +being tired; but it was at the tenants’ dinner that he set the seal on +the ignominy of his failure.</p> + +<p>In consideration of the fact that this was a long and crowded day for +one who was not robust, it had been settled that he should not preside +at the meal, but merely come in and take the chair, for the healths and +speeches, when the solid business of feeding had been satisfactorily +disposed of. It was between three and four o’clock, the hottest part of +the afternoon; and though the sides of the tent had been opened here and +there, the atmosphere was stifling, heavy with the odours of meat and +drink and the acrid exhalations of humanity. Sainty almost reeled on +entering, and had to steady himself by Arthur’s arm. There were some +seventy or eighty men present of all ages and degrees of stoutness, all +very hot, and mostly somewhat red in the face. Many of them were +intimately known to Arthur, who stopped several<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_107">{107}</a></span> times in the progress +up the tables to shake hands right and left. He met them at the covert +side, he shot over their farms, he played in cricket matches with them. +Sainty would have given anything for a touch of that happy graciousness, +that power of being hail-fellow-well-met. Circumstances had combined to +make him almost a stranger to the men who were on such friendly terms +with his younger brother. He knew that in his heart he had far more real +brotherhood with these sons of the soil, a much more jealous respect for +their manhood and independence; but his very sense of equality made him +feel the falseness of his position, whereas Arthur’s easy familiarity +sprang from a firm conviction of his own unquestionable superiority. +Sainty was only too well aware, as he took his seat in gloomy silence, +that his grave bow in answer to their friendly greetings, would be set +down to pride by most of the people present. When, after loyally +drinking the Queen’s health, the guests were once more seated and their +glasses filled, the oldest tenant rose to propose the toast of the +occasion. He began by complimenting the young man on attaining his +majority, spoke shortly of his attachment to the place and the family, +and at great length on the badness of times and the difficulties of the +agriculturist, which he seemed in some mysterious way to attribute to +Mr. Gladstone. The voice went droning on, monotonous by reason of its +very emphasis, until Sainty felt almost hypnotised by it and by the +buzzing of the numberless wasps and flies that were hovering over the +remnants of food and drops of beer on the table-cloths. Sainty had quite +ceased to attach any meaning to the sounds, when suddenly the voice +stopped; the old man was sitting down; the audience, which had been +dozing, shook itself and sat up alert, and all eyes were turned on the +hero of the occasion. For weeks past Sainty had given anxious thought to +what he should say to his tenants. He had never before had to make a +speech, and he had rehearsed many alternative utterances in the privacy +of his chamber. He had felt somehow that this was going to be his +opportunity, the electrical moment when he<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_108">{108}</a></span> was to make himself known to +those for whom it was of such importance what manner of man he was. He +would let them see that he was not an indifferent invalid, still less a +selfish pleasure-seeker, a careless eater of the produce and neglecter +of the producer; he would tell them how much he had their welfare at +heart. In carefully prepared sentences he would allude to his great +obligations (which incidentally were theirs also) to his mother’s long +laborious stewardship, his uncle’s enlightened economic teaching. He had +devoted hours to the consideration of just how much it would be well to +hint at his political convictions; sometimes he had been pleased to +fancy himself electrifying his hearers by a militant profession of +faith, but in calmer moments more moderate counsels prevailed.</p> + +<p>Now the time so anxiously anticipated had actually arrived. With a great +shuffling of feet the company got to its legs; some one started ‘For +he’s a jolly good fellow’ rather shakily, which was promptly taken up +and cheerfully shouted in a great variety of keys, and then all settled +down to await the answering speech.</p> + +<p>Sainty rose unsteadily and passed his hand across his forehead; for a +second he stood silent, while the guests greeted his rising by drumming +on the tables with their knife-handles. Then it seemed as though a +crushing weight descended through the top of his head to his brain, the +hum of the insects swelled to an organ roar in his ears, the hundred +faces before him seemed to float and swim in a mist, and with a kind of +gasping cry he sank back unconscious in Lord Firth’s arms.</p> + +<p>After this there could be no question of his appearing at the monster +fête and garden-party which had been organised for the afternoon. The +distant braying of a band, the sounds of many voices and laughter, and +the scrunching of innumerable wheels upon the gravel were borne to him +on the summer breeze, as he lay prostrate upon his bed. He had not yet +come back to any sense of shame or distress; for the <span class="pagenum"><a id="page_109">{109}</a></span>moment, pure +physical pain was almost a relief, a restful half-consciousness that, +with no effort of his, a solution had been found, a way out of all +difficulties and disagreeables.</p> + +<p>Not till late next day did he crawl downstairs, feeling very weak and +battered, to receive the hollow sympathy and polite inquiries of his +guests, and apologise with what grace he might for having failed so +lamentably in his duties as a host.</p> + +<p>Arthur had got up a cricket match. ‘You needn’t worry, old man,’ he said +cheerfully, as he carried out his bat and found Sainty among the group +of spectators. ‘You weren’t missed a bit. The duke made a speech after +dinner, and proposed your health, and I returned thanks for you, and +said all sorts of nice things about you, which you never could have said +for yourself. I did it much better than you could have done, because I +was rather drunk, which you would never have been.’</p> + +<p>‘O Lord Arthur! how <i>can</i> you say Lord Belchamber wasn’t missed?’ cried +Lady Eccleston. ‘We all missed you dreadfully, didn’t we, Cissy? But +your brother did do his best to supply your place, and really made a +delightful speech; and I do hope your head is better; it was too bad +your breaking down, and we were all quite miserable about you.’</p> + +<p>‘I wanted to send you some really wonderful nerve tonic Dr. Haslam gave +me,’ said Lady Firth. ‘I’m sure it would have done you good, but your +mother said you had everything you wanted.’</p> + +<p>Sainty insisted on showing himself at the ‘treat’ for the children and +the labourers; this was the one part of the ‘rejoicings’ in which he +took a personal interest; but after a very brief appearance he was +forced to go and lie down again till dinner, if he hoped to receive the +guests at the great ball which was to wind up the proceedings of the +second day.</p> + +<p>The ball was a very grand affair indeed; there must have been over five +hundred people present. Every woman there had put on her most gorgeous +raiment, and the best of her jewellery. The duchess positively shone in +white and gold brocade, hung in ropes of pearls, and with a great crown +upon her head. Even Lady Charmington had had what she con<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_110">{110}</a></span>sidered a +low-necked dress made for the occasion, and had withdrawn the Belchamber +emeralds from their twenty years’ seclusion at the bank for the pleasure +of wearing them before her mother-in-law. Sainty’s share in the +entertainment was strictly limited to standing by his mother, under the +portrait of his great-great-grandfather, leaning with his left hand on +the crutch stick which his cousin had given him, while his right was +shaken by a long procession of people, who all one after the other said: +‘I must—er—congratulate you, Lord Belchamber, on this auspicious +occasion. Sorry to hear you weren’t well yesterday; hope you’re all +right again.’ To which he had to reply, ‘Thanks awfully, very good of +you; so glad you could come; you’ll find the dancing through that next +room, straight on.’</p> + +<p>By the time he had repeated this phrase between three and four hundred +times, and the guests had all defiled before him, he felt so sick and +giddy that he had to be helped to bed by his valet, where he lay awake +hour after hour, listening to the distant strains of the dance music, +and picturing the scene in the great saloon to himself. He thought how +nice it would be to be an ordinary normal, healthy, courageous young +man. He did not desire to be exceptionally gifted, strong, or beautiful, +only just like any one of a hundred youths who were at that moment +whirling in his ballroom, or eating his supper. Surely, he thought, no +one had ever got so little fun out of his own coming-of-age ball before. +He thought how pretty Cissy Eccleston had looked, all in delicate pale +green, with a sort of white butterfly of some shimmering stuff just +poised on her bright curls for only ornament—not a jewel on her +beautiful neck or arms. He fancied her, aglow with dancing, sitting to +rest under the great palms and banana-trees of the winter-garden, and +perhaps Claude ensconced beside her in one of those nooks that he had +watched his cousin arranging, ‘for flirtations,’ as he said.</p> + +<p>It was in these sleepless hours of the early morning that he decided to +say something to Claude Morland which he had had on his mind for two +days, and the first time he got him<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_111">{111}</a></span> alone, he put his head down, dug +his nails into his palms, and said, ‘Claude, may I ask you something?’</p> + +<p>‘Of course; what is it?’</p> + +<p>Sainty gulped and was silent. He had made up his mind to speak the first +time he got an opportunity, but he had been genuinely relieved by every +interruption, and was conscious that he had even purposely avoided being +alone with his cousin.</p> + +<p>‘It is rather a queer question,’ he said, ‘and one which you may +resent.’</p> + +<p>Claude was lolling in a deep chair with a book; his hat tilted over his +eyes left little of his face visible but his moustache and the soft +curve of his chin.</p> + +<p>‘How could I resent anything from you, old chap?’ he said sweetly, but +without looking up. ‘For which of my many sins am I to be taken to task? +Fire away.’</p> + +<p>‘I know I’ve no right to ask such a question, but I wish you would tell +me if there is anything between you and Miss Winston.’</p> + +<p>Claude gave an almost imperceptible start, and sank lower into the deep +chair. Sainty was conscious that under his air of supreme nonchalance he +was suddenly tensely on his guard. ‘Between us?’ he murmured +interrogatively.</p> + +<p>If Sainty were going to be indiscreet, his cousin obviously did not +intend to make it easy for him.</p> + +<p>‘I mean, are you in love with each other, or engaged, or anything?’ +Sainty persisted. Claude gave a little laugh; he was evidently trying to +keep a certain relief out of his voice as he answered in his usual soft +tones, ‘I would not be so rude to our dear Aimée as to say I was not in +love with her; I have been in love with her any time these two years; as +to being <i>engaged</i>, you really do ask the most simple-minded questions. +Will you tell me just what you think I have to marry on? Am I in a +position to think of marrying, especially another pauper like myself?’</p> + +<p>‘That’s just what I was coming to,’ said Sainty eagerly. ‘I didn’t ask +from mere idle curiosity. But if you are in love<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_112">{112}</a></span> with Miss Winston, of +course you <i>want</i> to marry her, and you think you ought not to propose, +because you are not in a position to support a wife—isn’t that so?’</p> + +<p>‘Well—no, dear boy,’ answered Claude slowly; ‘to be honest, I don’t +exactly know that it is. Aimée and I understand one another perfectly,’ +he added, after a little pause.</p> + +<p>‘Do you think she <i>does</i> understand? Don’t you think you may have given +her the impression that you mean more than you do?’</p> + +<p>‘I am not the first man Miss Winston has met,’ said Claude, turning +rather an ugly grin upon his cousin; ‘the dear creature was having her +little flirtations before I went to Eton.’</p> + +<p>‘Of course, if you don’t want to, and you are sure she doesn’t want to, +there is no more to be said. I only wanted to say that if you were being +held back by want of money, perhaps I—perhaps we—you know—I mean, +that part might be arranged, don’t you know,’ and Sainty blushed hotly.</p> + +<p>Claude reached out a long white hand, and very gently pressed Sainty’s +knee. ‘You really are more kinds of an angel than any one I know,’ he +said, laughing softly, ‘but you need not worry about Aimée Winston; she +has no vocation for matrimony; if she ever makes up her mind to marry it +will be some one who can give her a far larger share of this world’s +goods than even you could spare for my dot. And as for me, if I should +ever find myself, either through your kindness or in any other way, in a +position to take to myself a wife, she would be a very different person +from <i>la belle Aimée; elle n’est pas de celles que l’on épouse’</i>; and +Claude turned again to his book in such a way as to intimate that the +subject was closed.</p> + +<p>By the time that the opportunity for this singularly abortive +conversation presented itself the house-party had dwindled sensibly. +Those who came to please the duchess, to meet each other, and to lend +the support of names well known to the chronicles of fashion, had fled +the day after the ball. They had come for an ‘occasion,’ and the moment +existence<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_113">{113}</a></span> at Belchamber threatened to resume a course remotely +resembling home life, they departed to other ‘occasions,’ with all their +baggage and camp-followers. Lord Nonsuch could not spend a Sunday where +the services were conducted according to the ideas of Lady Charmington; +and by the Monday all had gone except old Lady Firth, the Morlands, the +Traffords, and the Ecclestons, who somehow or other contrived to stay on +till they should be due at another country-house.</p> + +<p>Lord Firth, ere he departed for Scotland, had a talk with his nephew. +‘It has all gone off very well, my boy, on the whole,’ he said, +‘considering how new you and your mother were to anything of the sort. +Your breakdown was unfortunate, of course, but it couldn’t be helped. +You had better come up to Fours for a bit next month; it’ll do you good; +and in November you ought to have another party here, for the covert +shooting. You will have to live suitably in the place in future; all +these new servants will get lazy and demoralised unless you give them +something to do.’</p> + +<p>‘But I shan’t be here in November,’ said Sainty, ‘I shall be back at +Cambridge, you know.’</p> + +<p>‘Your mother and I were thinking that perhaps you wouldn’t want to go +back to Cambridge now you are of age,’ said his uncle.</p> + +<p>‘Not go back to Cambridge!’ Sainty interrupted, with unfeigned horror; +‘not take my degree!’</p> + +<p>‘Many people don’t, you know; and in your case, though it was no doubt +right for you to have a little taste of university life, there seem to +be claims which call for you more urgently elsewhere.’</p> + +<p>‘Don’t ask this of me, Uncle Cor,’ Sainty said earnestly. ‘You and I +have both been workers; in my way I have worked as hard as you. You can +understand what it must be to be told when one is in sight of one’s goal +that one must give it up and not try for it. I gave up the scholarship +because I saw that it was a shame to take it from men who needed it; but +this is different. I stand no chance with Cook; he<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_114">{114}</a></span> deserves to be +senior classic, and is safe to be; he has nothing to fear from me, or +any one; and if I beat any of the men who come next, well, it won’t hurt +them; they will have their first class all the same, and it makes no +difference to a man if he is second, third, or fourth.’</p> + +<p>‘Do you care as much as all that?’ asked Lord Firth.</p> + +<p>‘Yes, I do,’ said Sainty.</p> + +<p>His uncle appeared to consider. ‘Well,’ he said, after a pause, ‘I don’t +see, if you want to go back and take your degree, why you shouldn’t; but +couldn’t you come down for a week, say, for the pheasants?’</p> + +<p>‘Uncle Cor,’ said Sainty, ‘why <i>should</i> I come down, just in the middle +of my work, and idle away a whole week, in order that other people +should shoot pheasants? I don’t shoot, myself; I hate the sound and +sight of shooting.’</p> + +<p>‘Don’t you think you could get to like it? Of course it’s out of the +question for you to hunt, but you could quite well shoot, with a quiet +pony and little cart, or even from a campstool, if you couldn’t walk.’</p> + +<p>‘I don’t <i>want</i> to shoot; I should hate it. And in my case, the one +excuse, the tramping, the manly exercise, would be wanting. I should +seem to myself a kind of monster, dragged out to the work of slaughter +in some form of machine; sitting down to butchery, like Charles <small>IX.</small> +firing on Huguenots out of a window.’</p> + +<p>‘Well, I only thought it would give you something more in common with +your fellow-men, make you more like other people.’</p> + +<p>‘Oh yes, I know; it’s the old story, my unlikeness to other people, my +hopeless incurable unfitness for my position in life. I do so hate my +position in life.’</p> + +<p>‘Many people would be glad to change with you, my boy,’ said his uncle +gently.</p> + +<p>‘I wish they could, with all my heart,’ said Sainty. ‘Oh, I fully +realise, no one more, what an anomaly I am. If only some one of the +hundreds of nice impecunious young men with a public school education +and no taste for work could<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_115">{115}</a></span> have it all instead of me! Arthur, for +instance, would be ideal. He would hunt, shoot, play cricket, captain +the Yeomanry, be popular, successful, suitable, and enjoy the whole +thing immensely into the bargain.’</p> + +<p>‘My dear boy,’ said Lord Firth, taking refuge behind Providence with a +simple piety worthy of his sister, ‘does it never occur to you that if +it had been intended that Arthur should have your birthright, he would +have had it?’</p> + +<p>‘Oh, if you come to what was “intended,”<span class="lftspc">’</span> Sainty answered, ‘I give up. I +don’t pretend to understand.’</p> + +<p>‘It comes down to the simple old rule that you learned in your +catechism,’ said Firth, in a more natural manner; ‘<span class="lftspc">“</span>to do my duty in +that state of life unto which it shall please God to call me.” (I quote +from memory.) You can surely understand <i>that</i>?’</p> + +<p>‘Oh yes,’ said Sainty, ‘I can understand <i>that</i> right enough, as a +principle; but it is when you come to the question of just what <i>is</i> +one’s duty that the difficulty comes in. For instance, I don’t believe +that it is a duty incumbent on me from any religious point of view to +sit in a chair and shoot tame pheasants, nor to waste money in +expensively feeding a whole tribe of people with whom I have no sympathy +whatever.’</p> + +<p>‘We must “use hospitality,”<span class="lftspc">’</span> quoted Lord Firth a little half-heartedly.</p> + +<p>‘Oh, if you quote Scripture on that matter,’ said Sainty, not without +malice, ‘I think you would find I was enjoined to entertain a very +different class of person from the duke, or Lady Deans, or the +Dalsanies. Indeed, I am not without the highest authority for selling +all I have and giving to the poor; I sometimes think it would be the +best solution, as it would certainly be the simplest.’</p> + +<p>‘And how about the entail?’ asked his uncle.</p> + +<p>The wholesale disposal of his property being thus declared out of the +question, Belchamber had to try and find some other answer to the riddle +of life. For the present he was contented to have carried his point +about going back to<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_116">{116}</a></span> Cambridge; the terrible coming of age was safely +past, and the danger of his university career being cut short averted. +As he had not gone up till he was nineteen, he had still a year of happy +college life before him, a year of peaceful study, of stimulating +discussions, of congenial society, a year of hard work for a definite +object. With a sigh of relief he found himself once more in his old +rooms, surrounded by the dear familiar shabbinesses, his accommodation a +bedroom, sitting-room, and Gyp-closet bounded by a battered ‘oak’; his +establishment the tenth part of an old woman in a sat-upon black bonnet, +and a twenty-fifth share in the services of a Gyp, but lord of his own +soul, and free to follow his own bent, an undergraduate among +undergraduates, and not the slave of a cumbrous estate and an unwieldy +palace.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_117">{117}</a></span></p> + +<h2><a id="CHAPTER_IX">CHAPTER IX</a></h2> + +<p class="nind"><span class="smcap">Sainty</span> did not think it necessary to go home for the covert shooting, +and it is doubtful if he was much missed. Young Traffords and +Montgomeries came as usual, Lord Firth brought an older man or two, and +Arthur acted as host, not without a few skirmishes with his uncle, who +had been accustomed to appear in that capacity on such occasions. Arthur +was now at a crammer’s preparing for the army, but he had none of +Sainty’s objection to breaking in on his studies for a little sport, and +every one thought it quite right and natural that he should do so. It +might be all very necessary that he should help to slaughter his +fellow-men by and by, but the immediate duty was the destruction of +pheasants; and whatever might be the shortcomings of the absent lord of +the mansion, Arthur and the guests assembled at Belchamber had a proper +sense of their responsibilities in this respect.</p> + +<p>Sainty only wished that his brother would take his other duties in life +as seriously; there was permanently at the back of his mind an anxiety +about Arthur, which, like some latent poison in the blood, might lie +dormant for months, but was liable to stir up and give pain at any +moment. A certain sense that his own existence, unreasonably prolonged, +was, as it were, keeping his brother out of his inheritance, added +poignancy to all Sainty’s feelings about him. But for the unfortunate +accident of his own eighteen months’ seniority, Arthur would have +stepped naturally into his appropriate position, and found congenial +occupations, duties, pleasures ready to his hand. He felt that anything +that might go wrong with his brother before his own death<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_118">{118}</a></span> made tardy +restitution, would be almost his fault. It did not occur to his morbid +apprehension that with superior means at his command all Arthur’s +vicious tendencies would have increased a hundredfold; he only saw the +boy who had no aptitude for study obliged by circumstances to work that +he might pass examinations, and driven from healthy and innocent +recreations at Belchamber into a world of dangerous companions and +temptations which he lacked self-control to resist. Sainty appeared to +himself as an unwilling Jacob, who by no act or fraud of his own stood +possessed of the birthright which was only a burthen to him, and who yet +had no appetite for the pottage for which a younger Esau’s full red +mouth watered so hungrily. As in the nursery days when he had decided to +die young that his brother might succeed him, he still cherished an +undefined feeling that he was only occupying for a time. He would never +marry; all must eventually go to Arthur and to Arthur’s children; but he +was possessed of an ever-growing terror lest meanwhile, before this +desirable end should be reached, his brother might steer the frail bark +of his good behaviour to some irreparable shipwreck, commit himself +irrevocably in some way that should disqualify him for the position ere +it should come to him.</p> + +<p>Sainty mused much on abdications, on men who had cast aside rank and +wealth for the peace and seclusion of the cloister; the monastic calm of +his beloved courts drew him like a spell; had he been born in the +turbulent times of his fighting ancestors he would probably have been +violently dispossessed and immured in some convent of holy monks. He +began to wonder whether in spite of all the boasted progress of the +centuries they had not managed things in a simpler and more effectual +manner in the middle ages. He even went so far as secretly to consult a +solicitor as to whether a peer could legally renounce his title and +estates in favour of the next heir entail, with the discouraging result +that he learned that while he lived no act of his, short of high +treason, could make him other than Marquis of Belchamber<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_119">{119}</a></span> in the eye of +the law, or bestow that title on any other human being.</p> + +<p>‘It seems hard,’ he said to Newby one day, ‘that a man can be born into +a position with no act or consent of his own and bound in it for life; +struggle as he will he cannot free himself.’</p> + +<p>‘Are we not all alike in that respect?’ asked Gerald. ‘Are not +circumstances, as they are called, the fetters that each man wears? We +delude ourselves with a phantom of free-will, but I suspect that men are +really born as irrevocably parsons, doctors, politicians, as you are a +peer. Who shall free himself from the bonds of fate?’</p> + +<p>‘You are strangely inconsistent, Gerald. I can fancy no one less of a +fatalist than yourself.’</p> + +<p>‘The doctor varies his medicines according to the disease of the +patient,’ said Newby sententiously. ‘When men come prating to me of +fatality as an excuse from all effort and responsibility, I have a very +different word to say to them; but in your case, when you complain of +being fettered by your position, I wonder whether some of those who +perhaps think they would like their path thus plainly marked for them, +may not really, by inherited tendencies and a hundred other intangible +threads, be as truly constrained in their life choice as yourself.’</p> + +<p>‘<span class="lftspc">“</span>All men are born free,”<span class="lftspc">’</span> quoted Sainty. ‘There never was a more +deplorable fallacy; for my part, I feel like the ghost in Dickens’s +story, who had to drag that chain of cash-boxes and keys and +deposit-safes wherever he went. Perhaps it is my lameness which +accentuates this sense of being hobbled. I can’t take a step without +feeling the pull of the whole Belchamber estate; it is hung round my +neck like the Ancient Mariner’s albatross.’</p> + +<p>‘You certainly have a most deplorable trick of mixing your metaphors,’ +said Newby. ‘But,’ he added, with the mild awe of which Sainty had been +so disagreeably sensible at Belchamber, ‘yours is certainly a great +position, a grave responsibility.’</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_120">{120}</a></span></p> + +<p>‘If I might have gone in for a scholarship, like you, and stayed and got +work in the college till I could try for a fellowship!’ Sainty sighed. +‘The life would have suited me down to the ground.’</p> + +<p>‘There are many leading that life who would be glad to change with you,’ +Gerald answered with conviction.</p> + +<p>‘That is just what my uncle says, “many people would be glad to change +with you.” It is the old saying of our nursery days—“Many a poor man in +the street would be glad of that nice pudding.” Do you think it makes +unpalatable food more savoury to feel that one is keeping what one does +not like from some one to whom it would perhaps be an escape from +starvation? It is the strangest doctrine.’</p> + +<p>‘Nevertheless Lord Firth is a very sensible man,’ said Newby; ‘and I +don’t feel disposed to pity you overmuch.’</p> + +<p>‘I don’t think I want pity,’ said Sainty, ‘I want help. It seems too +deplorable that there should be no way out of an undesirable position. I +think it is this sense of being shut in that drives men to suicide far +more than great grief. Is any situation really hopeless, unalterable by +human effort? If any one were once persuaded of that, he <i>must</i> go mad. +I suppose the pistol or the overdose of chloral is the last supreme +refusal to accept such a belief. “What!” you say, “no way out of this +<i>impasse</i>? Well, there is always this.”<span class="lftspc">’</span></p> + +<p>‘How theatrical!’ said Newby. ‘You are talking claptrap. Who ever heard +of a man committing suicide to avoid a marquisate and £50,000 a year?’ +and he resolutely led the talk into other channels.</p> + +<p>Arthur hadn’t been a month at his crammer’s before he began to justify +his brother’s anxiety. Of course he broke all the rules of the +establishment, came and went as he pleased, drove tandem, and hunted +several days a week. Then there were complications about dogs, of which +he kept a perfect kennel of all sorts and sizes, which raided the +reverend gentleman’s poultry-yard, killed his cat and his children’s pet +rabbits, and harried his wife’s old pug. Sainty<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_121">{121}</a></span> had always wanted a +dog, but had never been able to have one because Arthur’s perpetually +changing menagerie had kept Lady Charmington’s powers of endurance +stretched to their easily reached limit.</p> + +<p>In the Christmas vacation Arthur had already stigmatised the +establishment to his brother as a ‘damned hole,’ where a gentleman +couldn’t live, and obliged him with graphic accounts of his many +differences of opinion with its principle.</p> + +<p>‘But doesn’t he <i>mind</i> your setting your dogs on his pig?’ Sainty asked.</p> + +<p>‘Mind? of course he minds; it makes him wild. But you should see the old +woman; she gets twice as mad as he does. She’s always telling us we are +“no gentlemen,” and that we shouldn’t do the things at home, and why +don’t we treat her as we would any other lady.’</p> + +<p>‘And why don’t you?’ asked Sainty, with delicate irony.</p> + +<p>‘What, <i>her</i>!’ with fine contempt; ‘the fellows say she was the old +man’s cook, and that he <i>had</i> to marry her, ‘cos he’d got her into +trouble. You should see her in the evening in a greasy old black satin +and a sham diamond locket; she’s awfully particular about our dressing +for dinner, so Wood came in the other evening in muddy shooting-boots. +She asked if he wanted to insult her, but he said he was awfully sorry +but he couldn’t find his pumps, and glanced significantly at her toes +that were sticking out of her gown: she has enormous beetle-crushers, +and had sported a brand-new pair of patent-leather shoes. She fairly +cried with rage.’</p> + +<p>Sainty saw the futility of trying to suggest the poor lady’s side of the +question; Arthur was never very quick at seeing other people’s point of +view.</p> + +<p>‘I just don’t pay ’em any attention,’ he said; ‘the old ‘un is always at +me about not working. Says I shall never pass my prelim., and objects to +my hunting. I tell him it’s necessary for my health.’</p> + +<p>‘And how often <i>do</i> you hunt?’</p> + +<p>‘Oh, well, not more than two days a week mostly, never more than three. +You see, I’ve only got two hunters there;<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_122">{122}</a></span> it’s so infernally expensive +keeping ’em at livery, and I have to pay for the man’s keep too. It runs +into a devil of a lot of money.’</p> + +<p>After several such conversations, Sainty was not altogether surprised to +hear from his mother that a three days’ absence without leave to attend +a race meeting had brought matters to a crisis, and that the care of his +brother’s education had been transferred from the church to the army. +Arthur went to this new place with only a pony cart and a bicycle, +promising great things; the hunters had been suppressed and the kennel +cut down to two fox-terriers and a bob-tailed sheep-dog. Sainty was +rather surprised at hearing nothing from him for several weeks—not even +the familiar demand for money had broken the silence between them—and +the day he came home for the Easter vacation he made haste to ask for +news.</p> + +<p>He was sitting in Lady Charmington’s sitting-room, where she had +conceded a cup of tea to his fatigue after a journey, but was rigorously +abstaining from refreshment herself. Sainty was drinking his tea and +eating cake, while his mother hastily ran through some farm accounts she +was going to submit to him.</p> + +<p>‘How does Arthur get on at Colonel Humby’s?’ Sainty asked.</p> + +<p>Lady Charmington looked up from her ledger with an abstracted air and +her mouth full of figures. ‘Thirty-seven, forty-two, fifty, fifty-six, +fifty-six pounds, seven and fourpence halfpenny,’ she murmured. ‘Didn’t +I tell you he’d moved?’ and she noted the sum at the bottom of the page +and turned over.</p> + +<p>‘What! again?’ cried Sainty in dismay.</p> + +<p>‘He said he couldn’t get on there; he felt he wasn’t making any +progress, and he didn’t seem to like the men there; apparently they +weren’t a very nice set.’</p> + +<p>‘He’ll never pass his exams. if he keeps chopping about like this, a +month in one place, a month in another. I’m afraid as long as he’s +expected to do any work, he’ll never<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_123">{123}</a></span> find a coach who quite suits his +views. Where has he gone now?’</p> + +<p>‘His friend, young Hunter, who was with him at Oxbourne, had gone to +that man in London they say is so wonderful——’</p> + +<p>‘Mother! you <i>haven’t</i> let him go to London?’</p> + +<p>‘Why not? The boy seemed to think he should do better at Monkton’s; it +is such a new thing, as you say yourself, for Arthur to want to work, +that it seemed a pity to balk his good intentions.’</p> + +<p>‘But surely you must see—London! Dear mother, won’t there be many more +distractions there for a boy of Arthur’s temperament than at a dull +place like Hog’s Hill?’</p> + +<p>‘He said that was one trouble with Colonel Humby’s place, that it <i>was</i> +so dull; there was never anything to do there. If he wanted any +amusement, he always had to go away for it, and this broke into his +work, interfered terribly with it, in fact.’</p> + +<p>‘And so you think he’ll be likely to do more work when the things that +break into it are under his hand? Oh! why didn’t you ask me before +agreeing to this?’ cried Sainty in genuine distress.</p> + +<p>This being his first day at home, Lady Charmington only smiled +indulgently at the suggestion. She was not in the habit of consulting +other people before making up her mind, and least of all Sainty. ‘My +dear boy,’ she said, ‘you are scarcely older than your brother, and in +some ways have really seen less of the world. Why should you think you +can settle things for him so much better than he can for himself? or, +for that matter, than I, who have been accustomed for years to arrange +your lives for both of you?’</p> + +<p>Sainty felt despairingly that there was nothing to be done with his +mother in that direction. He had come to know the signals, and to +recognise Lady Charmington’s ‘no thoroughfare expression’ as though it +were written on a notice-board. He wondered sometimes if she were really +as much at ease about her younger son as she seemed, but<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_124">{124}</a></span> he never dared +try to find out, for fear of awakening in her heart the uneasiness that +oppressed his own. It was incredible that a woman so shrewd and +far-seeing in most of the relations of life as his mother, should really +feel a restful confidence about Arthur. To be sure, she was ignorant of +many things that he knew only too well, such as the younger boy’s habit +of betting and constant appeals to his elder for money; on the other +hand, Arthur took but little pains to conceal his views of life, and +occasionally delivered himself in his mother’s presence of remarks +which, it seemed to Sainty, could not fail to enlighten a much more +obtuse intelligence than Lady Charmington’s.</p> + +<p>When he came to breakfast next morning he found her entrenched behind +the zareba of teapots and kettles, under the shelter of which she +habitually partook of that meal. She looked up from her letters with a +certain air of triumph to say, ‘I have a letter from Arthur; he is +working so hard that he will not even come home for Easter; he says he +might run down just for the Sunday and Monday, but he thinks it would +only break into his work, and that on the whole it is best for him not +to come away at all.’ That was all the voice said, but the eyes said +quite plainly, ‘You see!’</p> + +<p>Sainty said nothing. He went and peeped into the dishes on the +sideboard, and picked himself out a poached egg with no great appetite. +This habit of his of saying nothing when he had nothing to say was +called ‘rudeness’ by some people, by others ‘pride’ or ‘indifference.’ +If he had spoken out his real thought to his mother she would have told +him he was suspicious and could never believe any good of his brother, +and would probably have exhorted him to watch against such an unamiable +disposition.</p> + +<p>The breakfast, the day, the weeks passed in this silence between the +two, a silence eloquent of disagreement, yet broken only by a few words +on indifferent subjects, except when the presence of guests made +necessary some form of conversational rattling of peas in a bladder.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_125">{125}</a></span></p> + +<p>Whether it was duty or pleasure that kept Arthur away, the house seemed +strangely empty and silent without him, even when some of the inevitable +family party were gathered together in it—perhaps most so then, for +though Arthur put himself out for no man, the mere fact that his +pursuits were those of the normal young Englishman made him an important +help in the entertainment of cousins. Sainty took endless trouble, but +sent the men after rabbits who were secretly pining for the last meet of +the season, and mounted the only Trafford who hated horses and had come +down burning to throw the first fly of spring. Claude made things easier +when he arrived a little later, but now that he was the duke’s private +secretary, his presence was generally required at one of his grace’s +numerous country-houses on the festivals of the Church, so that he was +much less at Belchamber than formerly.</p> + +<p>‘I’m worried about Arthur,’ Sainty said to him the first time they were +alone. ‘You know he’s left the second place he went to, and my mother +has let him go to London to read at Monkton’s. They don’t even board +there, you know; he has rooms somewhere near.’</p> + +<p>Claude’s eyebrows arched themselves, and he gave vent to a low but +expressive whistle.</p> + +<p>‘Yes,’ said Sainty, ‘that’s what <i>I</i> think; I feel sure he must be in +mischief, he’s keeping so quiet. He wouldn’t even come home for Easter; +it’s incredible that a woman of mother’s cleverness should really +believe that it springs from excessive devotion to work.’</p> + +<p>‘Have you told your mother what you think?’</p> + +<p>‘I’ve tried, but there’s the difficulty. She thinks it is only my base +jealousy and suspicion. I wonder why she so readily believes all good of +him, and never gives me credit for even decent feelings. I’ve tried all +my life to please her, studied her, thought what she’d like, and I don’t +believe Arthur has ever done or given up one single thing for her sake; +yet she cares more for his little finger than for my whole body.’</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_126">{126}</a></span></p> + +<p>‘Oh, the secret of Arthur’s favour is not hard to guess. In the first +place, he’s got nothing, and you’ve got everything. On the face of it, +that seems like an injustice to him; so, with true woman’s logic, she +takes it out by being thoroughly unjust to you.’</p> + +<p>‘Got everything! Heavens! Do you suppose I wouldn’t rather be tall and +strong and straight like Arthur, be liked by men and admired by women, +than own half England and be fifty Lord Belchambers?’</p> + +<p>‘Very likely; though a woman of my aunt Sarah’s respect for “plenishing” +is not likely to appreciate that point of view. But the real reason of +her partiality is that Arthur is just the one person in the world who +isn’t afraid of her. Oh yes, you are afraid of her; it’s not the least +use your saying you’re not, and so am I, and so’s every one about the +place. Whereas Arthur doesn’t care a damn <i>what</i> she thinks; he does +jolly well what he pleases, and, <i>maîtresse-femme</i> as she is, she can’t +help admiring him for it.’</p> + +<p>‘Well, never mind about that; I didn’t mean to complain; that any one +should prefer Arthur to me is not a phenomenon that needs explanation. I +only deplore this particular result of her devotion to him for <i>his</i> +sake. What am I to do about it?’</p> + +<p>‘It’s a good thing you mentioned it to me; I must see what I can do. +Perhaps I shall be able to keep an eye on Master Arthur to a certain +extent.’</p> + +<p>It is true that his cousin’s influence had hitherto been unmixedly bad, +yet he seemed so sympathetic, so anxious to help, so entirely at one +with him in his desire to keep Arthur from making an ass of himself, +that Sainty went back to Cambridge vaguely consoled, and with a feeling +that Claude, being on the spot, might really perhaps be able to exercise +some kind of check on the object of their common solicitude.</p> + +<p>This was his ninth and last term, the term of his tripos exam. and his +degree, and he was so busy that he had but little time for thinking of +his brother. Lady Charmington<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_127">{127}</a></span> mentioned him but rarely in her letters, +beyond a casual observation that Arthur was as hard at work as ever. +Arthur himself wrote even less than usual, but he did vouchsafe a few +brief notes, saying he was ‘all right,’ and ‘sapping like the devil,’ +and ending with the usual demands. In spite of his close attention to +business, London seemed by no means an economical place of residence. +‘His landlady robbed him shamefully; he was told they all did; and +though he was sure of the fact, he knew too little about such things to +be able to spot her.’</p> + +<p>One day Sainty showed one of these epistles to Newby, and hinted at his +uneasiness. ‘You remember my brother Arthur?’ he added, seeing Gerald +look a little vague.</p> + +<p>‘Remember him? of course I do. A nice lad, a very jolly lad; an awfully +charming type of healthy English boyhood.’</p> + +<p>‘Oh yes, he’s all that,’ Sainty assented; ‘but I wish he wasn’t knocking +about in lodgings in London by himself. He’s very young, and awfully +fond of pleasure, and hasn’t a great deal of self-control.’</p> + +<p>‘Let him alone, my dear boy,’ returned Newby airily. ‘He must sow his +wild oats, like another; but he won’t go far astray. <i>Bon sang ne peut +mentir.</i>’</p> + +<p>‘Oh, can’t it?’ groaned Sainty; but his friend wouldn’t hear of any +danger.</p> + +<p>‘That kind of healthy well-bred English lad always comes out all right +in the end,’ he said. ‘You can’t ride a thoroughbred with a curb.’</p> + +<p>‘Dear me, how sporting you’ve become; you’re as horsey as Ned Parsons +when he talked to Lady Rugby.’</p> + +<p>‘Talking of Ned, have you heard about his book?’</p> + +<p>‘No—what book?’</p> + +<p>‘Why, he’s written a book which they say is going to be the success of +the year; it ought to be out by now. I saw some of the proofs, and +thought it deplorably flippant and vulgar, as anything by him was sure +to be, but undeniably clever in a way.’</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_128">{128}</a></span></p> + +<p>‘Is it a novel?’</p> + +<p>‘Yes, a novel of society—as if Ned knew anything about society!’</p> + +<p>‘How came you to see the proofs? Did he show them to you?’</p> + +<p>Newby’s pale cheek took on a faint flush. ‘Well, some one told me he had +put <i>me</i> into it; there is a young don in the story, and of course some +one who wanted to be clever immediately decided it was meant for me, so +I just taxed Parsons with it the first time I met him. “I hear you’ve +been putting me into your book,” I said.’</p> + +<p>‘And what did he say?’</p> + +<p>‘At first I thought he looked a little queer, then he laughed one of +those irritating insolent laughs of his and said he’d send me the +proof-sheets of the chapter where his young don was described, and I +could judge for myself.’</p> + +<p>‘Well?’</p> + +<p>‘Oh, of course, as soon as he offered to show it to me I knew it must be +all right, and directly I saw it I found as I expected the character +wasn’t the least like me. The fellow was a most egregious prig, and not +only that, but a snob; and whatever my faults, <i>that’s</i> a thing my worst +enemy couldn’t say I was, could he?’</p> + +<p>‘I’m glad it was all right,’ said Sainty. ‘It would have been too +caddish of him to return all your kindness in that way, and somehow I +don’t think Ned’s a bad sort at bottom.’</p> + +<p>As the tripos drew nearer Sainty had less and less time for anything +outside his work. It may be said at once that he took a very good +degree. In country rectories and cheerful middle-class households from +which the clever son of the family had been sent to college at the cost +of some privation and not a little grumbling, a place among the first +six in the Classical Tripos would have been acclaimed with grateful +pride and rejoicing. In Sainty it was accounted an innocent eccentricity +to care what degree he took, or whether he took one at all. Lord Firth, +who was the most understanding among his kinsfolk, wrote a kind little +note of congratulation.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_129">{129}</a></span> Lady Charmington was mildly gratified to find +that her boy had brains and the grit to work for a desired end, but she +frankly acknowledged that she could see no use his first class would be +to him in after life, nor how it would help him to manage his estates. +Arthur said ‘his brother was the rummest devil he ever came across, he +was hanged if he could understand him.’ They would all have been +infinitely better pleased had Sainty taken his uncle’s advice, bought a +gun and gone shooting in some form of movable go-cart. It was the more +remarkable that he should do so well, as he was always more and more +preoccupied about Arthur. Once the examination was over, and his mind at +ease on that score, the old anxieties came crowding back upon him, and +he decided to go to London and try and find out for himself what his +brother was about. He would come up again for his degree. Meanwhile, his +work was done and he had kept his term, so there was no difficulty about +getting an exeat for a day or two, and he wrote to his uncle to ask if +he could put him up.</p> + +<p>After old Lord Firth’s death his widow had given up the house in +Bryanston Square and retired to Roehampton with an elderly companion, an +elderly maid, and an elderly Blenheim spaniel; and the present peer had +bachelor quarters somewhere near Whitehall, close to the House of Lords, +and with a sidelong squint at the river if you got very close to the +windows.</p> + +<p>Having arrived and ascertained that his uncle would probably not be in +till dinner-time, Sainty went westwards in search of his brother. The +educational establishment, familiarly known to candidates for the army +as ‘Monkton’s,’ was situated in the wilds of South Kensington, and in +order to be handy for his place of study Arthur had taken rooms in the +same respectable region. But neither at the crammer’s nor his lodgings +did Sainty find trace of him. At the former he heard that his brother +had been there in the morning, but had not returned since lunch, and his +rooms seemed an even more unlikely place to obtain tidings of the +studious youth.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_130">{130}</a></span> ‘Oh yes!’ the maid said who opened the door, ‘<span class="lftspc">’</span>is +lordship ‘as rooms ’ere right enough, but ’e isn’t often in ’em; ’e +generally either calls or sends for ‘is letters most days, and once in a +way ’e’ll sleep ’ere, but it isn’t often. Sometimes I don’t clap eyes on +‘im for days together.’</p> + +<p>Neither this information nor the fact that his brother’s ideas of +‘sapping like the devil’ were consistent with taking the whole +afternoon, from lunch on, for amusement, struck Sainty as very +reassuring. However, there was nothing to be done except to write on a +card a request that Arthur would come and see him at his club on the +morrow, and trust that it might be one of the days when ‘<span class="lftspc">’</span>is lordship +called or sent for ‘is letters.’</p> + +<p>As his hansom bore him eastwards again, he could not help having his +mind diverted from his anxieties by the rush of London life at five +o’clock of a day in the season unrolled before him like a picture-book. +The streams of vehicles of all sorts flowing in either direction made +progress necessarily slow, and gave ample time for studying their +occupants. He was not yet twenty-two, and had hardly ever been in +London; the whole pageant was absolutely new to him, and it is small +wonder if he found much to interest and amuse him. The great toppling +vans and omnibuses were interspersed with equipages beside which the +renovated carriages of Belchamber seemed suddenly rustic and +old-fashioned. Little victorias slid past, bearing beings in shining +raiment and crowned with improbable headgear. Family landaus containing +no less gorgeous matrons, and perhaps a brace of pink-cheeked +sulky-looking daughters in clouds of blue and white feathers, or small +parterres of roses nodding in the summer breeze, made stately progress +towards the park, or to fetch papa from his club. One of the prettiest +of the passing girls leaned forward in sudden recognition and touched +her companion’s arm, and Sainty found himself responding to a volley of +smiles and bows from Cissy Eccleston and her mother, which at a touch +made him part of the great glittering show, and no longer a mere +onlooker and outsider. It occurred to him<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_131">{131}</a></span> with a little thrill that it +only rested with himself to come in and take his place among all these +people, the place that was his by right of birth. Already invitations +had poured in, more or less unheeded, on such an eligible young man. +Unversed as he was in the ways of the world, he knew enough to be aware +that a fatherless peer with a long minority behind him, an unencumbered +rent-roll, and one of the show places of England, would not be forced to +take the lowest room at the various feasts to which all these votaries +of fashion were so eagerly pressing.</p> + +<p>But this unusual uplifting of his horn was of brief duration. One glance +at the little mirrors on either side of the cab in which he rode, and he +would have bartered all his advantages for the health and good looks of +the poorest of the well-groomed, broad-shouldered youths in shiny boots +who trod the pavement of Piccadilly with floating coat-tails and such a +happy insolence. At one point where the throng was thickest, Sainty’s +attention was arrested by a tall and very showy-looking young person in +a smart private hansom going in the opposite direction from his own. She +was much dressed in the height of the prevailing fashion, and wore what +is called a ‘picture hat’ adorned with a great number of nodding plumes. +Her charms, deftly enhanced by art, were of the more obvious order, and +she scattered smiles broadcast among the throng of young men, where +dogskin-covered hands flew up to many a burnished hat as she passed, +enjoying a sort of triumphal progress with the western sun shining full +on her flashing gems and dazzling complexion. As the two cabs came +almost abreast of one another she leaned back to say something to the +man beside her, and with a clutch of the heart Sainty recognised in the +slim youth leaning lazily back with his hat tipped over his eyes, who +looked so distressingly boyish beside all this full-blown beauty, his +brother Arthur.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_132">{132}</a></span></p> + +<h2><a id="CHAPTER_X">CHAPTER X</a></h2> + +<p class="nind"><span class="smcap">Belchamber’s</span> first feeling was that it was a judgment on him for having +allowed his mind to wander to worldly frivolities and thoughts of +personal amusement. Certainly he had been brought up with a round turn. +His next was one of bewilderment as to what it behoved him to do under +the circumstances. Ought he to let his mother or Lord Firth know what he +had seen? He recoiled with all the force of schoolboy traditions from +the idea of telling tales. Had Arthur recognised him? he wondered, and +would he come to the rendezvous at the club next day, even supposing +that he got his message? He had been on his way to call on his +grandmother, and, as he omitted to give the driver any fresh +instructions, he presently found himself at Sunborough House. Having +ascertained from the porter that the duchess was out, he was turning +away when he saw some one signalling to him from one of the ground-floor +windows, and Claude came running bareheaded down the steps.</p> + +<p>‘My dear old boy! this <i>is</i> nice,’ he said. ‘I’d no idea you were in +town. I saw you from the window of my room. Come in and have some tea, +and I’ll tell them to let us know when grandmamma comes in.’</p> + +<p>Sainty was drawn affectionately into a large room near the front-door, +which Claude explained was his peculiar sanctum. ‘It used just to be a +sort of waiting-room, and was much wasted, so I got the Pompier to let +me have it for mine. That bell rings from his study, so he can get at me +whenever he wants me.’</p> + +<p>It was a pleasant room, with two high windows draped with some sombre, +respectable, woollen fabric. Its original furni<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_133">{133}</a></span>ture consisted of a +large writing-table with a gallery, and a set of green leather chairs, +two high-backed mahogany bookcases with brass lattice-work in their +doors, and several good old engravings on the walls, the duke’s father, +mother, and grandfather, after Lawrence, Mesdames Taglioni, and Fanny +Ellsler, Count d’Orsay, the Queen on horseback, and the Duke of +Wellington. On this severe ground Claude had, so to speak, embroidered a +fantasia of more modern objects—little tables, low easy-chairs, +cigarette-cases, a vase or two of flowers, several books, reviews, and +paper-knives, and a vast quantity of signed and framed photographs of +all shapes and sizes. With the exception of an eminent man or two, and a +few sleek young peers, they all represented beautiful ladies—ladies +looking over their shoulders, with their hands behind their backs, +ladies with sheaves of lilies and baskets of flowers, ladies looking out +of paper-mullioned windows wreathed in sham ivy, ladies with children in +lace frocks, ladies in ball dress, court dress, fancy dress, or simply +what may be called photographic dress, consisting of the sitter’s best +low-necked gown and a hat, a combination which no one could be expected +to believe was ever worn outside the studio. Three large official +dispatch-boxes with paper tags hanging out of their ends stood on the +writing-table, and a receptacle like a good-sized dog-basket bulged with +letters for the post.</p> + +<p>His cousin was so cordial and affectionate, did the honours of his +official residence with such charming grace, that Sainty felt impelled +rather against his will to tell him of his late encounter. Perhaps if +circumstances had not thrown him so immediately in his way, he might not +have selected Claude as his confidant; but he desperately needed help +and counsel, and here was some one ready with both, some one whom to +tell would have none of the grave, official importance of a report to +Lady Charmington or his uncle. Warmed by tea and his cousin’s +enthusiastic welcome, he had not been ten minutes in the room before he +had confided to its occupant all his uneasiness and its latest cause.</p> + +<p>‘Really! Arthur <i>is</i> an ass!’ was Claude’s comment.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_134">{134}</a></span> ‘What strikes me +first of all is the infernal imprudence of the whole thing. Why can’t he +go and see the lady quietly, instead of flourishing about Piccadilly in +a hansom with her at five o’clock in the afternoon? He’s just as likely +as not to meet grandmamma or your uncle as any one else, and then all +the fat will be in the fire.’</p> + +<p>There was a ring of very genuine annoyance in Claude’s voice; and +Sainty, though he smiled at the aspect of the matter that so +characteristically presented itself to Morland as the important one, +felt that he had not brought his troubles to an indifferent or +unsympathetic person.</p> + +<p>‘But who do you suppose it is?’ he asked, ‘and where can Arthur have +made her acquaintance? Perhaps it may not be—what I fear; but she +looked rather—well, rather——’</p> + +<p>‘Yes,’ said Claude, laughing; ‘I should say it was ten to one she <i>was</i> +“rather.”<span class="lftspc">’</span></p> + +<p>‘It’s no laughing matter,’ cried Sainty. ‘It was bad enough when I +thought he was only neglecting his work, and just idling and amusing +himself; but this makes it all much more serious. But Claude, can’t you +help? Can you not guess who it might be?’</p> + +<p>‘Oh, it might be any one of a dozen people,’ said Claude indifferently. +‘It doesn’t so much matter <i>who</i> it is,’ he added; ‘the great thing is +to try and get him not to make a fool of himself. You know, dear Saint, +it is useless to expect the high moral view from <i>me</i>. What you want is +that Arthur shan’t go and do anything idiotic, isn’t it? Well, I’m much +more likely to prevent his giving the whole show away than you are, +ain’t I? You leave it to me; I’ll see what can be done.’</p> + +<p>It was on the tip of Sainty’s tongue to say that the eye which Claude +had promised him at Belchamber to keep on Arthur, could not have been +peculiarly vigilant; but he did not wish to alienate the one person who +might perhaps help him, so he expressed gratitude and a confidence he +did not wholly feel; and just then a footman came in to say that<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_135">{135}</a></span> ‘<span class="lftspc">’</span>Er +grace had come in, but was dining out, and must rest before dressing, +and she ‘oped Lord Belchamber would come to luncheon next day.’</p> + +<p>‘By the way, yes,’ said Claude, when the man had left them. ‘To-night is +the dinner at the French Embassy, and then there is the ball at +What’s-their-names, and grandmamma must shed her day-skin and give the +new one time to harden.’</p> + +<p>‘What do you <i>call</i> her, Claude?’ asked Sainty. ‘I never feel as if I +<i>could</i> call her “grandmamma.”<span class="lftspc">’</span></p> + +<p>‘Oh, I never call her that to her face, <i>bien entendu</i>. It was a +dreadful question at first. I couldn’t call her Hélo as her stepsons do; +but I’ve hit on a lovely plan. I call her ‘Grace,’ suggesting +facetiously ‘Your grace,’ do you see? and it sounds like a cross between +a Christian name and a sort of compliment, grace personified, that kind +of business. Well, good-night, old chap, if you must go. Don’t worry +about the little blessing; you had much better let me see what I can do. +Right you are. And for the Lord’s sake, don’t say a word to your uncle +or any of ’em.’</p> + +<p>‘Don’t worry,’ that was still the burthen of such very various +counsellors, as Gerald Newby and Claude Morland, and more or less the +line his mother took, who was again so unlike either of them; and +meanwhile he was expected to stand by and see Arthur drifting to ruin +under his eyes. However, he so far obeyed Claude’s injunctions as to say +nothing to Lord Firth on the subject, when they presently dined +together, though his principal object in coming to town had been to ask +his advice.</p> + +<p>‘Have you seen Arthur?’ his uncle asked in the course of dinner, and +Sainty only said, ‘I called at Monkton’s and at his lodgings, but I +didn’t find him.’</p> + +<p>‘It was a rum idea of your mother’s, letting him come to London, but it +seems to be working, and so does he. I’ve asked him once or twice to +come and dine, but he hardly ever comes. He says the evening is one of +the best times he has for work.’</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_136">{136}</a></span></p> + +<p>Sainty had but little chance of private talk with Claude the next day, +when he lunched at Sunborough House. His cousin drew him gently to a +window when he arrived, while the numerous chance guests were awaiting +the appearance of their hostess.</p> + +<p>‘I’ve thought of who it very likely was,’ he said, with engaging +frankness. ‘If it’s the person I think, she’s a good girl, and won’t do +him any harm. You know you can’t expect to keep Arthur away from women; +the important thing is that he shouldn’t get into bad hands, and I’ll +drop him a hint to be more careful and not to go and <i>afficher</i> himself. +Hush! here’s our respectable ancestress. Well, Grace, here’s your <i>good</i> +boy come to see you, to make a change from your bad one.’</p> + +<p>Sainty never knew whether it was circumstances or design that made it +impossible for him to get another word alone with Claude. He did not +feel that Morland’s help would be exactly of the kind or in the +direction that he wanted, and he was more than ever anxious to see his +brother himself, and try and find out just how much was wrong. He went +early in the afternoon to a club in St. James’s Street, of which he had +lately become a member, so as to be sure not to miss Arthur if he should +come there. To his surprise, the porter handed him a letter as he went +in, which proved to be a note from Lady Eccleston asking him to dine the +same evening. He thought it would be pleasant to accept, but decided to +keep it till he had found out if Arthur had any plans for the evening; +so he put it into his pocket, and turned into a room on the ground +floor, where some of the latest publications were displayed on a long +table.</p> + +<p>A group of young men who were laughing uproariously over a book desisted +rather suddenly on his entrance, as one of them, in whom he recognised +the young stockbroker Pryor, looked towards him and whispered something +to the rest. They faced round and stared at him much as sheep look at a +dog, while Austin Pryor came forward holding out his right hand, with +the book still in his left.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_137">{137}</a></span></p> + +<p>‘I say,’ he said, ‘how odd you should come in just this minute! Have you +seen this book of your friend Parsons’? It’s only out to-day, and they +say you can’t get a copy for love or money. Wasn’t he that untidy chap +with a fishy eye who was at your coming of age last year? I’m blowed if +he hasn’t gone and stuck the whole show into his book, only he’s made +your brother the hero instead of you, he’s turned you into a girl, a +great heiress with rather jimmy health and a cork leg, who’s in love +with the villain. But the rest of us are there, even down to poor little +me. Your mother, your uncle—oh! and the duchess—he’s touched the old +duchess off to the life, even to the colour of the gowns she wore at +dinner. Well—he’s made his fortune. They say he’s been offered ten +thousand for his next book, if he’ll only guarantee two well-known +people bein’ in it. It’s better biz than the House; here am I come away +at three-thirty; absolutely nothing doing, I give you my word. I haven’t +made a fiver this account. Here—would you like the book? I’ve got to go +out, and some one’ll grab it like a shot if you don’t lay hold of it.’</p> + +<p>The other youths seemed to have melted away during this speech, so that +when Mr. Pryor, convinced that he had made himself most agreeable, +handed him the fortunate novel of the season, and hurried away to gossip +about it in as many drawing-rooms as he could work in before +dressing-time, Sainty found himself alone with the book in his hand. He +sat down to wait for Arthur, and began turning over the pages.</p> + +<p>So it was for this that Parsons had wanted to come to Belchamber. Now he +understood. As Pryor had said, they were all drawn to the life. ‘Well, +it doesn’t demand much imagination to write a book in that way,’ he +thought. Presently he came to the passage about the young don, and found +he was smiling in spite of himself at Newby’s happy confidence that the +character could by no possibility have been drawn from him. The portrait +was one-sided and most malevolent, but quite unmistakable. A year ago he +would have been beyond words indignant at this ill-natured cari<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_138">{138}</a></span>cature +of his friend and hero. Now he could not repress a faint feeling of +amusement. What had happened to him in the meanwhile, he wondered; he +felt ashamed of his want of loyalty. ‘Lord Arthur Chambers askin’ for +you, m’lud,’ a discreet club waiter murmured in his ear; and he +remembered with a start that in life as in Ned Parsons’ story, the +protagonist of the moment was not himself but his younger brother.</p> + +<p>‘Infernally thirsty weather,’ Arthur remarked, as he dropped gracefully +into a chair. ‘May I have a whisky and soda?—thanks.’ Then to the +waiter, without allowing Sainty time to answer, ‘A large whisky and +soda, please, with some ice and a slice of lemon. Well, old chap,’ he +continued, turning again to his brother as the man departed, ‘and what’s +brought you to town?’</p> + +<p>‘You,’ answered Sainty severely.</p> + +<p>‘O God! old man, not a jaw,’ Arthur pleaded wearily; ‘it’s too hot’</p> + +<p>‘Did you see me yesterday?’ Sainty asked suddenly.</p> + +<p>‘No, old boy—where?’ said Arthur, with slightly awakened interest.</p> + +<p>‘About five o’clock, in Piccadilly. You were in a hansom.’</p> + +<p>Arthur flushed crimson all over his handsome face. ‘The devil!’ he said +simply, in a manner which told more plainly than words that he had <i>not</i> +seen his brother.</p> + +<p>‘Think of the imprudence of it,’ Sainty remonstrated (quoting Claude, +rather to his own surprise; it was not in the least what he had meant to +say). ‘You might just as likely have met Uncle Cor as me, or some one +who knew you, and might have written to mother.’ He did not like to name +Lady Eccleston, who was the person he had in his mind.</p> + +<p>‘I wasn’t doing anything I was ashamed of,’ Arthur answered doggedly.</p> + +<p>Then there was a little pause, during which the waiter reappeared with a +long clanking tumbler, and the brothers sat and looked at one another +gloomily.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_139">{139}</a></span></p> + +<p>‘Well?’ asked the younger, as he sipped his refreshment.</p> + +<p>‘Do you often drink between meals?’ Sainty asked. ‘Are there none of the +stereotyped bad habits that you haven’t contracted yet?’</p> + +<p>‘An occasional whisky and soda when one’s thirsty doesn’t make a man an +habitual drunkard——’</p> + +<p>After a second pause, ‘I suppose you want to know who it was?’ Arthur +suggested, with another blush.</p> + +<p>‘I don’t know that I do,’ Sainty answered. ‘It was evident enough the +sort of person——’</p> + +<p>But Arthur cut him short. ‘I won’t hear a word against her,’ he said +hotly. ‘Of course she’s an actress, and that’s enough to make people say +deuced ill-natured things; but she’s as good a girl——’</p> + +<p>‘Do you mean to say——’ Sainty was beginning, when Arthur suddenly +melted, leaned forward, and laid an affectionate hand on his.</p> + +<p>‘Look here, old man,’ he said, ‘of course I don’t mean that she’s +immaculate; but she’s told me a lot about herself, and I’m sure she’s +more sinned against than sinning, you know, and all that. And I’m +awfully in love with her; you may as well know it first as last. And I +can’t stand hearing her talked about as if she was just a common woman. +What are you doing to-night? I’ve persuaded her to come to supper with +me, and asked some of her pals; will you come to the theatre with me and +see her act, and come and meet her at supper? You’ll see for yourself +how awfully respectable and jolly and all that she is.’</p> + +<p>Sainty’s mind flew to the little note in his pocket; he would much +rather have dined with the Ecclestons, but perhaps it was his duty to go +and inspect the syren who had captured his brother, and he was not +without curiosity as to a side of life with regard to which he was as +ignorant as a girl. ‘How can I help him,’ he thought, ‘if I know no more +of his life and temptations than mother does?’ And he shuddered to think +of the light in which Lady Charmington would view his acceptance of the +proffered supper-party.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_140">{140}</a></span></p> + +<p>‘You had better dine here with me first,’ he said resignedly; ‘Uncle Cor +is dining out.’</p> + +<p>Arthur was so delighted at the ease with which he had brought his +brother into line with his plans, and so excited by the anticipation of +the evening’s amusement, that Sainty found it impossible to get anything +out of him as to the extent to which he had been neglecting his work. +All mere prosaic questions of that sort seemed to the enamoured swain so +entirely trivial that Sainty himself began to wonder why he attached +such undue importance to them. Under the influence of what seemed almost +like an unselfish passion, Arthur appeared so much more amiable than +usual, that he, who had come to lecture, came perilously near remaining +to sympathise. He learned that the lady of the hansom was Miss Cynthia +de Vere, who was performing in a piece called ‘<i>Africa Limited, or the +Day of All Jeers</i>,’ a really rattling piece, in which she was perfectly +ripping, that she had a not very important <i>rôle</i>, as far as words went, +which was of course due to professional jealousies, but she was on the +stage nearly all the time, and wore some ‘clinking’ costumes.</p> + +<p>‘By the way,’ Sainty inquired, just as Arthur was about to leave him, +‘how did you come to meet Miss de Vere?’</p> + +<p>‘Oh, Claude introduced me to her, one of the few good things I owe him.’</p> + +<p>‘Claude!’ Sainty bounded. He could only gasp, as the full measure of his +cousin’s duplicity forced itself upon him.</p> + +<p>‘You needn’t think the worse of her on that account,’ Arthur said. ‘She +doesn’t like our slimy cousin; she told me so. She says he’s a bad lot, +and so he is. Between you and me, I think he’s behaved badly to her in +some way. She said she’d no cause to love him, but of course I couldn’t +<i>ask</i> her anything about it. Tata, old chap; see you later. I must go +and tell a certain person you’re coming; she’ll be awfully pleased.’</p> + +<p><i>Africa Limited</i> was one of the first of those musical farces which have +revolutionised the English stage; it had a great quantity of characters, +and no particular plot. The first act<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_141">{141}</a></span> took place in England, the second +in what was supposed to be Algeria, and was represented by a mixture of +the tropics and a pantomime transformation scene. There were any number +of songs and dances, that could be introduced or omitted at will, and +the time of day was morning, sunset, limelight, or back to high noon, +with bewildering rapidity, and a total disregard of the ordinary +sequence of the hours. There were a pair of serious and lyrical lovers, +who discoursed sentimental ballads and duets; a pair of secondary +lovers, more facetious and less sentimental; an excruciatingly funny +comic man from the halls, who assumed every kind of disguise for no +particular reason; a barbarous potentate, who turned out to be Irish, +and the comic man’s long lost grandfather; several dancers of +<i>pas-seuls</i>, and last, but not least, a number of extremely handsome +young ladies, who did not seem to have much connection with the story, +but who turned up in the most unlikely places, always gorgeously +dressed, and had each three sentences to say in the course of the +evening. It was one of this frolic band whom Arthur shyly indicated to +his brother as Miss Cynthia de Vere, and in whom Sainty without much +difficulty recognised the damsel he had seen in Piccadilly. Across the +footlights and out of the pitiless sunshine of a summer day, she made a +striking and picturesque appearance enough. She smiled affably at the +brothers, and at several other acquaintances in the stalls and boxes, +and took a most perfunctory interest in what was going on upon the +stage.</p> + +<p>A rather <i>recherché</i> dandyism was at that moment the correct style for +young men about town, and Arthur was got up to kill, with a vast expanse +of shirt-front illuminated by a single jewel, white kid gloves, and a +cane, his fair curls cropped, flattened, and darkened as near to the +accepted model as nature would allow, and his face very pink and solemn +over his high collar. He went out between the acts ‘to smoke a +cigarette,’ and returned with a new buttonhole and a peculiarly fatuous +smile never produced by tobacco.</p> + +<p>As they drove to the restaurant where they were to sup, he<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_142">{142}</a></span> obliged +Sainty with a catalogue <i>raisonné</i> of the guests. ‘Charley Hunter’s +coming, and Agnes Baines, the girl next but two to Cynthia, because +Charley’s awfully mashed on her; Mabel Hodgson, that handsome girl at +the other corner from Cynthia; and I had to ask that little cad Harry +Atides, because he won’t let her go anywhere without him; they say he +beats her. Cynthia has such an awfully good heart; she asked me to ask +her, because she has such a dull life. I don’t see why she stays with +that little beast. Then there is Elise Balbullier, the French +girl—she’s awfully amusing and clever; Clara Bingham, one of the chorus +girls—she’s a pal of Cynthia’s; and Colonel Hoby—he knows all the +girls, and they like him, and he chaffs ’em, don’t you know.’</p> + +<p>Some of us not yet in our dotage can remember when it was by no means an +easy thing to find a place in London whereat to sup; but about the time +that pieces of the type of <i>Africa Limited</i> came into fashion, the +play-going public discovered that it was unequal to the intellectual +effort of witnessing them without the support of two dinners, and the +first house of entertainment to cater for this new need was the Hotel +and Restaurant Fritz, so called after its enterprising manager. +Everything was on a scale of hitherto unprecedented luxury and +proportionate expense; the waiters, of every conceivable nationality, +wore short jackets and white aprons like those in a French café. A real +chef directed an army of myrmidons in the adjoining kitchen. There were +shaded electric lights, and little vases of flowers on the tables, among +which dignified head-waiters walked like dethroned potentates in +irreproachable evening dress, while a string-band made conversation +appear a superfluity. A negro in a fez made Turkish coffee at a sort of +altar in the midst, and the decorations suggested the saloon of the most +expensive Atlantic liner.</p> + +<p>The brothers had to struggle to the cloak-room through a crowd of all +ages and sexes, the women with fresh powder on their noses pulling out +their crushed laces, the men settling their ties and stroking their back +hair. Among these latter<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_143">{143}</a></span> they suddenly found themselves face to face +with Claude. Arthur pushed past him with a sulky nod. Claude jerked his +head after him. ‘So you’ve got hold of the culprit,’ he said; ‘is it all +right? have you got anything satisfactory out of him?’</p> + +<p>‘I have got the most surprising things out of him,’ answered Sainty +witheringly, looking his cousin straight in the eye.</p> + +<p>Claude did not seem to notice. ‘I’m waiting for Lady Deans and Lady +Dalsany,’ he said. ‘Women take such an infernal time prinking. Have you +seen your cousin Trafford? He’s supposed to be supping with us, or +rather we with him; but what are <i>you</i> doing in this unlikely place?’</p> + +<p>‘Oh, <i>I</i>’m supping in quite a different <i>monde</i>,’ said Sainty in a low +vibrating voice, which he tried to keep very steady and sarcastic; ‘my +brother has invited me to meet the girl of his heart. I really must +offer you my sincerest thanks for the admirable way you’ve looked after +him for me.’ He was swelling with righteous indignation and a +consciousness of having driven a nail of incisive bitterness through the +counterfeit coin of his cousin’s sympathy, as he rejoined Arthur and +delivered up his hat to the attendant.</p> + +<p>Possibly with some touch of quite new prudence born of his conversation +with Sainty, but much more probably with a view to doing proper honour +to his fair guest, Arthur had retained a private room, rather, as it +appeared, to the disappointment of the ladies, who had looked forward to +seeing and being seen in the big restaurant, but immensely to the relief +of his elder brother. The table was profusely decked with long trails of +smilax and a quantity of those florists’ roses that are all of one size +and shape and colour, and seem to have been manufactured by the dozen, +ready packed in cardboard boxes, having no more suggestion about them of +growth by any natural process than the little red silk shades on the +electric lights.</p> + +<p>Miss de Vere, resplendent in green velvet, with a vast number of diamond +ornaments, hearts, stars, crescents, arrows, and even frogs and spiders, +pinned into the front<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_144">{144}</a></span> of her gown, sat on Arthur’s right and between +the two brothers. She just touched a string of pearls at her throat, +smiling archly on her host, as she took her seat. Long afterwards, +Sainty had the opportunity of verifying his surmise that it was a +present from that open-handed youth, when, in settling his brother’s +outstanding liabilities, he came across it in Messrs. Rumond & Diby’s +little account in company with the claret jug that had figured on the +occasion of his own majority.</p> + +<p>Seen at close quarters, the fair Cynthia was a little coarse looking, +and it seemed to Sainty that a person to whom the art of painting her +face must be professionally familiar, ought to have acquired more +delicacy of touch. Her eyes were very large, and what the French call <i>à +fleur de tête</i>; her lips were too full, too red, and seemed to show too +much of their linings; and her teeth, which had flashed so brilliantly +across the footlights, were less dazzling on a nearer inspection. Her +figure and carriage were superb, but her hands, though unnaturally +whitened, were not pretty, and her nails were ill-cared for and perhaps +a little bitten. She was extremely gracious to Sainty, and evidently +anxious to impress him with her <i>tenue</i> and the elegance of her manners.</p> + +<p>‘I met Lady Deans in the cloakroom,’ she began; ‘isn’t she a handsome +woman? I <i>do</i> admire her. Isn’t it odd, her Christian name’s Vere, and +so’s my surname? and we’re both so tall. Some one once said we might be +sisters, but of course that’s nonsense. I know she’s a great deal better +lookin’ than me.’</p> + +<p>‘It had not occurred to me that you were alike——’ Sainty was +beginning, but Arthur cut in. ‘Rats,’ he said. ‘You know she isn’t a +patch on you,’ for which gallant speech he was rewarded by a rap on the +knuckles from his enslaver’s fork. Though he gazed enraptured in her +face, she paid him very little attention, and continued to address her +conversation to Sainty.</p> + +<p>‘We had a little supper at my place last night; I wish I’d known you +were in town; your brother was there. Oh, all<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_145">{145}</a></span> very quiet, of course; +only a little soup, and lobster cutlets, and nothing else hot but the +fowls; a few little things in aspic, and some plover’s eggs, that’s all; +but we were very jolly. Straddles came, the famous <i>comique</i>, and sang +some of his songs and made us roar; and one or two other people sang, +and then we cleared away the furniture and had some dancing. We kept it +up till four o’clock. I declare I’m quite sleepy; ain’t you, Clara?’</p> + +<p>Miss Bingham, a little, heavily painted black and red lady, replied from +the other end of the table that she couldn’t keep her eyes open. ‘Lor! +we did have fun, though,’ she said; ‘how was the poor piano this +morning, after those boys pouring the champagne into it?’</p> + +<p>‘Oh, don’t speak of it,’ said Miss de Vere. ‘You know that lovely new +drapery I’d got for it, plush and Liberty silk; they completely ruined +it. I was really cross. I don’t see any fun in spoiling people’s +things.’</p> + +<p>‘What a shame!’ said Arthur. ‘May I give you a new one?’</p> + +<p>‘No, naughty boy, don’t you be extravagant. Why didn’t <i>you</i> come?’ she +added, turning to Miss Hodgson, the beautiful statuesque lady who sat on +Arthur’s left with a fixed smile on her lovely mouth that recalled the +hairdresser’s window. She was eating a good deal, but not adding much to +the conversation. Thus appealed to, she glanced towards the little +Greek, still with the same amiable absence of expression, and nodded +gently.</p> + +<p>‘Do you mean I wouldn’t let you go?’ snarled Mr. Atides.</p> + +<p>‘Oh no,’ she cooed.</p> + +<p>‘Then why the devil didn’t you go? <i>I</i> don’t know——’</p> + +<p>‘<i>Petit monstre</i>,’ murmured Miss Balbullier to Sainty. ‘<i>Est-il +insupportable! V’là longtemps que je l’aurais planté là si j’etais +Mabel.</i> ‘Oby, what is “planted there” in English?’</p> + +<p>‘Chuck ‘im, give ‘im the mitten,’ promptly responded that gallant +officer.</p> + +<p>Sainty wondered just what kind of weird irregular regiment could once +have been commanded by this blue-nosed veteran,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_146">{146}</a></span> with his dyed moustache +and damp grizzled curls; his hands and eyes were so much older than +anything else about him, as to give an uncanny suggestion of magic, as +of some imperfectly transformed Faust.</p> + +<p>‘<i>Tiens! la mitaine?</i> I ignore the phrase,’ said mademoiselle.</p> + +<p>Mr. Atides continued to growl into his plate with a very evil +expression, like a dog over a bone, and Agnes Baines, a very pretty fair +girl with a pronounced Cockney accent pursued an eager conversation +across him with Miss Bingham, as though he were an empty chair.</p> + +<p>‘<span class="lftspc">’</span>E’s given ’er a tiara,’ Sainty heard her say; ‘none of your little +‘undred-pounders, a real fine one with big stones in it.’</p> + +<p>‘Isn’t Agnes vulgar?’ Cynthia murmured to him, very impressive and +supercilious from the heights of her superior gentility. ‘She’s had so +few advantages, poor girl! but she is pretty, don’t you think?’</p> + +<p>‘They say he’s goin’ to marry ’er,’ Miss Baines continued.</p> + +<p>‘Your English girls are so kveer,’ the French lady remarked to Sainty; +‘zay sink of nozzing but gettin’ married. To me zat seem so sorrrdid,’ +As Mademoiselle Elise was credited with having already ruined three +young men during the brief period of her sojourn on these shores, +without any thought of ceremonial formalities, this sentiment was +perhaps not so disinterestedly high-minded as it sounded.</p> + +<p>Charley Hunter, who had been vainly trying to attract Miss Baines’ +attention—though perhaps more of her conversation was addressed to him +than he realised—and gnawing his beardless lips at the ill success of +his manœuvres, here turned his back squarely on her and addressed +himself to Arthur.</p> + +<p>‘They say they’re going to raise the standard; isn’t it beastly? as if +the damned exams. weren’t hard enough as it is.’</p> + +<p>‘My little feller from Aldershot says they are going to make ’em so +stiff that none of you Johnnies will be able to pass unless you jolly +well buck up,’ remarked Miss Bingham cheerfully.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_147">{147}</a></span></p> + +<p>‘I hope you will use your influence with my brother to make him work,’ +Sainty said, turning to Cynthia; ‘it’s very important he should pass.’</p> + +<p>‘He’s a bad boy,’ said Miss de Vere playfully, ‘but I’m always at him +not to be so idle.’</p> + +<p>This speech being greeted with derisive laughter by some of the company, +the lady indignantly demanded if they didn’t believe her.</p> + +<p>‘There were no exams. in my day,’ cried Colonel Hoby, ‘and damn me if I +think they turned out less good officers than the damned spindle-shanked +round-shouldered crew of short-sighted asses you have in the army +nowadays. They ought to be parsons.’</p> + +<p>‘Hear, hear! Fieldmarshal,’ said Arthur. ‘I wish we had you in Pall +Mall; there’d be a lot more good fellows in the army than there are, if +you were Commander-in-chief.’</p> + +<p>Sainty was growing weak with the effort of trying to find something +agreeable to say to either of his neighbours. He was oppressed with a +sense of the dreariness of the whole function. He had come prepared to +be a little shocked, but half hoping for a touch of reckless gaiety. If +this was the sort of entertainment Tannhäuser found in the Venusberg, he +thought the pilgrimage to Rome must have been an exhilarating change. He +found himself almost wishing for the young men who had poured champagne +into Miss de Vere’s piano, to lend some semblance of liveliness to the +proceedings. With its banal unimaginative luxury and sordid second-rate +chatter, this one excursion of his into Bohemia was as dull as one of +his mother’s religious dinner-parties. And to think that it was for the +privilege of frequenting this sort of society that dozens of young men +of Arthur’s stamp ruined themselves yearly, on the very threshold of +life! Uncle Cor might not be very exciting, but he surely was better +company than Atides or Colonel Hoby. But then Sainty was +constitutionally unfitted to give its due importance to love’s young +dream.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_148">{148}</a></span></p> + +<h2><a id="CHAPTER_XI">CHAPTER XI</a></h2> + +<p class="nind"><span class="smcap">Sainty</span> rather expected a letter with some attempt at exculpation from +his cousin; but Claude was evidently aware that in many awkward +positions there is no course so expedient as silence. Had circumstances +made a meeting with Sainty seem imminent, he might have thought +otherwise; but, as things were, having nothing to say, he said nothing, +and trusted to time to take the edge off the situation. Sainty composed +several very withering answers to the possible letter, but as it never +came he had no occasion to send them.</p> + +<p>He had not contrived to get a word with Arthur after the memorable +supper. ‘Hope you won’t mind, old man, promised to see Miss de Vere +home; only civil,’ the boy had murmured, as he slipped into the little +hired <i>coupé</i> that was waiting. Mademoiselle Balbullier had hinted that +a like attention would not be unwelcome from himself, but finding her +hints disregarded, had driven off in a hansom with Miss Bingham, +laughing very shrilly at some joke that seemed to tickle them hugely.</p> + +<p>Sainty returned to Cambridge more than ever persuaded that if anything +was to be done for Arthur it must be done quickly. He had for some time +had a scheme in his head, which had been germinating slowly, but for it +to come to blossom, let alone fruit, he needed above all things the +co-operation of Gerald Newby. He therefore made haste to seek his friend +and lay his plans before him. He found Newby for a wonder alone.</p> + +<p>‘So you’re back,’ Gerald said, pushing the papers together on his desk +and pulling the blotting-paper over them, a<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_149">{149}</a></span> little trick of his which +always exasperated Sainty, who would rather have died than look at +anything not meant for him.</p> + +<p>‘Are you busy?’ he asked. ‘I’ve got something special to talk to you +about.’</p> + +<p>‘I’m not too busy to be at the service of any one who wants me,’ said +Newby. ‘Mere college work never seems to me as important as real human +needs.’</p> + +<p>‘Ah! I’m so glad to hear you say that; it gives me a better hope in what +I have to say to you.’ Sainty had thought so much over the scheme he had +to propose—it was so important to him—that now it was trembling on the +threshold of utterance he feared lest he should not put it before Newby +to the best advantage.</p> + +<p>There was so long a pause that the young don came round from his +writing-table to a position from which he faced and dominated his +interlocutor. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I’m all attention.’</p> + +<p>‘First of all about my brother,’ Sainty began, with some hesitation. +‘You must know that I’ve found things even worse than I expected; it’s +not merely idleness and waste of time, as I feared; there’s a woman in +the case.’</p> + +<p>Newby frowned. He had an almost feminine prudery. The fact was he knew +very little of such things, and what he did not know always seemed to +him dark and dangerous, a subject to be as much as possible avoided in +conversation. ‘I am very little qualified to advise——’ he began.</p> + +<p>‘Oh! that’s not what I wanted your help about,’ Sainty assured him; ‘at +least, not directly; but you know I’ve often told you how I wished I +could get rid of my most unsuitable part in life.’</p> + +<p>Newby made an almost imperceptible gesture of impatience, as who should +say, ‘We are back to that old game, are we?’</p> + +<p>‘It was not mere talk,’ Sainty went on. ‘I have thought and thought +about it, till I really have evolved something; I have once or twice +wanted to speak to you about it, but have<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_150">{150}</a></span> been afraid. Why I mentioned +Arthur just now, was that a great factor in my desire for a change of +life was that I thought I saw my way to helping him, perhaps to <i>saving</i> +him; and what I’ve seen in this visit to London convinces me that I’ve +no time to lose.’</p> + +<p>‘You interest me,’ said Newby patronisingly. He went across and fastened +his outer door. ‘If what you have to say to me is so important,’ he +said, ‘we may as well secure ourselves against interruption.’</p> + +<p>‘Ever since I was a child,’ Sainty began again, ‘it has been borne in on +me that my brother was as pre-eminently fitted for my place in the world +as I was <i>un</i>fitted for it. I used to think I was sure to die young, and +that so matters would adjust themselves naturally without my +intervention. Well—I’m nearly twenty-two, and I seem to get stronger +every year. I don’t say I’m a tower of strength, but I fancy I’m less +likely to die than many more robust men. For one thing, I do no +dangerous things. You can understand that the idea is not a pleasant one +to me that my one business in life is to keep my brother out of his +birthright.’</p> + +<p>‘It isn’t his birthright; it’s yours.’</p> + +<p>‘That’s as you happen to look at it; it’s not my view. I can’t feel as +if I had any right to what is only a hindrance and clog to me, and would +be such a help to him.’</p> + +<p>‘But you can’t change places with him, however much you may wish to.’</p> + +<p>‘Legally and physically, no; virtually, yes. For ever so long I’ve been +hatching a pet scheme, but I can’t carry it out without your help. I’ve +not the health, the will, nor the intellect necessary; but you would be +the ideal person to do it, and you would help and cheer me when I +failed.’</p> + +<p>‘May I know what this wonderful idea of yours is?’</p> + +<p>‘I can’t make him Lord Belchamber—I wish I could; but I can practically +give him the position, if I hand over the place and income to him. He +would be able to marry some nice girl; he is one of those who ought to +marry young.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_151">{151}</a></span> With a healthy, out-of-door life and plenty of innocent +congenial occupation, and the influence of a good woman at his side, all +that is kindly in him would have room to develop. He is not naturally +vicious, only weak and incurably headstrong and obstinate.’</p> + +<p>‘And what do you propose to do with <i>yourself</i>?’</p> + +<p>‘Ah! that is it; that’s where <i>you</i> come in. The whole thing hangs on +you.’ Sainty looked appealingly in his friend’s face. ‘I’m half afraid +to put it to the touch,’ he said; ‘I have it so much at heart.’</p> + +<p>‘I can’t give you my views on your Utopia unless you tell me what it +is.’</p> + +<p>Sainty detected and grieved at the faint sneer in the use of the word +‘Utopia.’</p> + +<p>‘You don’t encourage me,’ he said.</p> + +<p>‘How can I, till I know what you propose?’</p> + +<p>‘I thought we might go, you and I, into one of those East End parishes +and start a place something on the lines of Toynbee Hall, a sort of +university for the poor, a centre of culture and light and civilisation +in the middle of all that dreariness and barbarity; I to find the money, +and you practically everything else, with me for your lieutenant to work +under your orders.’</p> + +<p>Sainty brought it all out with a rush, when once he had come to the +point, and then paused breathless to hear how his idea would be +received. Newby sat silent for a moment or two; at least he took the +matter seriously.</p> + +<p>‘Have you thought at all what it will cost?’ he asked.</p> + +<p>‘Yes,’ cried Sainty eagerly, ‘I’ve gone into all that rather carefully. +Say that it costs £20,000 to build the place—it could be done for that, +very simple and plain; a big hall to begin with, and perhaps a cloister, +and a few sets of rooms like college rooms. After the initial expense I +don’t think it <i>could</i> cost more than £2000 or £3000 a year. Of course +we should live in the simplest way—there would be no luxury; and +gradually I should hope the place would begin to help pay for itself; it +wouldn’t be a charity, you know.’</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_152">{152}</a></span></p> + +<p>‘And the land?’ asked Newby; ‘is that included in your £20,000? You +would want a good big plot, for the heart of London, to put up such +buildings as you propose.’</p> + +<p>‘Oh, that could be managed. I might pay for half and raise the other +half by mortgage on the property, or even the whole. There need be no +difficulty about the money part of it; <i>I</i>’d see to that. The question +is, will you help? All the rules, all the details of the working of the +thing would have to come from you. You would be absolute master. I +thought,’ he added a little piteously, ‘that it would appeal to you as +an opportunity of carrying out some of your ideals. It would, of course, +be entirely undenominational; people of all creeds should be invited to +explain their views. It might be the beginning, the nucleus of your idea +of universal belief and brotherhood.’</p> + +<p>The pleading eyes fixed on his face seemed to make Newby vaguely ill at +ease. While Sainty was talking he had shifted his position, got up and +walked to the window, and sat down again at his desk, on which he +drummed a little with his fingers. Now he rose and came back to his +friend. There was a touch of embarrassment and something like +compunction, as he said—</p> + +<p>‘My dear fellow, it’s impossible, simply impossible.’</p> + +<p>Sainty, glancing round the charming room with its air of dignified calm +and severe luxury, saw suddenly how sham was its austerity, how real its +comfort.</p> + +<p>‘I am asking a great deal of you,’ he said; ‘too much, I’m afraid.’</p> + +<p>‘Don’t say that,’ said Newby eagerly. ‘Don’t think I would hesitate at +any little personal sacrifice; that is indeed a low view of me. But, +believe me, I see the impracticability of the whole thing.’</p> + +<p>For a few seconds there was an uneasy silence. The summer breeze from +the open windows faintly stirred the pictures on the wall. Voices +softened by distance and pleasant outdoor sounds came wafted to them +where they sat. It occurred to Sainty that it was not necessary for a +young<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_153">{153}</a></span> man to ‘have great possessions’ ‘to go away sorrowful’ when +confronted by the opportunity of the supreme sacrifice for others. No +one knew better than he that Newby’s way of life would have been far +harder for him to give up than his own; and this knowledge lent a great +tenderness and humility to his voice as he asked, ‘Why impracticable if +we are both willing?’</p> + +<p>‘Take yourself to begin with,’ Newby answered; ‘think of your people, +your mother, your uncle, the duke and duchess—what would they say to +such a scheme?’</p> + +<p>‘Oh, they’d be horrified at first; but I don’t think they would offer +any very strenuous opposition to such a simple plan of disposing of me +in favour of Arthur.’</p> + +<p>‘Then, think how <i>I</i> should appear in the matter. What would they say of +me?—that I had acquired a great influence over you, and then used it to +make you devote yourself and your money to the support of myself and the +furtherance of my crack-brained schemes. It’s ten to one against their +even allowing me any sincerity; far more likely they would think my one +object was to advertise myself while living at your expense.’</p> + +<p>‘And do you care so greatly what people say of you?’</p> + +<p>‘Yes, I do. My dear boy, you are one of the great ones of the earth and +can afford to be thought eccentric if you please; but I am a poor +scholar—my good name is everything to me.’</p> + +<p>‘You said once that we could never hope to do anything unless we were +prepared to be misunderstood; that no man could really be good for +anything of whom the commonplace respectable people spoke well.’</p> + +<p>‘Good heavens!’ cried Newby, with not unnatural exasperation, ‘I wish +you wouldn’t cast snatches of things I may have said in some quite +different connection in my teeth.’ He made another excursion to the +window and stood looking out for a second or two. Presently he turned +and said in a much more chastened manner, ‘Then there’s what I’m doing +here. You yourself can bear witness that I am not without<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_154">{154}</a></span> influence on +a number of young men, an influence you have told me was good. Have I a +right to give up my work here, my power of influencing unnumbered young +lives towards higher and purer ideals, for a quite problematical chance +of doing good to costermongers, and incidentally enabling your brother +to stand in your shoes?’</p> + +<p>For a few moments neither spoke.</p> + +<p>‘Then you refuse?’ said Sainty almost under his breath. ‘Is it quite, +quite irrevocable?’</p> + +<p>‘My dear boy, some day you will see the matter in its true light and +will thank me for having saved you from following the will-o’-the-wisp +of your own too precipitate philanthropy. The idea is purely fanciful; +believe me, it would never work. In the first place, the mortifications, +the disappointments, the roughness of the life, would kill you in a +year.’</p> + +<p>‘And if meanwhile my money and my feeble efforts had served to start a +really useful work, to launch you on a career of helpfulness, what would +that matter? Would it not even be the simplest solution of all? Arthur +would then step into the place in which it is so much my object to +establish him.’</p> + +<p>‘Quâ method of suicide the machinery is cumbrous and expensive,’ said +Newby, with dreary facetiousness; ‘and you can’t seriously expect me to +aid and abet you in committing the happy dispatch.’</p> + +<p>They talked much longer, Sainty still pleading for his idea, though +without much hope of success, Newby, gaining assurance from the sound of +his own voice, pouring more and more cold water on the project and +abounding in excellent reason. Sainty could not but see the sense of +much that Gerald said; yet he came away from the interview not only +depressed and disappointed at the ruthless killing of his cherished +scheme, but with an uncomfortable sense of having caught a glimpse of +his idol’s clay feet, always one of the saddest experiences of life. He +felt too a certain closing in on him as of fate; his attempts to mould +events or to avert catastrophes had met with singularly little success. +Was all<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_155">{155}</a></span> struggle useless, then? was it true that we were only puppets +in the iron grip of destiny? To a person of his temperament it was only +too easy to believe it, yet youth’s everlasting assertion of free-will +dies hard in our twenty-second year, and it was not without many +searchings of heart that Belchamber settled down to the conviction that +there was nothing to be done. To say that his brother was never out of +his thoughts would be an exaggeration. Happily for us, there is no such +thing as complete absorption in one idea. When we have lost all that +made life worth having, if we were honest we should own that at certain +moments the most trivial of daily preoccupations drove our grief +completely out of our minds. There is no evidence to show that the +inhabitants of Herculaneum were other than cheerfully busy; and we all +pursue a hundred frivolous objects, though lying every one of us +inexorably under sentence of death.</p> + +<p>In the year that followed Sainty thought much and anxiously of Arthur, +but he also thought of many other things. For one thing, the management +of his estate was beginning to interest him. Having originally turned +his attention that way purely to please his mother, he had gradually +come to some appreciation of what he could do for his fellow-creatures +over an area for which he was more or less responsible. Whatever his +views might be as to the position of the land-owning class, while he +held such a position it undoubtedly entailed many duties and +responsibilities. Whether his land were eventually to pass to the State +or be cut up into peasant properties, as long as it remained his it was +clearly better that the people on it should live in well-drained, +weathertight houses, than in insanitary hovels; that they should be as +far as possible provided with regular employment, educated, amused, kept +from the public-house. While Cambridge and his work for the tripos held +him, he had thought less of all these things, secure in the conviction +that his mother and uncle were giving them careful attention. To tell +the truth, he had a little feared to absorb himself in them while he +still cherished a hope that his work in life might lie in far other<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_156">{156}</a></span> +fields, that all this might be Arthur’s business, not his. In his +immediate neighbourhood there was no very terrible distress to stir his +imagination; by the poor on the place Lady Charmington had scrupulously +done something more than her duty, and hard as were the lives of the +agricultural labourers, at least their lot had fallen to them in +pleasant places—their work was done in the pure air of heaven. It was +for the huddled degraded masses of the great cities, and especially of +London, that his soul felt the overwhelming sickening pity which had +threatened to drive him out into the wilderness. Now that he personally +seemed to be barred from effort in that direction, that his +long-cherished hopes of seating his brother in his place had proved +quite impracticable, and all the fabric raised by his dreams on that +foundation had fallen in ruins about his ears at the blast of Newby’s +inexorable common-sense, the plain duties that lay immediately around +him presented themselves as something to be clutched with an almost +despairing intensity. Here, at least, was work ready to his hand, and he +promised himself it should be done thoroughly. He absorbed himself in +his mother’s big ledgers, her detailed and carefully kept accounts of +all the workings of the great property, with the same student’s passion +for mastering his subject that he had brought to his Cambridge studies. +Had Lady Charmington been a less conscientious woman, the thought that +her power was passing from her might not have been without a sting; but +she had talked so much of ‘giving an account of her stewardship,’ and so +often lamented Sainty’s want of interest in his own possessions, that, +whatever slight pangs she may have had to stifle, she had not the face +to express anything but pleasure at his changed attitude. So far, too, +he was still her pupil, eagerly learning all she had to tell, and +accepting her word as final. It is possible that she took a genuine +pleasure in introducing him to his duties, and she may well have been +forgiven some moments of pride in displaying to him both the quantity +and quality of her work during his minority. Sainty, on his side, began +to understand<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_157">{157}</a></span> all that his mother had done for him, and his wonder was +only equalled by his gratitude.</p> + +<p>Lady Charmington’s confidence in Arthur’s application to his studies +began to be shaken about this time by his ignominious failure to pass +his examination; and here it was she who turned to Sainty for +help—Sainty who, impossible as it seemed, had been right where she was +wrong.</p> + +<p>‘I can’t make it out at all,’ she would say; ‘he seemed to be working so +hard. You recollect he wouldn’t even come home last Easter; and then in +the summer he went off on that reading party.’</p> + +<p>Arthur, in fact, after a fortnight at Belchamber—a fortnight during +which he had been moody, restless, unlike himself, and had carefully +shunned all possibilities of private or personal talk with either his +mother or brother—had left hurriedly on a mysterious ‘reading party.’</p> + +<p>Sainty wrote often to the London lodgings, but seldom got any answers, +and doubted whether many of his letters ever reached the person to whom +they were written. It became increasingly difficult to pacify Lady +Charmington, who passed by a rapid transition from her serene optimism +to the depths of the gloomiest apprehension. Sometimes for days she +would hardly talk of anything else, expressing wonder, surprise, +disappointment, all of which Sainty had more or less to pretend to +share, with a sense of deceit when he reflected how little surprised he +really was, and how much he could have enlightened the poor lady.</p> + +<p>At Sainty’s earnest request Arthur came again to Belchamber in November +for the shooting, his last visit, as it proved, for many a long day. +Sainty argued, remonstrated, implored. ‘What was he doing? What did he +intend to do? Didn’t he <i>want</i> to go into the army? He must know he +could never get in if he didn’t work or pass his exams.’ It was all to +no purpose. The boy took refuge in a surly silence. He had two such +terrible scenes with his mother that for the first time in his life he +spent Christmas away from home. ‘I’m going to the Hunters,’ he wrote. +‘If I<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_158">{158}</a></span> come to Belchamber there will only be a repetition of the ghastly +rows I had with mother in November, and what’s the good? I hate rows; +jawing never did me any good yet.’</p> + +<p>Lady Charmington appealed to her brother. Lord Firth saw Arthur when he +came up for the meeting of parliament. Sainty could never learn +accurately what passed between them, but his uncle, that most amiable +gentleman, said he would not willingly speak to the boy again.</p> + +<p>The spring wore away miserably in sickening suspense. Arthur was still +nominally working at ‘Monkton’s,’ but several letters had come from the +principal of the establishment, complaining of the slackness of his +attendance, which had not tended to soothe his mother’s feelings.</p> + +<p>It was getting on for a year after the supper at the Hotel Fritz, when +Sainty, seeing a number of letters, most of which had a bill-like look +about them, on the hall table for Arthur, took them to his room to +re-direct. He was just about to do so, when he noticed that they had all +originally been sent to Monkton’s, and had been forwarded from there. +The postmarks of some of them were several weeks old, from which it was +evident not only that Arthur had not been at the crammer’s at all for +some time past, but that the people there believed him to be at home. +The pen dropped from Sainty’s hand, and he sat staring at the envelopes, +shuffling them idly from behind one another, as though they were a hand +at cards. Finally, shutting them sharply together, he thrust them into +his pocket, and went in search of his mother.</p> + +<p>Since his defection at Christmas and the failure of Lord Firth to bring +the culprit to reason, Lady Charmington had talked much less of her +second son; for the most part she maintained a grim and offended +silence. Sainty wondered sometimes what this changed attitude might +mean. He was certain that she did not think less of Arthur, or worry +less about him. Was it possible that she had begun to distrust his +co-operation for any reason, and was trying to find out something for +herself without his help? Her manner, when he spoke to her on this +particular day, was<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_159">{159}</a></span> stranger than ever, and she looked at him with a +sudden hard scrutiny which chilled him, when he asked if she did not +think it might be well for him to go to London and look Arthur up.</p> + +<p>‘He never writes, and we don’t know what he may be doing,’ he said. ‘I +can’t let things drift in this way any longer.’</p> + +<p>He said nothing of the letters in his pocket. Lady Charmington looked as +if she were on the point of saying something, and then decided not to.</p> + +<p>‘Very well,’ she answered quietly; ‘how long shall you be gone?’</p> + +<p>‘I don’t know; it will depend on what I find. Mother,’ he added, ‘don’t +you agree? don’t you think it will be well for me to go?’</p> + +<p>Again his mother looked at him as if she would have read his soul; it +was the old glance that had made him stammer and look down as a child, +the look that said more clearly than words that she thought him a liar. +He had never been able to meet it. Instinctively he looked away.</p> + +<p>‘Go, by all means,’ he heard her say, and he knew that her eyes were +still upon his face, the eyes of a judge, almost an accuser. ‘Go and see +what you can do. You may have means of getting at the truth not open to +me.’</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_160">{160}</a></span></p> + +<h2><a id="CHAPTER_XII">CHAPTER XII</a></h2> + +<p class="nind"><span class="smcap">Without</span> seeing any one at Monkton’s but the servant, or even disclosing +his identity, Sainty was able in a very few words to establish the +correctness of his surmises. Arthur had not been there for weeks. ‘I can +get you ‘is address, if you’ll wait a minute,’ the man said; ‘<span class="lftspc">’</span>e’s down +at ‘is own ‘ome; I forwarded some letters to him a day or two back.’</p> + +<p>‘Oh, thanks; if he’s there, I know the address and need not trouble +you,’ and Sainty turned again to his hansom. He reflected that to find +Miss de Vere was to find his brother, and supposed, in his innocence, +that he had only to apply at the theatre to learn the young lady’s +address. But when he presented himself at the stage-door and blushingly +demanded it, he was informed that Miss de Vere was not acting at +present, and that, in any case, they were strictly forbidden to give the +private address of any of their ladies or gentlemen. A letter sent to +the theatre for Miss de Vere would be forwarded.</p> + +<p>This was an unlooked-for check, and he wondered blankly what he was to +do next. He sent away his cab and began to wander slowly westward again; +he could think better on foot. He was walking sadly along Pall Mall, +when he was passed by a young man with wonderfully broad shoulders and a +wonderfully small waist, who paused, looked at him, and finally held out +his hand. Sainty recognised Algy Montgomery.</p> + +<p>‘Hulloa!’ said the guardsman, with the smileless gloom of the +fashionable London young man. ‘Where are you off to? I’m just on my way +to call on my stepmother; I understand<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_161">{161}</a></span> she says I never come near her. +Why don’t you come along and see your revered grandmother?’</p> + +<p>Sainty had been trying to make himself go and ask Claude for the address +he wanted; he had not once set eyes on his cousin during the past year, +and to appeal to him again for help was a bitter pill. Think as he +would, he could evolve no other way of arriving at his end, and this +chance meeting and invitation to Sunborough House seemed like a leading. +He would go and see the duchess—what more natural? and if Claude +happened to be there, how could he help it?</p> + +<p>‘All right,’ he said; ‘I don’t mind if I do.’</p> + +<p>The pair walked in silence for a few seconds, Lord Algernon trying to +accommodate his long stride to his companion’s limp.</p> + +<p>‘Come up to look after your young brother?’ he asked presently, through +the cigar which he held tightly between his teeth. ‘He’s making no end +of an ass of himself with Topsy de Vere; he never leaves her for a +minute——’</p> + +<p>To talk casually to a comparative stranger of what was gnawing his +vitals was gall and wormwood to Sainty, but he grunted some sort of an +assent, and then asked as indifferently as he could, ‘You don’t happen +to know Miss de Vere’s address, do you?’</p> + +<p>Lord Algy laughed. ‘No, for a wonder, I don’t,’ he said; ‘but I tell you +who ought to—your precious cousin Morland. I fancy he knew his way +there quite well at one time.’</p> + +<p>‘Oh! did Claude——’</p> + +<p>‘Got tired of the lady; or perhaps found her rather too expensive (I +suspect his grace don’t do his secretary particularly well), so passed +her on to the little cousin. Sharp fellow, Morland.’</p> + +<p>The duchess, whom presently they found having tea in company with Lady +Rugby and Lady Eva, had also a word to say of her prodigal grandson. +‘Arthur <i>s’encanaille</i>,’ she remarked. ‘He is bad form; he lets himself +be seen everywhere with <i>cocottes</i>; the young men of to-day have no +<i>tenue</i>—none. <span class="pagenum"><a id="page_162">{162}</a></span>Formerly, yes, I don’t say men were any better—they +have always been monsters; but they did not throw <i>ces demoiselles</i> in +the face of the world.’</p> + +<p>Lady Eva murmured something to the effect that Arthur was a dear, and +dropped a platitude about wild oats.</p> + +<p>‘Oh, I don’t want a boy to be a <i>merle blanc</i>,’ her mother rejoined.’ +Sainty would be all the better if he were just a little naughty, +wouldn’t you, my child? I don’t suppose Algy here, or your own boy, are +models of virtue, but there are ways of doing things. By the way, where +is Claude? Ring the bell, Algy, and we will see if he is in; he will +like to see his cousin.’</p> + +<p>Sainty did not feel at all sure that he would, but when Morland +presently appeared in answer to the duchess’s message, he was as easy +and unembarrassed as usual; it was Belchamber who was awkward and ill at +ease. There was, perhaps, just a shade of reproachful tenderness in +Claude’s greeting, an eloquent glance, a silent pressure of the hand, as +who should say, ‘You may be as cantankerous and unreasonable as you +like, my patience with those I love is practically inexhaustible.’ At +the merest hint from Sainty that he had something to ask him, he carried +him off to his own room, and when the request for Miss de Vere’s address +had been stammered out, produced a little address-book from a locked +drawer, and began to search in it with a great appearance of assiduity.</p> + +<p>‘Here it is—no, let me see, she left there, that’s her old address; how +stupid of me. Ah! this is it, a flat she took; I remember now. But she’s +always moving, I don’t guarantee that you’ll find her there; but they’ll +be able to tell you if she’s flitted again.’ His voice was dry and +business-like; Sainty wanted an address, he was trying to help him to +it, as he would try to do anything he wanted. Why he had need of it was +no affair of his. Claude prided himself on his power of implying much +that his tongue never uttered.</p> + +<p>He wrung Sainty’s hand at parting. ‘Good luck to you,’ he whispered. +‘<i>I</i> could do no good; may you be more fortunate! And oh! by the way, I +wouldn’t mention <i>me</i> there; I’m not popular in that quarter. Cynthia +has taken one of<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_163">{163}</a></span> those absurd unreasoning dislikes to me that +half-educated people do, and has set Arthur against me. I suppose she +was afraid I might try and get him away from her. It’s a bad business. +Well, <i>addio</i>, and best wishes.’</p> + +<p>Oddly enough, Claude was right in his surmise that Miss de Vere might +have moved, but Sainty did at last discover her present abode, and +arriving there about noon of the following day, found that she had gone +to a rehearsal, ‘but the gentleman was in.’ Sainty was not sorry to find +Arthur alone. The boy was at first of course very much on the defensive; +the elder brother had to walk most warily among the eggshells of +suspicion and susceptibility, but he soon discovered that his coming was +not altogether unwelcome. Arthur did not attempt to disguise the fact +that he was living with Cynthia; ‘he had made her give up her flat, and +had taken these rooms for her; they had the whole house, and the people +of the house looked after them; it saved the bother of servants; he was +answerable for the rent and the housekeeping; naturally he couldn’t live +at her expense; otherwise she wouldn’t take a penny from him, she was +very high-minded; it was as much as ever she would let him give her a +little present now and then. Anything she made professionally was no +business of his; she had gone about a new engagement this morning.’</p> + +<p>‘But how do you do it? Surely to take a whole house like this on the +footing of lodgings is the most expensive arrangement you can make.’</p> + +<p>‘It ain’t done for nothing, I can tell you,’ Arthur said ruefully. He +was not sorry to unburthen himself a little to his brother. Sainty had +had no idea to what extent a young man of family could live on credit in +London, for a time at least. By carefully never paying ready money where +it was not absolutely necessary, it was astonishing what a lot you could +do.</p> + +<p>‘But what’s it all going to lead to?’ Sainty asked. ‘Do you propose to +give up the army, never do anything—just live on here with her from day +to day? Even supposing you were me, and had all the money you wanted, +would this life satisfy you?’</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_164">{164}</a></span></p> + +<p>‘I believe you, my boy,’ said Arthur heartily.</p> + +<p>‘It may for a time; it won’t, it can’t, for long,’ Sainty said eagerly. +‘And mother? Don’t you care about her? Mother’s awfully cut up about +your not passing your exam. There’s another coming on in the autumn; +it’ll be your last chance. Don’t you mean to try?’</p> + +<p>Arthur’s brow grew dark at the mention of his mother. ‘By Jove!’ he +said, ‘you don’t know the things she said to me. She <i>can</i> let you have +it, when she isn’t pleased, the mater can.’</p> + +<p>‘Well, you must admit she had some reason <i>not</i> to be pleased,’ said +Sainty.</p> + +<p>‘Lots of fellows muff the first time,’ said Arthur lamely. ‘I’ve got +another try.’</p> + +<p>‘But are you any more likely to pass the next time? Are you doing a +stroke of work for it?’ And he narrated to Arthur how it had come to his +knowledge that he had not been at Monkton’s for weeks. ‘I happened on +these,’ he said, producing the letters he had found in the hall at +Belchamber, ‘but mother might just as well have found them. She doesn’t +know yet that you’ve dropped work altogether, but she must find it out +soon. Monkton may write to her any day and ask when you are coming +back.’</p> + +<p>‘Damn it all! I hadn’t thought of that.’</p> + +<p>‘No. You never think of anything half an hour ahead, do you?’</p> + +<p>Then Sainty told him how people were talking about him—his grandmother, +Aunt Eva, Algy Montgomery (he did not mention Claude). ‘Don’t you see +that in a dozen ways the whole thing may come out to mother at any +moment?’</p> + +<p>Arthur was very stubborn, took refuge in the reiteration of his devotion +to Cynthia and his determination not to be parted from her. Once or +twice Sainty almost lost patience.</p> + +<p>‘You say you <i>won’t</i> leave her, and you <i>won’t</i> do this or that or +anything you don’t choose,’ he said with some warmth; ‘but what are you +going to live on? You own you’re up to<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_165">{165}</a></span> your ears in debt, and that +people are getting impatient. What can you do if mother cuts off your +allowance?’</p> + +<p>‘I’m of age; I’ve got my own money.’</p> + +<p>‘Five hundred a year! You can keep up this sort of life so easily on +that, can’t you? You know you can’t touch the principal. I don’t suppose +the next two years’ income would begin to pay what you owe now.’</p> + +<p>Arthur looked doubtful; he began to see the weakness of his position. He +tried a few platitudes about ‘working his fingers to the bone for +<i>her</i>,’ at which Sainty, miserable as he felt, couldn’t help laughing.</p> + +<p>‘You’ve never done a stroke of work in your life,’ he said, ‘and you +would find it so easy to get employment, wouldn’t you? You would be so +valuable in a house of business!’</p> + +<p>He wisely refrained from any suggestion that the lady’s affection might +not be proof against the trials of poverty.</p> + +<p>Finally, after long argument and entreaty, Arthur was persuaded to say +he would go to a new crammer in the country till after the next +examination, and would do his best to pass. ‘It is no good my trying to +work at Monkton’s,’ he said candidly; ‘I should always be bolting back +to Cynthia. You can’t think how good she is; she’s always telling me I +ought to work and pass my exams, and please you. Don’t try and make me +give her up or say I won’t have anything more to do with her, or any rot +of that sort.’</p> + +<p>Sainty, too glad to have carried his point about the work, was ready to +promise anything—payment of debts, help in the support of the lady, in +short, whatever Arthur liked to demand. ‘And first of all,’ he said +pleadingly, ‘you will come down home for a few days before you go to the +new place. Poor mother’s sore and wretched at the way you’ve treated +her. She doesn’t <i>show</i> much, but she feels a lot, and you’ve always +been her favourite. Come and be nice to her for a bit before you take up +your work again.’</p> + +<p>‘By Jove! you make me do everything you want,’ said Arthur tenderly. +Sainty could not help smiling at the thought of how very far this was +from being the case, but he was<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_166">{166}</a></span> thankful for small mercies. He +reflected that he had been lucky in hitting on a propitious moment, when +the narrow matters of the house had begun to press rather importunately +on Miss de Vere’s lover. To grant a favour, accepting the money he +needed as a condition, was in every way pleasanter to Arthur than having +to sue for help.</p> + +<p>Sainty declined to stay and lunch and see Miss de Vere. ‘I want to get +home this afternoon,’ he said. ‘Mother’ll be so glad to know that you +are going to work and do your best to pass; and also that you’ll come +home for a bit. You haven’t been at Belchamber since November, and this +is May; I don’t think you’ve ever been away for so long at a stretch +before.’</p> + +<p>He travelled down to the country that same afternoon with a lighter +heart than he had carried for many months, pleased to find he still had +some influence over his brother, glad to be reconciled to Claude, and +rejoicing in the pleasure he should be able to give his mother in the +announcement of Arthur’s visit and his promise of industry and +reformation. He pondered anxiously on the question how much he need say +of the temptations and distractions of London life, to explain Arthur’s +desire to leave Monkton’s and once more try a country crammer’s, and +concluded that there was no necessity to breathe a word of the nature of +the occupation that had kept his brother from working in town. He only +trusted other people might be equally reticent. He had telegraphed, +before leaving London, to his mother that he would be back to dinner, +and as soon as he arrived at Belchamber he was met by a message that she +would like to see him at once in her own room. It was in vain that he +told himself she was naturally impatient to hear what news he brought; +it was with an uneasy foreboding that he approached her door, and he had +to pause and brace himself before he summoned courage to turn the +handle.</p> + +<p>His first glance at his mother confirmed his worst anticipations. She +was walking up and down the room, so that her back was towards him as he +entered; but the white set face<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_167">{167}</a></span> she turned on him as he closed the door +showed him at once that she knew everything. It was terrible to see this +silent, dignified woman so ravaged and shaken out of her habitual +self-control. Even at that moment he noticed with surprise the curious +staginess of her movements and method of speech. It was true, then, that +people in times of strong emotion did really behave in this way; and +these gestures and phrases which he had always supposed to be pure +literary and theatrical conventions derived from something in nature +after all.</p> + +<p>‘So,’ she cried, sweeping round upon him, ‘I find what I have long +suspected was true: my boy, who, if he was thoughtless and a little +idle, I thought was a pure-minded, healthy boy, has been degrading +himself with loose women; and this has been going on for a year past; it +has been common talk; every one has known it; every one but his poor +blind idiot of a mother. We must never know anything, of course; our +sons may be drifting to perdition, but there is no one who will come and +tell a poor woman. People stand by and laugh; I suppose they think it +funny; all the godless, indecent, modern books say so. No one, no one +will say a word till it’s too late, too late to do any good.’</p> + +<p>She was in a white heat of rage, tearless, tragic, almost distraught, +all the mother and the puritan in her crying out in revolt against the +eternal mystery of the flesh, the triumph of the senses in the young +male. Yes, in the abstract she knew of it, recognised that men were +sinners and full of carnal appetites; but that <i>her</i> boy, her child whom +she had nursed and tended, whom but a few years back she had held upon +her knee, that this pure, bright young creature should voluntarily turn +from her to smirch its white raiment in the slough of sensuality—it was +not to be believed. If sacred art represented the mother of the one +sinless son with seven swords in her heart, what symbol can adequately +depict the woes of the mothers of men?</p> + +<p>Sainty, with his quick sympathy, divined something of all this in the +awful moments that he stood for the first time face to face with his +mother. His curious, guarded, sheltered<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_168">{168}</a></span> youth, his unhealthy, abnormal +perception of other people’s feelings, as well as the something feminine +and maternal in his relation to his robuster brother, combined to give +him a vision of an agony vouchsafed to few of his sex. He saw his +mother, his cold, chaste, proud mother, stricken at once in her +motherhood, her pride, her chastity, and yet he understood the situation +as she could never understand it, as it could never be possible for him +to make her understand. His whole heart yearned over her with a pity he +seemed to have been specially created to feel in its full force. He made +a step towards her with his arms held out, but she turned on him as if +she would have struck him.</p> + +<p>‘And <i>you</i>,’ she cried, blazing with denunciation, ‘<i>you</i> come to me +with a lying pretence of sympathy; you who have talked to me a dozen +times of your anxiety about your brother, and seemed at one with me, so +unselfishly, nobly distressed about him. You have known of this all +along, have aided and abetted him in his infamy. You, who are too +sexless and poor a creature to have known his temptations, have helped +him in cold blood to his undoing, and with this in your heart have come +to me to consult what was best to be done for him. Oh! you were always +subtle and sly when you were hardly more than a baby.’</p> + +<p>‘Mother, mother! for God’s sake stop; you don’t know what you’re saying. +What do you mean?’</p> + +<p>‘Oh! you don’t know, do you? Do you deny that you have known this all +along? A year ago, didn’t you go up and sup and carouse in this +creature’s company and that of her vile companions? Answer me that. Yes +or no? Did you, or did you not? You see, you can’t deny it. For all I +know, you have been with them often. Is it from her house you have come +to me now? to me, the mother of you both!’</p> + +<p>‘Perhaps I have been wrong, mother, but I don’t deserve this at your +hands. I have done what I could. I have just come from Arthur. You know +he is not very manageable; I have not had an easy part to play. And I +<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_169">{169}</a></span>have got him to promise to come away; he will come home and——’</p> + +<p>‘Has he said he won’t go back?’ She flashed it at him like a whiplash, +and her gesture spoke impatient contempt as he answered—</p> + +<p>‘No, I can’t make him say that, but I hope much from home influences; +when we get him here, surrounded by all that will speak to him of his +childhood, of all he owes to you——’</p> + +<p>She cut him short. ‘You temporise with evil. Your arguments are those of +the worldly wise.’ She was regaining her calm; argument was steadying +her, and the old habit of rebuke brought back the judicial tone to her +voice. ‘There are only two ways,’ she said, ‘right and wrong. You cannot +palter and hold diplomatic parleys with vice. I am willing—I should +<i>like</i>—to believe that your motives have been good, but I hope you see +the harm you have done by your attempts at compromise. Why, oh why,’ she +broke out again, ‘knowing all this, haven’t you told <i>me</i>? Surely <i>I</i> +was the person to know, to be consulted on the subject.’</p> + +<p>‘I wanted to spare you, to save you pain. I may have been mistaken; I +haven’t seen very clearly what was best, but I hoped to get him away, +and that perhaps you might never have the sorrow of knowing. I knew how +bitter it would be to you.’</p> + +<p>‘Oh! this eternal deceit! When will you learn that there can be no +question of “not seeing what was best”? My early training of you must +have been strangely defective, if at your age you can’t tell good from +evil. How can it ever be anything but right to tell the truth?’</p> + +<p>‘It is no new burthen I’ve had to bear,’ Sainty answered, ‘to be alone +in my knowledge of what was going on. For years I’ve stood between +Arthur and your knowledge of the scrapes he was in.’</p> + +<p>‘You have, have you! So there has been a conspiracy between you to keep +me in the dark. I don’t want to be unjust to you; you have not a strong +or courageous character; you may have honestly believed you were being +kind; but see what has come of your duplicity. Had I known, I might<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_170">{170}</a></span> +have said a word in season. Arthur would always listen to <i>me</i>.’</p> + +<p>Sainty thought of the tempests that had raged when Lady Charmington had +said a word in season in the autumn on a much less ticklish subject, but +he forebore to press this home.</p> + +<p>‘Well,’ his mother resumed, with a certain grim ferocity, ‘I’ve written +now. <i>I</i> am not subtle or diplomatic, I have borne my testimony quite +simply and faithfully.’</p> + +<p>Sainty’s heart sank. He thought of his long and anxious contest, of how +hardly at length he had prevailed. Of his mother’s methods of plain +dealing he had just had a specimen; he knew, none better, Arthur’s +impatience of the smallest interference, and the spirit in which he +would receive even the tenderest animadversion on Cynthia.</p> + +<p>‘Mother!’ he cried, ‘what <i>have</i> you said?’</p> + +<p>‘Said! What should I say? <i>I</i> haven’t temporised and beat about the +bush. I have said plainly that he was living in mortal sin, and +imperilling his soul; and I’ve bidden him leave that woman at once, or +never see me again.’</p> + +<p>Sainty sank into a chair and covered his face with his hands. He saw all +he had striven for, all he had effected, swept away at a touch; he saw +too that the mischief was done, and irrecoverable; there was no good in +saying a word. The despair his attitude expressed must have touched some +tenderer chord in his mother. She came across to him, and laid her hand, +not unkindly, on his shoulder.</p> + +<p>‘Pray,’ she said sternly. ‘Pray to God for help; He alone can turn this +wretched boy from his evil courses. Vain is the help of man.’</p> + +<p>Sainty never knew how he got through the next two days. He had put a +strain upon himself far beyond his feeble strength; the two railway +journeys would in themselves have told on him, but the unresting +hurrying hither and thither in London, the emotion of meeting Claude +again, the terrible nervous excitement of his long argument with his +brother, and then, on the top of all, when he was worn out in body<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_171">{171}</a></span> and +mind, the shock of seeing his mother as he had never seen her, the +bitter disappointment of finding all he had done rendered useless at a +blow, crushed him utterly. He was glad to take refuge in physical stupor +and exhaustion from the bitterness of his own reflections.</p> + +<p>In the morning of the third day, when he was gradually coming back to a +sense of what had happened, his mother came to his room with an open +letter in her hand. Her face was grey and drawn, and she seemed suddenly +to have become an old woman. Her voice was hollow and unnaturally quiet. +‘Read that,’ she said, and tossed the letter on to his bed. Then raising +her hand, which shook as she held it up, ‘I curse him,’ she said, still +in that same even, horrible tone. ‘Remember that you have heard me curse +my son’; and she went slowly out of the room.</p> + +<p>With trembling hand Sainty drew the paper to him; he recognised Arthur’s +schoolboy scrawl. The letter was meant to be very dignified.</p> + +<p>‘My dear mother,’ the boy wrote, ‘I have received your letter; I will +not notice your insults to a woman I love. You say I am living in sin. +Very well, then—so be it. I will do so no longer. I came of age last +week and am my own master, and curse me if I’ll take it from you or any +one. I have to announce to you that I was married yesterday at the +registry office in Mount Street to Miss Cynthia de Vere.’ He had begun +another sentence, ‘Till you are prepared,’ but apparently thinking +anything more would weaken the effect of what he had said, he had run +his pen through the words. The letter wound up, ‘I am your son,</p> + +<p class="r"> +‘<span class="smcap">Arthur Wellesley Chambers</span>.’<br> +</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_172">{172}</a></span></p> + +<h2><a id="CHAPTER_XIII">CHAPTER XIII</a></h2> + +<p class="nind"><span class="smcap">No</span> one can live at the height of great crises. After the storm, when the +wind has sobbed itself to sleep, the sun comes peeping shyly to count +the damage done, the draggled, flattened flowers begin to lift +themselves and look about, the fallen trees are sawn up and carted away.</p> + +<p>Sainty might take to his bed, and lie there groaning at the wreck of all +his hopes and plans for his brother. Lady Charmington might say dreadful +violent things, and indulge in the cheap gratification of cursing her +son. But sooner or later Sainty must get up and dress, must come +downstairs and see the agent and the butler, and his mother must wash +her hot eyes and flatten down her hair, must order dinner, and scold the +maids, and sit at the head of the table as though nothing were amiss. +And it is just this that saves us from madness; the more we have to do, +the less time we can afford for sitting down with our sorrow in darkened +rooms, the better for us. Kings and business men, and the labouring +classes generally, whose work must be done no matter what happens, have +a great advantage over leisured mourners. Sainty crept out, battered and +disheartened, to face a new world which yet had a great deal in common +with the old one. He had to provide himself with a new set of motives, +desires, objects in life. But outwardly nothing was changed. The very +book he had put down when he left the library to find the letters for +Arthur in crossing the hall, was still on the same table with his +paperknife laid between the leaves to mark the place.</p> + +<p>He never knew how his mother had come by her information. Sometimes he +thought of Lady Eccleston, sometimes<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_173">{173}</a></span> of the duchess. Her reference to +the supper and his own presence at it had suggested a sickening +suspicion of a new treachery on the part of Claude, but he finally +decided that this was unlikely. A dozen other people might have seen him +going in, and gossiped about his presence. Claude had mentioned that he +was supping with Johnny Trafford; it might have come round through his +aunt Susie. He did not want to think any worse of his cousin than he +need, and he did Claude the justice to recollect that if he never shrank +from doing a mean action when he had anything to gain by it, mere +purposeless mischief was not in his traditions; indeed, he would rather +take trouble to keep things straight. He was not one of those who turned +explosive truths loose in the world—who ‘thought people ought to know’; +on the contrary, on general principles he was all for people <i>not</i> +knowing, especially awkward facts about their own relatives. On the +whole, the causes of the catastrophe seemed to Sainty far less important +than the consideration of what, under the circumstances, was left for +him to do for his brother.</p> + +<p>Lady Charmington, on his screwing up courage to ask if she had any views +on the subject, forbade him peremptorily to mention Arthur’s name to +her.</p> + +<p>Lord Firth said the young ass had done for himself irretrievably, but +agreed that he couldn’t be left to starve. He was much inclined to +think, however, that the younger brother’s £500 a year, which was all to +which he had a legal claim under his grandfather’s will, was quite +enough for him. ‘If you give him any more, he’ll only chuck it away.’</p> + +<p>‘Uncle Cor,’ Sainty said, ‘what’s the good of talking like that? You +know as well as I do that Arthur will never live on £500 a year. I see +nothing to be gained by pretending that he will. <i>I</i> could easily, but +<i>he</i> never will. And do you suppose I could serenely sit in this huge +house, and spend £50,000 a year, and know my brother was in want?’</p> + +<p>‘Whatever you give him, you may be sure he’ll spend double,’ said Lord +Firth; ‘so I should recommend your not beginning with too large a sum; +you had better keep some<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_174">{174}</a></span>thing for the debts you will assuredly be +called on to pay from time to time.’</p> + +<p>‘I’d so much rather give him a decent allowance to start with, one that +he <i>could</i> live on and <i>not</i> get into debt.’</p> + +<p>‘You rebuked me just now,’ his uncle replied blandly, ‘for not looking +facts in the face. Might I suggest that the aspiration you have just put +forward is based on a hypothesis quite as visionary as my proposal that +Arthur should live on £500 a year.’</p> + +<p>Sainty was forced to admit the contention. He wrote, therefore, a letter +from which he tried as far as possible to banish all useless +recrimination, offering to pay his brother’s debts if he would send him +the bills, and to allow him a thousand a year; to which Arthur in due +course returned a most characteristic reply, beginning with a +magnificent declaration that he wanted nothing of people who were not +prepared to recognise or receive his wife, and repetitions of his +readiness to ‘work his fingers to the bone for her,’ and ending with a +bitter complaint of his brother’s meanness in not making him a larger +allowance. In due course, however, the bills arrived, and made Sainty +gasp; nor did he find when he placed the first quarter’s allowance to +his brother’s credit that it was returned to his own.</p> + +<p>There is a certain repose in the fact that the worst which one has +dreaded has happened. To some temperaments anxiety is far harder to bear +than sorrow, and the mother who killed her baby because she was so +dreadfully afraid that it would die, presented only an extreme case of a +not uncommon frame of mind.</p> + +<p>The sun shone, the birds sang, the early and late summer were not less +glorious than usual on the great well-kept lawns and terraces of +Belchamber. The places that have known us do not put on mourning for our +departure unless it withdraws from them some fostering care, and +Arthur’s effect upon a garden was mostly written in broken branches and +footprints on the flower-beds. When people have been more than usually +disappointing, we turn with an added<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_175">{175}</a></span> tenderness to things, and Sainty, +whose regard for his beautiful inheritance had always been sentimentally +great, began to take a more intelligent interest in the possessions he +had been so anxious to renounce. Since it seemed that he could not shake +off his responsibilities, he would embrace them with fervour. He found +himself wandering about the great historic house and eagerly learning +all he could of the treasures it contained; and he started to rearrange +and catalogue the huge library, which had been much neglected and had +got sadly out of order. Soon finding this a task utterly beyond him +without expert help, he imported as librarian a young <i>protégé</i> of +Gerald Newby from the library of his college, with whom he spent long +mornings exploring chests and closets where dusty folios had been +ruthlessly heaped together and left to rats and spiders. They made the +most wonderful finds of whole boxes of manuscripts, family papers, +parchments, letters. Among other things, they discovered one day the +original plans on which the grounds had been laid out, signed by +Perrault, and though there had been many subsequent alterations, Sainty +was delighted to find how much the main lines had remained intact. The +orangery with its enclosed garden, the bowling-green by the canal with +its formal pleached alleys, and the whole system of waterworks, ponds, +cascades, and fountains, were all more or less as the great Frenchman +had designed them. Here and there his long sweeping vistas across the +park had been cut by stupid little plantations of conifers, coverts for +game, and these Sainty was eager to remove, reopening the grand +perspectives. He planned, too, to restore the dignified simplicity of +the forecourt, with its great oval expanse of turf and five statues of +Flora and the Seasons, according to the original drawing. The statues +had been removed and dotted without method up and down the long +shrubbery, the great wrought-iron grille and gates carried away to one +of the lodges, the turf broken up with flower-beds and terracotta +baskets. It would be delightful to put everything back in its proper +place.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_176">{176}</a></span></p> + +<p>To these and many other schemes his mother lent an indulgent ear. She +had that curious instinctive taste in gardens and houses which so many +of her countrywomen combine with an utter absence of the æsthetic sense +in all that concerns the fine arts or their own personal adornment; she +was quite incapable of real sympathy with his joy in musty old documents +and letters, but alterations in the garden were more in her line, and if +she did not always think what he proposed an improvement, at least it +was natural and normal that a man should take pleasure in his own +possessions, instead of wishing to give them away and live in the East +End. Sainty consulted her about everything, not merely from long habit +of deference, but from real respect for her judgment.</p> + +<p>A more powerful bond of union than any alterations in house or garden +were certain schemes for the benefit of their fellow-creatures. In their +more radical youth Lady Charmington and her brother had started many +such, a co-operative dairy-farm, settlements of model cottages, schools, +benefit clubs, and a system of old-age pensions that should not lessen +the self-respect of the recipients. Sainty’s interest in all these +matters was no new thing, though he had formerly rather carefully +repressed it. Now he took them up with a zeal not even second to Lady +Charmington’s own. It was not to be expected that he and she should be +always in absolute agreement, but on the whole they worked surprisingly +well together. There were concessions on both sides. On his they had the +ease of long habit, and he was astonished by a quite new tendency in his +mother to consult his wishes and defer to his opinions.</p> + +<p>Though she never mentioned his brother’s name, Sainty had a conviction +that she knew by some means or other what he had done for Arthur, and +was silently grateful to him for defying her resentment. She helped him +to establish himself in the west pavilion, now become uninterruptedly +his own, and to arrange his few personal possessions that had come from +Cambridge. The old schoolroom became his study;<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_177">{177}</a></span> he turned Claude’s room +into a workroom and place for extra books, with a writing-table for the +librarian if he wanted him near him; but Arthur’s chamber was left by a +tacit agreement as it had always been, and sometimes Sainty would wander +in there and look disconsolately on the sporting prints, the school +groups, the faded blue cap dangling from a nail, the old Eton bureau +decorated by a red-hot poker with its owner’s name, a very large ‘Chamb’ +and a very small ’ers,’ owing to the artist’s miscalculation of the +space at his command. Sainty did not want Claude in the old schoolboy +quarters, and explained to that accommodating person that he needed more +space for his books, and thought his cousin would be more comfortable in +one of the many guest-rooms.</p> + +<p>By and by other people besides Claude began to occupy these apartments +again. There were no regular parties during the year after Arthur’s +marriage, but gradually Lady Charmington took to asking a few people at +a time; his Aunt Susan and her sons, the Rugbies, the Ecclestons, Alice +de Lissac and her step-daughters. His mother even suggested that Sainty +should invite some of his own friends, and Newby came several times and +was satisfactorily interested in his many undertakings.</p> + +<p>‘I like to see you taking your proper place,’ he said complacently, with +the air of an artist contemplating his own work; but the old spring of +grateful devotion no longer gushed responsive to Newby’s lightest word +of commendation. To begin to grow away from a friend is a terrible +experience, and few things are harder than to keep up the pretence that +no such change is taking place; but when the friend in question has been +less the equal comrade than the Gamaliel at whose feet one has sat, the +strain of preserving the old attitude is increased to infinity. There is +no furniture so encumbering as a fallen idol; we trip over it a dozen +times a day. Already the blush of shame had tinged the corner of +Sainty’s smile at Parsons’ lampoon, and now he was constantly to +experience similar compunctions. Gerald took<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_178">{178}</a></span> a great fancy to Claude +and held forth to him unsparingly on many subjects.</p> + +<p>‘Your cousin is a real Prince Charming,’ he would say to Sainty; ‘very +refreshing, and such quaint views of things, without the university +flavour one gets so sick of; he is of immense use to me.’</p> + +<p>Morland listened to Newby’s lucubrations with an air of grave sympathy, +but made fun of him behind his back. Sainty was exasperated all round; +he hated Gerald’s making an ass of himself, hated Claude’s gibes at his +expense, hated himself for being amused by them against his will. Cissy +Eccleston, on the contrary, was always ecstatically giggling at the +young man’s witticisms.</p> + +<p>The Ecclestons had begun to be a great deal at Belchamber; Lady +Charmington seemed to have endless philanthropic projects to discuss +with her friend, which needed the latter’s constant presence.</p> + +<p>‘I have asked Lady Eccleston to run down for a few days,’ became a +recognised formula; ‘I want to ask her about the G.F.S. meeting’; or, +‘She has got to consult me about the concert at Middlesex House for Lady +Stepney’s Home for Inebriates; she wants the duchess to be a patroness.’ +And Lady Eccleston ‘ran down,’ always taking care to thank Sainty +effusively for ‘letting her come’; ‘I had heaps to talk over with your +mother, and it saves such a lot of tiresome letter-writing; it <i>is</i> good +of you to have us.’ In Lady Eccleston’s train came Lady Eccleston’s +daughter, and sometimes a son or two. Sainty had come to have quite a +friendly feeling for Tommy; he was such a good soul, so reposefully +commonplace, and so unfeignedly happy and grateful at Belchamber.</p> + +<p>‘You don’t know what it is to a chap to get out of that damned London,’ +he said fervently. Poor Tommy, not being very good at examinations, had +had to bow his neck under the yoke of a house of business, for which, +after the manner of English boys, his whole previous training had most +elaborately unfitted him. Sainty was glad to give him<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_179">{179}</a></span> the pleasures +which would be no pleasures to himself, and Tommy responded with a sort +of wondering gratitude made up in about equal parts of admiration and +contempt. Once he rather tactlessly tried to express his regret over +Arthur. The Ecclestons were at the moment the only guests, and Sainty +said something about its being very dull for him having to go out +shooting alone.</p> + +<p>‘Oh, that’s all right,’ said Thomas; ‘though, of course, I miss your +brother. Awfully good chap, your brother. I was deuced sorry he went and +muckered the whole show like that. Hard luck on all of you.’</p> + +<p>Sainty winced, but he liked the boy for liking Arthur, and silently +pressed his arm.</p> + +<p>‘Beg pardon,’ said Tommy, getting very red.’ Stupid of me to say that. +The mater would comb my hair if she knew.’</p> + +<p>Lady Eccleston indeed was almost distressingly tactful on the subject, +stepping round it on elaborate tiptoe, as some people go about a +death-chamber.</p> + +<p>She and Cissy were full of interest in all Sainty’s undertakings. They +watched with breathless excitement the works for reinstating the grille +and the statues, and allowed themselves to be patiently bored by long +readings from some of the old documents which Sainty was editing for +publication by the Historical Society.</p> + +<p>When there were no other young people in the house, Sainty felt it no +less than his duty as host to try and entertain the young lady, and she +was always ready to accompany him on his drives about the place and +visits to the outlying farms and cottages. He thought of himself so +little in the light of a young man for whom a girl could possibly +entertain a warmer feeling than friendship, that it never occurred to +him to imagine any possibility of objection to these long expeditions, +practically <i>tête-à-tête</i> with only a stolid little groom as chaperon; +and indeed the two mammas smiled very indulgently on them as they drove +off. He showed Cissy all over the co-operative dairy-farm and explained +the system of its working, and if her remarks did not display a very<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_180">{180}</a></span> +thorough grasp of its aims, she listened with the politest attention to +his explanations. Whether the two widowed mothers, when left alone, +confined their conversation exclusively to topics of external +benevolence may be doubted; but anyway they always seemed to have plenty +to talk about, and to be quite able to spare their children; and +meanwhile Sainty drove along the avenues of the park, or the roads and +lanes of the countryside, with Cissy tucked in beside him and chattering +like a sparrow. The girl had a certain sense of humour, strictly limited +in scope, but diverting as far as it went. It is true that it mostly +took the form of personal ridicule, and Sainty was rather scandalised at +the frequency with which it was turned upon her mother, but he couldn’t +help laughing at some of the revelations. ‘And, after all,’ he thought, +‘she would not make fun of her if she did not love her; it is the +light-hearted thoughtlessness of a child.’</p> + +<p>‘Mamma is very low to-day,’ Cissy said, bursting with laughter. ‘You +know, she takes the <i>Exchange and Mart</i> and is always swopping something +or other. I don’t think she does very good business, but she likes the +fun of writing to people she don’t know, and the bargaining. Well, she’s +got an old black silk gown, quite good still, it was a good silk; she +bought it at Woolland’s at a sale (she goes to all the sales), but she’s +worn it three seasons and it’s old fashioned, and every creature we know +is sick of the sight of it, so she has been trying to get rid of it in +the <i>Exchange</i>, and what do you think she was offered for it this +morning? A goat! Think of us in Chester Square with a goat! Tommy says +we can keep it in the back-yard and he’ll milk it, and it will save the +dairy bill; but mamma is not amused.’ And Cissy went off into peals of +laughter in which Sainty could not help joining.</p> + +<p>This power of making him laugh was the great secret of his pleasure in +her society. At most times they might not have had much in common, but +after all he had been through, her irresponsible frivolity was very +restful. His morbid conscientiousness seemed overstrained and absurd by<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_181">{181}</a></span> +comparison, and he was ashamed to be frightened by life in the presence +of a creature who took it so lightly, displaying such a careless front +to the slings and arrows of a quite insufficient fortune. With more +humour than delicacy she gave him glimpses of many of her parent’s +little economies and contrivances. ‘I’ve got to be turned out smart, you +know, and we give awfully nice teas, lots of teas—even the little +Sunday dinners ain’t badly done; but no one dropping in unexpectedly to +lunch—no thank you! and if she and I dine out it’s cold mutton for the +boys and none too much of it. You’re awfully good to Tommy; it’s just +heaven for him being here, poor boy!’</p> + +<p>‘It’s delightful being able to give any pleasure to any one. I have +never been able to make any one happy though I’ve tried.’</p> + +<p>‘Oh, come, cheer up! I assure you, you are giving a lot of pleasure to +the Eccleston family at this moment; it really is ripping of you asking +the whole family. Did you know, by the way, that your mother has said +the two boys could come next week when Harrow breaks up, and that we +might all stay over Christmas?’</p> + +<p>‘Yes, of course I knew, seeing that it was I who suggested it. I thought +if you had your little brothers here it would not be so dull for you, +and my friend Newby will be here, and Claude——’ The vivid colour came +and went so quickly under the fair skin that Sainty could not be sure if +it were Claude’s name that called up the faint flush. It might have been +caused by the pleasure Cissy’s next words expressed.</p> + +<p>‘Oh, it was you! How angelic of you! As for me, I don’t think my young +brothers add much to my enjoyment of life, nor I to theirs; besides, I +am quite happy in this dear, beautiful place, and going all about your +improvements and things with you is so jolly; but I’m awfully grateful +to you all the same, and you will be more in mamma’s good books than +ever; and with mamma, you must know, “good books” is not a mere phrase. +She has a red book in which she<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_182">{182}</a></span> enters all her friends according to +what they have done for her; not an ordinary visitor’s-list. She puts +down “Lady So-and-So—asked us to her squash, but gave a dance and did +not ask us”; or “Mrs. Snooks—dined with us, but didn’t ask us back: +Mem.—not again till she does,” and so on. It’s capital reading; if I +can get hold of it some day I’ll show it to you.’</p> + +<p>‘Do you mind if we get out at the end of the shrubbery and walk home?’ +Sainty asked; ‘I want to see how they are getting on with moving one of +the statues.’</p> + +<p>‘Oh, do let’s! I should love to see Spring (isn’t she Spring, the fat +woman with the sort of trumpet with the apples? Oh no, of course, +Autumn) swinging in mid-air. They had just got the thing rigged up +yesterday afternoon when I walked my parent round there. I do hope they +haven’t got her into the cart yet.’</p> + +<p>They visited poor Autumn, whose head was reposing in rather a ghastly +manner in a heap of straw on a trolly, while her trunk and cornucopia +hung perilously from the pulleys, and her legs still graced a florid +Dutch pedestal.</p> + +<p>‘Isn’t she sweet?’ Cissy said. ‘I do think it’s so clever of you putting +them all back where they belong. I should never have had the energy to +take all this trouble once they were here and established.’</p> + +<p>‘The worst of it is,’ Sainty admitted, ‘that now the thing is decreed, I +feel almost sacrilegious tearing them from the places where I have +always known them. If I had known what a business it was going to be, +and what a lot it would cost, I should never have had the courage to +undertake it.’</p> + +<p>‘It must be lovely to have lots of money to spend,’ Cissy interjected +almost under her breath.</p> + +<p>‘What I can’t understand,’ Sainty went on, ‘is the frame of mind of the +person who spent such sums on <i>destroying</i> a good design; he must have +disturbed his own early associations as much as I am doing, yet without +the same reason for doing so.</p> + +<p>‘I suppose he thought he was improving things, just as you<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_183">{183}</a></span> do,’ said +Cissy cheerfully. ‘All the things people give such heaps for nowadays +are what our grandmothers put in the garrets. Probably the people who +come after you will think Faith, Hope, and Charity, or whoever the +ladies are, would look much nicer in the park, or on the roof, or at the +bottom of the big pond.’</p> + +<p>‘The people who came after him!’ The phrase struck cold upon his ear. +Who was there to ‘come after’ him? Lady Arthur? Good heavens! Sainty +shuddered to think what <i>her</i> notions of the æsthetic might involve. He +had a fleeting vision of Belchamber rearranged according to the standard +of taste suggested by the plush piano drapery so fatally baptized in +champagne.</p> + +<p>This question of who was to enter into his labours and gather the fruits +of all that he was doing contained within itself the germ of paralysis. +The works for the outward beautifying of the place were the smallest of +his preoccupations; but what would his successor care for all his other +hopes, his projects for bettering the condition of the ‘poor about his +lands’? The thought that whatever he might effect would pass with his +own feeble and precarious life, and leave no trace behind it, was one of +the sharpest darts in the quiver of his familiar fiend.</p> + +<p>They walked back to the house almost in silence, Sainty revolving these +unhappy thoughts, Cissy, for once, not chattering. Sainty stole an +occasional glance at his companion, wondering at her unusual quiet. Her +eyes had a far-away look, which gave a great sweetness to her face; he +feared to intrude on some tender maiden thoughts which he felt tolerably +sure had little to do with him or his concerns. As they came out upon +the lawn they saw Lady Charmington approaching from the village, bearing +a small tin-lined basket in which she conveyed cold slabs of pudding to +some of her dependants. Cissy waved her muff and ran forward, insisting +on relieving her from the burthen which she was perfectly capable of +carrying on one stalwart finger. Miss Eccleston’s manner to her hostess +was the perfection of pretty girlish<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_184">{184}</a></span> deference and service, and Lady +Charmington’s grim countenance relaxed at sight of her.</p> + +<p>‘Have you had a pleasant drive?’ she asked. ‘I hope Sainty has taken +good care of you.’</p> + +<p>‘Lord Belchamber has been delightful,’ Cissy answered, ‘and shown me all +sorts of interesting things. We came back by the shrubbery, to look at +one of the poor ladies who has had her head cut off. Now I must go and +tell mamma we are back. I will leave your basket in the little hall for +you, dear Lady Charmington, I know just where it lives.’</p> + +<p>Lady Charmington turned to Sainty as the girl skipped away. ‘Give me +your arm, my son, I am a little tired,’ she said. Now Sainty was well +aware that his mother was never tired, and would rather have died than +own it if she had been. ‘Good heavens, mother, aren’t you well?’ he +asked in alarm.</p> + +<p>‘Oh yes, dear, quite well; but I am getting an old woman. It is a good +thing that you have begun to look after things yourself. What you ought +to do for me now is to give me a nice young daughter-in-law to look +after <i>me</i>, and some dear little grandchildren to pet and spoil.’</p> + +<p>Sainty was startled; it seemed almost as if Lady Charmington were +answering the thoughts that had oppressed him on the way home. He smiled +parenthetically at the vision of his capable energetic mother in the +character of the feeble old lady cared for by pious children; nor did he +see her ‘petting and spoiling’ any one.</p> + +<p>‘I am not likely to marry,’ he said. ‘With the best will in the world, I +might find it difficult. Fairy princesses do not marry the yellow +dwarf!’</p> + +<p>Lady Charmington’s unwonted mildness fell from her miraculously. ‘You +are almost bound to marry—<i>now</i>,’ she said, the last word pronounced +with a sudden sharp inspiration that told how much the reference cost +her.</p> + +<p>‘Dear mother,’ Sainty said gently, ‘who could possibly fill your place +here? Who would do all that you do, or do it nearly as well?’</p> + +<p>‘I can’t live for ever. As I tell you, I am getting old;<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_185">{185}</a></span> already I +can’t do all that I could. The thought of that woman in my place gives +me fever. Do you want her to succeed me—do you?’ And Sainty felt the +hand on his arm tighten to a clutch.</p> + +<p>‘We have both got to die before that happens, mother. If you are not in +your first youth, you are very strong, and if I am not a tower of +strength, at least I have youth on my side; we may both have more +vitality than many younger or stronger people.’ Alas! that his chances +of long life, once so fiercely resented, should have come to be the +buckler on which he counted to interpose against the speedy succession +of his brother, which in those days he had so ardently desired!</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_186">{186}</a></span></p> + +<h2><a id="CHAPTER_XIV">CHAPTER XIV</a></h2> + +<p class="nind"><span class="smcap">It</span> was natural that with other people in the house Sainty should see +less of Cissy; he told himself so several times a day, yet the thought +was not altogether a pleasant one that she only welcomed his society as +a refuge from solitude or Lady Eccleston. The frost had put a stop to +the works in front of the house, and a bad chill and sharp attack of +neuralgia warned Sainty to discontinue his drives until milder weather. +Skating on the big pond became the amusement of the moment, a pastime in +which his lameness prevented his joining. Gerald Newby, in a straw hat, +spent hours upon the ice, and fell down with Spartan perseverance in his +determination to accomplish figures of eight.</p> + +<p>‘Why is it a necessary part of the make-up of the good young man to wear +a straw hat in the winter?’ Claude asked; ‘I notice that serious youths +always do, curates and schoolmasters. Is it a mark of asceticism, as +being obviously not the comfortable thing to do, or to give the +impression that their brains are overheated with excess of thought?’</p> + +<p>Claude, who skated, as he did everything else that he attempted, with +elegance and precision, had undertaken to instruct Cissy in the art, and +Sainty had to watch them gliding about together, both her hands tightly +clasped in his, and even a sustaining arm occasionally flung out when +the maiden was more than usually wobbly. It was all perfectly natural; +there was not the smallest ground for objecting. Lady Susan Trafford and +her sons, Claude’s mother, Newby, and Cissy’s three brothers were all on +the ice the whole time; the pond, though a good-sized sheet of water, +was visible from end to end; there were no corners or islands behind +which<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_187">{187}</a></span> the flirtatiously-inclined could disappear; yet the sight of +those perpetually clasped hands became a constant irritation to +Belchamber, and it was quite vain for him to reiterate that with her +mother and brothers in the house, it was less than no business of his +how Miss Eccleston amused herself. ‘Had it been any one else but +Claude,’ he thought, ‘he should not have minded.’</p> + +<p>It soon became evident to him that he was not alone in the apprehension +with which he watched the growing intimacy between Cissy and his cousin. +Lady Eccleston, it was plain, viewed it with quite as little favour as +he did. Swathed in furs, and with a blue nose, the poor lady fluttered +on the bank, in a manner strongly suggestive of a hen whose ducklings +have taken to the water. One day, having invited him to take her for a +walk, while the hoar frost crackled under their feet in the winding +mazes of the shrubbery, she quite unexpectedly unburthened herself to +him on the subject.</p> + +<p>‘I can talk to you, dear Lord Belchamber,’ she said, ‘as I would to an +older man; you are so good, so pure, so unlike the others, and I am so +sorely in need of advice.’</p> + +<p>‘Good gracious! Lady Eccleston,’ said Sainty, with hypocritical +surprise, ‘what’s the matter? How can I help you?’</p> + +<p>‘I’m so afraid you’ll think it strange of me to talk to you on such a +subject, but, as I say, you are not like an ordinary young man; you have +always been so serious for your age, and then, you know your cousin +better than any one; you have been boys together.’</p> + +<p>‘Claude?’</p> + +<p>‘Yes, Mr. Morland. How kind of you to understand and help me out; but +you <i>are</i> so sympathetic, more like a woman in some ways, I always say.’</p> + +<p>Sainty was only partially pleased by this equivocal compliment. ‘What +about Claude?’ he asked.</p> + +<p>‘I will be quite frank with you; you won’t misunderstand me, I know. A +mother’s solicitude; and, after all, what can be more natural? Left so +early a widow, and with these<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_188">{188}</a></span> young ones to guide and bring up. If my +dear husband had lived it would all have been so different; but I have +no one to turn to. Tom is a mere boy, really no more help than the young +ones. Ah! Lord Belchamber, children are a sad responsibility.’</p> + +<p>‘Yours seem to be very good ones,’ said Sainty.</p> + +<p>‘You <i>do</i> think so? I <i>am</i> so glad. Yes, I think they are, but of course +I feel a mother is not a judge—her great love blinds her; but they +<i>are</i> good children, I must say they give me very little trouble. Only +the high spirits of youth are always a pitfall. And Cissy—she’s a dear, +good girl, and we haven’t a secret from one another; we are more like +sisters. Yet it is for her that I sometimes feel the greatest anxiety.’</p> + +<p>‘Yes?’</p> + +<p>‘Some people think her pretty; again, of course, my partiality prevents +my judging; but lots of people have told me she was pretty. <i>Do</i> you +think her pretty?’</p> + +<p>‘I should think no one could help admiring Miss Eccleston,’ said Sainty.</p> + +<p>‘Ah! that’s it. There’s no denying it. I can’t help seeing it; why +should I pretend I don’t? The girl does have a lot of admiration; I <i>do</i> +hope it won’t turn her head. She’s as good as gold, but London’s an +awful place. I’ve done all I can to keep her from all knowledge of evil, +and so far, thank God! the child is a thoroughly healthy-minded, pure +girl. Doesn’t she strike you so?’</p> + +<p>‘Oh, certainly; but what——’</p> + +<p>‘You were going to say “What has all this to do with Mr. Morland?” You +won’t mind my talking to you quite frankly? it <i>is</i> such a comfort. +Well—any one can see your cousin admires Cissy immensely. And of course +she’s pleased by his attentions. I must admit he is charming; but <i>is</i> +he the kind of young man a mother would like to give her daughter to?’</p> + +<p>‘Have you any reason to suppose your daughter cares at all for Claude?’</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_189">{189}</a></span></p> + +<p>‘Oh no, no, no! don’t misunderstand me; I’m quite <i>sure</i> she doesn’t. +But girls are so thoughtless; the more innocent they are, the more +imprudent. If I so much as try to venture a hint to her to be a little +more circumspect, she says, “I don’t know what you <i>mean</i>, mother,” and +she looks at me in such a way I’m quite ashamed, I really am.’</p> + +<p>‘Of course Miss Eccleston is all that is delicate and refined, but if +you are certain she does not at all return my cousin’s partiality——’</p> + +<p>‘Oh, of that I’m <i>sure</i>; she’s such a mirror of candour—if she had the +very smallest feeling she would have told me—but your cousin is most +fascinating, that I must admit, and she <i>might</i> get to think she cared. +Now, I ask you, who know him so well, <i>is</i> he just the sort of man in +whose hands a very pure-minded girl with high ideals would be happy? I +know my child so well; if she were ever to find out that the man she +married had been at all fast, it would simply kill her. And the young +men of the day <i>are</i> so wicked, or so they tell me. One can’t help +hearing things <i>de temps en temps</i> in London, no matter how much one +hates gossip, and <i>no</i> one hates it as I do.’</p> + +<p>Sainty thought he knew some one who hated it at least as much as her +ladyship. He was wondering what Claude really felt for Cissy. In the +light of their conversation about Miss Winston, he found it difficult to +believe that his cousin was courting a portionless girl with a view to +marriage; but he could not catechise him as to his intentions towards +every young woman with whom he ever saw him, especially after the scanty +encouragement he had met with on that occasion. Were he to answer Lady +Eccleston truthfully, there could be little doubt of what he must say; +but the thought of acting secret police in this fashion was not +agreeable to him.</p> + +<p>‘You must see——’ he began.</p> + +<p>‘Oh! I do, I do,’ cried the lady; ‘I see <i>just</i> how unpleasant it would +be for you to have to say a word against your cousin, and, dear Lord +Belchamber, do let me say how<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_190">{190}</a></span> much it makes me like you, though, to be +sure, that wasn’t necessary, for I’ve always said you were my ideal +young man. Cissy and I have so often agreed in talking over some of the +young men we know, Tom’s friends, and the men we see at balls, and +others, that there is <i>no</i> one quite like you.’</p> + +<p>‘No, I’m well aware that I am not like other young men——’</p> + +<p>‘Ah! be thankful you’re not, dear Lord Belchamber; the young men of the +day, I’m <i>sorry</i> to say, are not nice. And thank you so much for +listening to me so patiently, and telling me <i>just</i> what I wanted to +know. I can’t tell you the comfort this little talk has been to me. You +see, I have no one to turn to, and I do think it so sweet of you not to +want to say a word against Mr. Morland.’</p> + +<p>Sainty wondered a little afterwards just what the information was for +which Lady Eccleston was so grateful, for though the interview was +nominally sought with a view to consulting him, while he had received a +number of interesting confidences, he could not recollect having +expressed any opinion at all. Lady Eccleston, however, had apparently +found him a satisfactory counsellor, for the next day she returned to +the subject.</p> + +<p>‘You remember what I said to you yesterday about Cissy and Mr. Morland,’ +she whispered, dropping down beside him on one of the seats in the +winter-garden after lunch. ‘I’m more than ever convinced she doesn’t +care for him; it is foolish of me to take fright as I do, but there is +just one point I <i>do</i> want to put myself right with you about. I was so +afraid afterwards you might think—and yet—no, come to think of it, I’m +sure you wouldn’t; but I should like just to say that I hope you +<i>didn’t</i> think what I said had <i>any</i>thing to do with Mr. Morland being +poor, or what the world would call not a good match. As long as he was a +good man, and a man of principle, and some one in her own <i>monde</i>, I’ve +always said I didn’t care who my girl married. No one can say I’m +mercenary. My poor dear husband and I married on next to nothing, and +there never was a happier<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_191">{191}</a></span> marriage. I wish you had known Sir Thomas, +you would have loved him,’</p> + +<p>Sainty expressed a suitable regret at having missed the pleasure of Sir +Thomas’s acquaintance. ‘Some people,’ Lady Eccleston continued +pensively, ‘some people think I’m wrong. Only last week a dear friend of +mine said to me that it was all very well to despise money, but that +other things being equal, it was a great power, and that in this age of +the world it was impossible to get on without it. I said “You may be +right, dear, and I don’t deny that for my children’s sake I’ve sometimes +wished I had a little more of it, but money isn’t everything. It can’t +give happiness.”<span class="lftspc">’</span> And her ladyship raised her eyes to a statuette of +Venus in a cluster of palms, with the expression of a dying martyr +regarding a crucifix.</p> + +<p>‘No, Lord Belchamber, if a man’s a gentleman and a good man, for me, he +may be as poor as—as he pleases—<i>that</i> isn’t what I fear; but though +Cissy seems such a child, she has a very strongly marked character, and +intensely deep feelings, and were she to marry a man she could not +respect, she would never know a moment’s happiness. What she needs above +all is a man of strict principles, of high ideals, and with a pure mind +and life, and where is such a man to be found? But forgive me for boring +you with all this; it can’t interest you. George, dear,’ to her second +son, who passed at the moment, ‘are you going skating? Do you know where +Cissy is? Is she going with you? I want to speak to her’; and with a +little nod of good understanding to her host, Lady Eccleston skipped +with her usual amazing agility off the ottoman, and departed with her +arm twined about the boy’s waist.</p> + +<p>Belchamber pondered much on these conversations. ‘The ordinary clever +man,’ he thought, ‘who prides himself on knowledge of human nature, +would be sure that Lady Eccleston was trying to “hook him” for her +daughter, and would, as usual, be wrong. If the lady is not, a monument +of wisdom, at least I give her credit for not being so obvious<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_192">{192}</a></span> as +<i>that</i>. No; she is treating me, as women always do, as a creature +removed from all thoughts and hopes of love, a sexless being set apart +like the priest in Catholic countries to be the safe recipient of tender +confidences in which he can have no personal concern.’ Still he +sometimes dreamed (as who may not at twenty-three?) of what life might +come to mean if Love should breathe on its dry bones and bid them live; +if it were possible that some maid more discerning than her fellows +should see with the eye of the soul, beneath his dreary, unattractive +exterior, the wealth of love that was waiting like the sleeping princess +for the awakening kiss! ‘Perhaps I might even have the luck of the +unhappy monster in <i>L’Homme qui rit</i>, and meet with a blind girl!’ +Hideousness, even deformity, was no bar to the love of woman, that he +knew. He thought of Wilkes, of Mirabeau, of many others who had been +more passionately loved than your pretty fellows. Deep in his heart he +knew his real disability; it was not his lack of personal beauty, nor +even his lameness that was the bar, but his miserable inherent +effeminacy. A man might be never so uncouth, so that the manhood in him +cried imperiously to the other sex and commanded surrender. ‘More like a +woman in some ways.’ Had not Lady Eccleston said it? There lay the +sting. And yet—who could tell? Might not a miracle be worked? Might he +not some day find himself face to face with this stupendous, unhoped-for +happiness?</p> + +<p>He wrote many poems at this time, poems not addressed to any concrete +personality, but to that ‘not impossible she,’ the divine abstraction +who should recognise and respond to what lay hidden in his heart. He +felt very sure that Cissy Eccleston, with her frank pagan enjoyment of +life and the moment, was not the lady of his dreams. Those little curved +lips of hers might seek the red mouth of a lover, but would never bestow +the heroic salute that should cleanse the leper, or restore his true +form to the enchanted beast. Yet, forasmuch as he had seen so few girls, +his Beatrice sometimes came to him clad in something of the outward +semblance,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_193">{193}</a></span> the virginal candour and freshness of this sojourner within +his gates. He found himself wondering if Lady Eccleston’s account of her +daughter’s ermine-like recoil from all contact with moral impurity had +any foundation in fact, or whether this fancy portrait of the girl dying +of a stain on the premarital robe of her husband were not as purely +fallacious as some of his mother’s theories about Arthur. It had been +borne in on him that mothers were not always infallible in what +concerned their children’s characters; he was farther rendered a little +sceptical as to the young lady’s excessive innocence by some of her own +conversation, and notably a certain curiosity displayed with what seemed +to him a lack of delicacy on more than one occasion as to his +unfortunate sister-in-law.</p> + +<p>‘Of course one knew all those girls by sight,’ she remarked, with +engaging candour, ‘but I’m not sure just <i>which</i> was Cynthia de Vere; it +<i>was</i> the tall one with the beautiful legs and the rather big mouth, +wasn’t it? I told Tom so, and he said it wasn’t; but I’m sure I’m right, +ain’t I?’</p> + +<p>On another occasion she startled him by the plainest possible reference +to the relations of Charley Hunter and Miss Baynes.</p> + +<p>‘I didn’t know young ladies knew anything about such things,’ Sainty +said rather severely.</p> + +<p>‘They do now,’ said Cissy, ‘whatever they used to; but I suspect they +always knew more than they let on. There was a friend of mine who +married Teddie Hersham last season; I was one of her bridesmaids; she +was awfully proud of taking him away from Totty Seymour; she used to +boast of it to all her friends.’</p> + +<p>‘I can’t bear to hear you talk like that,’ Sainty answered. ‘It would +give people who didn’t know you such a wrong idea of you.’</p> + +<p>‘I’ll try not to, if you don’t like it; but it isn’t easy for me to +pretend to be different to what I am.’</p> + +<p>‘I don’t want you to. I only ask you to be true to yourself, and not say +things that I am sure are quite foreign to you for the sake of startling +people.’</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_194">{194}</a></span></p> + +<p>‘Well, I must own I do enjoy shocking <i>you</i>. You are so awfully proper, +you know; but why should you care what I do or say?’ she added, with a +little arch glance.</p> + +<p>‘I don’t know, I’m sure, but I do. I suppose I—I like you too well not +to mind your behaving in a way I don’t think worthy of you.’</p> + +<p>What wonder if Miss Eccleston found Claude Morland a more amusing +companion than his cousin? Sainty was the first to admit the likelihood. +He was well aware that Claude would not have offended her by championing +her innocence against herself, or have made any difficulties about +gratifying her girlish curiosity as to that other world of which she +knew so little. The thought of Morland’s long, deft fingers delicately +removing the bloom from this young creature irritated him unaccountably. +Oh no! it was not jealousy; that, again, was what the stupid, knowing +people would think; he could never care for this empty-headed little +thing in that way, and knew only too well how much more impossible it +was that <i>she</i> should care for <i>him</i>. Only, he did not want her to +suffer, nor to coarsen and deteriorate.</p> + +<p>He was revolving some such thoughts as these as he walked by himself one +day, perhaps a week after his conversation with Lady Eccleston, when he +was startled by loud cries from the neighbourhood of the pond, and made +all the haste he was able in that direction. The air was certainly +milder; there had been unmistakable premonitions of a thaw. He +remembered the discussion at breakfast as to whether the ice would still +bear, and the eager affirmations of the young Traffords and Ecclestons +that it was as sound as ever. Bertie Trafford and Randolph Eccleston had +been sliding all over it, and had even stamped in places to see if it +would give way; but Mr. Danford, the agent, had come in in the course of +the morning to say that it had a damp look about the edges he did not +like, and to advise them to keep off it. Sainty had not been greatly +interested; the pond, though large, was mostly artificial, and nowhere +more than three or four feet deep, and if the boys liked to risk a +wetting, it did<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_195">{195}</a></span> not seem to him to matter much. Now his thoughts flew +to Cissy; he wondered he had not thought of her before, and the next +moment he turned a corner, and found himself one of an excited group, +the centre of which was Claude, hatless, dishevelled, and very wet, +bearing in his arms the inanimate form of Miss Eccleston. Her eyes were +closed, and every trace of colour was gone from her face; her lips were +blue, and the water ran in streams from her clothing. The boys crowded +round, all talking at once, and making a number of foolish suggestions.</p> + +<p>‘Is she drowned? Is she dead?’ wailed little Randolph, and was sternly +bidden by George not to be an ass unless he wanted to get kicked.</p> + +<p>‘What is the matter? What has happened?’ asked Sainty, and was conscious +of saying the silly thing even before Claude answered with studied +politeness, ‘Don’t you see? Miss Eccleston has caught fire, but we have +luckily extinguished the flames.’</p> + +<p>Claude was seldom cross, but he hated scenes and emotions and spoilt +clothes. ‘If some one would help me to get her up to the house it would +be some use,’ he added; ‘and can’t any one lend a dry coat to wrap round +her? Mine’s no good, it’s as wet as a sponge. Oh! not <i>you</i>, Sainty, +<i>you</i>’ll catch cold.’</p> + +<p>A little way from the house they encountered Lady Eccleston, who had got +wind of the catastrophe, and was hurrying to meet them; and Sainty was +struck by the change in her manner in face of emergency. Her foolish +flightiness seemed to have dropped from her like a garment that an +athlete throws off. She had all her wits about her, and gave the most +sensible directions. She had her daughter upstairs and in bed between +warm blankets in less time than it takes to write it down, and by the +afternoon she was able to report to them that Cissy was quite +comfortable, only a little feverish and upset by the shock; but she did +not think she would be much the worse for her wetting.</p> + +<p>Cissy, however, was a most unaccountable time in getting<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_196">{196}</a></span> over that +shock. Lady Eccleston expressed herself as amazed that her daughter +should take so long to recover from so small a thing.</p> + +<p>‘Really, Lord Belchamber, I’m ashamed; you’ll think you are never going +to get rid of us; but the doctor says positively that the child mustn’t +come down yet. I can’t understand it at all, for the chill she has +<i>quite</i> got over. Of course she had a dreadful feverish cold, and at +first we thought it would settle on her lungs, but, thank God! all +danger of that seems at an end. Then I ask <i>what</i> is the matter? and Dr. +Lane says, “It’s the shock to the nervous system.” But I’m mortified. I +really am. Do you know how long we’ve been here?’</p> + +<p>‘I don’t want to know, Lady Eccleston. I only know we are too glad to +keep you as long as you can stay, and I am sure my mother feels as I do +about it.’</p> + +<p>‘Oh! you are too kind about it, both of you! But one has <i>some</i> +compunctions, you know. And after all your goodness about the boys and +all!’</p> + +<p>George and Randolph had returned to Harrow, and Tom to his hated office +in Throgmorton Avenue, Claude’s presence had been once more required by +his respected chief, and the rest of the party had melted like the snow +that had followed the long frost; but still Cissy lay in a most becoming +pink dressing-gown in a small boudoir that had been arranged for her +next her bedroom. It took Lady Eccleston days of modest trepidation to +bring herself to admit Sainty to these sacred precincts. ‘Was she very +unconventional? Well, she supposed she was—people always said so—but +she was weak where her children were concerned, and Cissy had said, “Why +<i>shouldn’t</i> Lord Belchamber come to see me, mamma?” Not for worlds would +she have introduced the ordinary young man’; and then Sainty was once +more assured of his ‘difference,’ his purity, the perfect confidence an +anxious mother could repose in him.</p> + +<p>‘Her brothers are gone, you see, and she misses them so, poor child. And +though we are <i>such</i> friends, an old woman<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_197">{197}</a></span> is dull company <i>pour tout +potage</i>; and then my wretched throat gives out; I am no good for reading +aloud. Now it would be <i>angelic</i> of you, if you would read to her a +little; <i>would</i> you? Oh! <i>how</i> kind! She is a perfect baby about being +read to; and you are so clever; you will know just what to read; you +have such literary taste; everybody says so.’</p> + +<p>Thus Sainty found himself installed as reader to the invalid, and spent +many hours a day by her sofa. At first Lady Eccleston was always there; +then, when they were deep in their book, she would sometimes slip away +to her voluminous correspondence or long consultations with her maid +over the endless transmutations of her wardrobe. Sometimes Lady +Charmington would look in, with a few words of grim tenderness, and lay +a large cool hand on Cissy’s hair. Gradually the young people came to be +left alone for longer and longer intervals. Belchamber rather wondered, +himself, at the relaxation of all watchfulness on the part of their +chaperons. ‘It is the old story,’ he told himself gloomily; ‘I am +certainly not considered dangerous.’</p> + +<p>One day Lady Eccleston was much perturbed at breakfast over her letters.</p> + +<p>‘I don’t know what to do,’ she cried, ‘it is most unfortunate; do advise +me, dear Lady Charmington. There are a dozen things I ought to be in +London for. I have a committee on Tuesday; they say they can’t do +without me; and things seem to be all at sixes and sevens at home: poor +Tommy writes that he is most uncomfortable; he says the maids are always +out, and he believes the cook gives parties; that there are—what is it? +Oh! yes, here—“sounds of revelry by night”; he is always so absurd, +poor dear; but it <i>is</i> hard on him. I really feel we ought to go, and +Cissy is just beginning at last to be a little better.’</p> + +<p>‘Why don’t you run up for a day or two, and do what you have to, attend +to your committee, and give an eye to things in Chester Square?’ said +Lady Charmington. ‘Leave Cissy to us, if you will trust us; we will take +every care of her.’</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_198">{198}</a></span></p> + +<p>‘O dear Lady Charmington, I <i>couldn’t</i>; that <i>would</i> be an imposition. +Of course she would be ever so much better here, and she is so happy, +poor child; Chester Square is so noisy, and of course directly she gets +back to London, people will begin to want her to do things, and I shall +never keep her quiet. But I simply couldn’t; it would be monstrous to +put on you to such an extent.’</p> + +<p>‘Nonsense,’ said Lady Charmington. ‘It is a thousand pities to take her +back to town just when she is getting on so well; a few weeks more of +good air and rest will do everything for her; she must come downstairs +first, go out for a few drives, before she thinks of a journey. Don’t +you agree with me, Sainty?’</p> + +<p>‘Of course we shall be only too glad, if you think Miss Eccleston would +not be dull——’ Sainty began.</p> + +<p>‘Ah! dear Lord Belchamber! dear Lady Charmington! how good you both +are!’ cried the tender mother. ‘I am ashamed, positively ashamed, but +what can I say? She will be overjoyed. She had to gulp down a big lump +in her throat when I told her we must go home; she was so good, she +wouldn’t say anything, but <i>I</i> could see; love sharpens our wits when it +is a question of our children’s happiness, doesn’t it, dear?’</p> + +<p>‘It is generally not difficult to see through young people,’ said Lady +Charmington. Sainty was wondering if the necessity for Lady Eccleston’s +presence in London had arisen out of the letters she had received since +she came downstairs, when she could have had the conversation on the +subject which had brought the lump into her daughter’s throat, but he +was too polite to inquire.</p> + +<p>The conclusion of the whole matter, as might have been foreseen, was +that Lady Eccleston departed to London, leaving Cissy at Belchamber, and +the readings were continued with even less supervision than before.</p> + +<p>Cissy’s literary taste was decidedly undeveloped, and it may be doubted +if some of her host’s finest reading was not merely an accompaniment to +the thinking out of new hats;<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_199">{199}</a></span> but Sainty enjoyed immensely introducing +a novice to his best beloved authors, and the new sensation of being +able to minister to a sufferer, and lighten the long hours of some of +their dullness and depression. He wasted an immense amount of care and +thought on the selection of suitable gems, passages that should be +characteristic and of the highest beauty, and yet milk to the +intellectual babe. Sometimes he almost forgot his listener in the +pleasure of voicing things long dear to himself, especially poetry, and +he read a good deal of poetry. Cissy displayed but little enthusiasm; +she always thanked him very prettily when he finished, if she was not +asleep, and ‘hoped it didn’t bore him awfully,’ but she made few +comments, and listened for the most part in silence and often with her +eyes closed. Sainty put down her apparent indifference to the languor of +convalescence. Once, indeed, she startled him by the energy of her +appreciation. He was reading <i>Maud</i> to her, and she had several times +disappointed him with a calm ‘very pretty’ when he had paused after some +exquisite lyric that left him vibrating like a harpstring. When, +however, he came to—</p> + +<div class="poetry"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">‘Oh that ‘twere possible<br></span> +<span class="i2">After long grief and pain<br></span> +<span class="i1">To find the arms of my true love<br></span> +<span class="i2">Round me once again!’<br></span> +</div></div> +</div> + +<p class="nind">her quickened respiration showed her interest; and at the stanza +beginning ‘When I was wont to meet her,’ she half raised herself, saying +eagerly, ‘I like that; read that bit again, please; do you mind?’ and on +Sainty’s complying, she repeated dreamily to herself, as though the +words called up some image that gave her pleasure,</p> + +<div class="poetry"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">‘We stood tranced in long embraces,<br></span> +<span class="i1">Mixt with kisses sweeter, sweeter<br></span> +<span class="i1">Than anything on earth.’<br></span> +</div></div> +</div> + +<p class="nind">‘Who did you say wrote that?’ she asked. ‘Oh! of course, yes, Tennyson,’ +and with a great sigh she sank back on her cushions. Then she looked +suddenly at him, as though she<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_200">{200}</a></span> feared she had betrayed something, and +flushed crimson. ‘Go on,’ she murmured; ‘beg pardon,’ and relapsed into +her habitual expression of polite endurance. Next day she asked him to +lend her the book, as she wanted to copy some of it out.</p> + +<p>Sainty was delighted, but surprised.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_201">{201}</a></span></p> + +<h2><a id="CHAPTER_XV">CHAPTER XV</a></h2> + +<p class="nind"><span class="smcap">Lady Eccleston’s</span> business kept her in London longer than she expected. +Each day brought hurried notes from her, full of regrets and apologies, +compunction for all the trouble they were giving, but joy that her dear +child was in such good, kind hands, and a plentiful supply of a mother’s +blessings. She was a swift and copious letter-writer, economising time +by the ruthless excision of articles, pronouns, and other short words. +Tommy always declared that his mother could write two letters at once, +one with each hand, and interview the cook at the same time.</p> + +<p>Breakfast in bed was the last lingering trace of Cissy’s mysterious +ailment, by the time her parent reappeared upon the scene.</p> + +<p>‘What have you done to my little girl?’ cried Lady Eccleston in a +transport of gratitude; ‘she is a different child.’ And truly it would +have been hard to find a more blooming specimen of girlhood. Indeed, +when you come to think of it, six weeks is a liberal allowance of time +for a perfectly healthy young woman to get over the effects of a +momentary immersion in cold water.</p> + +<p>‘You have been so kind to my darling,’ Lady Eccleston said to Sainty. +‘She has been telling me of all your delightful talks and readings; it +is just what she needed, a little intercourse with a really cultivated +mind. She has always felt the dissatisfaction of the frivolous life of +society; there has been the desire to improve herself, the love of +reading, but no one to guide her taste, or put her in the right way. +Now, if you would draw up a little table of reading for her, tell her +<i>what</i> to read, and in what order and connection, it<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_202">{202}</a></span> would be just +everything for her; and perhaps even her ignorant old mother might find +a little leisure now and then to profit by your help. One is never too +old to learn, you know.’</p> + +<p>So Sainty drew up tables, lent books, and marked passages, like the +simple little pedant that he was, but without producing any very marked +impression on Cissy’s fundamental ignorance. Sometimes he wondered if +the girl were not very dull at Belchamber, and how it was that people +who had always seemed to have so many engagements could spare so much +time to one house. It is true that Lady Eccleston was perpetually +threatening departure, but she was as often persuaded to remain by the +very mildest expostulation that civility demanded.</p> + +<p>At last a date was definitely fixed, and Sainty had to acknowledge to +himself that he would miss the charming companion of his walks and +drives. He felt tolerably sure that he was not in the least in love with +Cissy, but he had come to feel a sort of tender protecting friendship +for her, an interest in her welfare, and a desire to shield her from +evil and unhappiness. Thus, one day, when he had heard raised voices and +rather excited talking as he passed Lady Eccleston’s door, and Cissy had +appeared at lunch with red eyes, he burned to know what was wrong, and +if possible to help and comfort her. Sorrow seemed so inappropriate to +this bright young creature; yet, during the last few days of the +Ecclestons’ stay, the air was heavy with suppressed tears. It was like +the weather when people look each evening at the clearing heavens and +say, ‘There must have been a storm somewhere’; an actual shower would +have been a relief. To a person of Sainty’s temperament such a state of +things was unendurable. He could not ask Cissy what was wrong; she who +had been so ready to walk, or drive, or read, seemed suddenly to have +become unapproachable.</p> + +<p>One day he watched the mother and daughter returning from a walk. They +were talking excitedly in low hurried voices and with a good deal of +gesture; it was obvious even<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_203">{203}</a></span> at a distance that they were discussing no +ordinary topics, and what is more that they were having a decided +difference of opinion. Lady Eccleston seemed to be appealing urgently +about something. Sainty saw her lay her hand not too gently on her +daughter’s arm, but the girl threw it off with an impatient gesture, +broke from her, and fairly ran towards the house.</p> + +<p>So swift and unexpected was her coming that Sainty had no time to +withdraw, and they met in the hall. Cissy’s face was working, her eyes +dry and burning.</p> + +<p>‘Miss Eccleston—Cissy,’ said Belchamber, ‘what is wrong? Can I do +anything——’</p> + +<p>At sight of him she started away like a shying horse.</p> + +<p>‘Oh, let me alone!’ she cried, and hurried upstairs, and Sainty could +hear her sobbing as she went. At that moment Lady Eccleston appeared +upon the scene, with heightened colour and decidedly out of breath. An +indefinable change came over her expression as she saw the young man, a +certain exultation seemed to leap in her eyes, to be immediately +extinguished in a confusion which had every appearance of being genuine.</p> + +<p>‘Lady Eccleston,’ said Sainty, moving eagerly to meet her, ‘what is the +matter with Cissy?’ He did not notice that in his excitement he had +twice called the girl by her Christian name.</p> + +<p>‘O Lord Belchamber, how unfortunate! I would have given worlds not to +have met you just now. Give me a minute or two, I’m all upset.’</p> + +<p>Sainty opened the door of the morning-room and ushered the agitated lady +in there. His heart was beating uncomfortably; he felt something +decisive was going to happen. Lady Eccleston sank into a chair and +struggled with emotion, giving vent to a series of little sniffs and +hiccoughs, and dabbing her eyes and mouth with her pocket-handkerchief.</p> + +<p>‘To-morrow we should have gone, and you need never have known,’ she said +at last in broken accents.</p> + +<p>‘Known what? I don’t understand.’</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_204">{204}</a></span></p> + +<p>‘I blame myself,’ Lady Eccleston went on, not heeding the interruption. +‘It was my fault; I ought to have had more foresight and discretion; I +see it all now. If Sir Thomas had only been spared it would never have +happened; he had such sterling sense.’</p> + +<p>‘Won’t you tell me what’s wrong?’ Sainty asked.</p> + +<p>‘I alone am to blame,’ Lady Eccleston repeated tragically. ‘Of course I +see it now. You are both so young, so pure-minded, so unsophisticated; +and dear Lady Charmington has lived so long out of the world; but <i>I</i> +ought to have seen. Oh! I am inexcusable. But I did hope at least <i>you</i> +would never know’; and like Agamemnon she once more veiled her grief.</p> + +<p>‘I might have known, I might have been sure,’ she continued after a +pause. ‘Heaven knows I have enough reason to know how malicious people +are, but my belief in my fellow-creatures is incurable. I can <i>not</i> +bring myself to realise the love of scandal in evil-minded people.’</p> + +<p>‘Good heavens!’ said Sainty, now thoroughly alarmed. ‘What can you mean? +Surely no one has presumed——’</p> + +<p>‘People have talked,’ Lady Eccleston mourned. ‘Cissy being here so long, +and my leaving her here, and all. It seems people have drawn all sorts +of silly conclusions. I have been asked—— I can’t say it; you can +guess what; and the poor child has had letters, hints, and +congratulations, and all that; you can fancy it has upset her terribly; +she is almost beside herself; I can do nothing with her; you saw her +just now’; and Lady Eccleston took a little side-glance at Sainty behind +her pocket-handkerchief. ‘Of course, <i>I</i> understand perfectly, and so +does she; but I see how it would strike outsiders. Oh! why is one always +wise after the event? Now you see why I am so angry with myself.’</p> + +<p>Sainty was much perturbed. ‘This is monstrous, monstrous!’ he cried; +‘that she should be annoyed, distressed in this way, is horrible. I +hope, Lady Eccleston, you don’t think that I have behaved badly, that I +have taken any advantage of the confidence with which you have honoured +me.’</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_205">{205}</a></span></p> + +<p>‘Oh dear no, Lord Belchamber; you have been kindness itself, and so has +your dear mother. I never can forget all your goodness. I knew how +absolutely I could trust <i>you</i>; but I ought to have thought, to have +remembered. Well, I had hoped and meant that at least we alone should +bear the burthen. This is an ill return to make to you for all your +sweetness and hospitality. You will wish you had never heard our name.’</p> + +<p>‘Believe me, I am not thinking at all about myself. The one question is, +how is Miss Eccleston to be shielded from any annoyance in the matter? +It is intolerable that she should have to suffer.’</p> + +<p>‘How like you! always so noble and unselfish,’ said Lady Eccleston +fervently. ‘I shall always remember how splendidly you have behaved. I +don’t blame <i>you</i> for a single instant, but I can never forgive +<i>myself</i>. It is so like me; I am so impulsive. I thought only of the +immense benefit it would be to her intellectually, the intercourse with +such a mind as yours. I should have recollected there were dangers; that +at her age the intellect plays but a very small part beside the +heart——’</p> + +<p>‘Good gracious! you don’t mean that she has thought me capable of +pestering her with my attentions? I knew well enough that I was only +allowed such liberty because—because I was different from other men.’</p> + +<p>‘No, no; I don’t <i>think</i> she thought anything of it. <i>I</i> should have +known that it was only your kindness to a poor little invalid, your +desire to instruct a little ignoramus. But Cissy is very young; she may +have fancied—— Oh! I don’t know what I’m saying.’</p> + +<p>Sainty had grown very pale; he had to hold on to a table for support.</p> + +<p>‘Lady Eccleston,’ he said in a low voice, ‘you can’t mean to imply that +Miss Eccleston could possibly care for <i>me</i> in that way.’</p> + +<p>‘Lord Belchamber, this is unfair,’ cried Lady Eccleston, starting up. +‘You have no right to try and force the chil<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_206">{206}</a></span>d’s poor little secret from +me. You found me all unstrung after a terrible talk with her, and I have +let out far more than I should. I have told you I entirely exonerate you +from all blame; I appreciate that your motive was pure kindness. Is not +that enough for you? If people have been tiresome and tactless it is not +your fault, still less hers, poor girl. I blame <i>myself</i>, as I say, more +than I can tell you, but that has nothing to do with you. If I have been +foolish I am more than punished; but I only regret that I cannot bear +<i>all</i> the punishment; we never can. The fault or folly, call it what you +will, was mine, but much of the price must be paid by my poor innocent +child—that is the thought that unnerves me’; and her ladyship once more +had recourse to her pocket-handkerchief. ‘She has no father,’ she +wailed; ‘her brothers are mere children in knowledge of the world; and +I, her mother, who should have shielded her from trouble, in my blind, +foolish desire to procure her a little intellectual advantage, have +brought on her the bitterest trial of her life.’</p> + +<p>Sainty was twisting his stick in his fingers in great agitation. ‘It is +too bad, too bad,’ he said, ‘that she should be pestered like this and +made unhappy. I would do anything in my power to repair the harm of +which I have been the unwitting cause. But if the trouble is, as I +suppose, only what stupid people have been saying or writing to her, I +don’t see what I can do. Poor child! I can well understand how her pride +and delicacy must have been hurt.’</p> + +<p>‘No, no; there is nothing to be done, nothing,’ said Lady Eccleston. ‘I +never meant that you should know; and, Lord Belchamber, promise me one +thing: never refer to this to Cissy; she would die of shame, if she +thought I had told you. We are going to-morrow; try and forget what I +have said, especially—especially——’ and she broke off abruptly, and +made a stumbling grope at the door-handle, as though she would leave the +room.</p> + +<p>‘Stop a minute, please,’ Sainty cried, interposing. ‘Don’t go. I don’t +want to be indiscreet, but you said something <span class="pagenum"><a id="page_207">{207}</a></span>just now which seemed to +hint—— Oh! I know it’s incredible; but don’t you see, it would make +all the difference whether her distress came <i>only</i> from the +mortification of people having coupled our names, or if it was possible +that she could look on me as—as——’</p> + +<p>‘Say no more, say no more. I understand you perfectly,’ interrupted Lady +Eccleston. ‘You are the soul of punctilious honour. You are capable of +any sacrifice, if you thought that even, as you said just now, +<i>unwittingly</i> you had made a poor girl care for you; but I have not said +it, and I will not say it. I have pride for her, as I should have it for +myself. I would <i>never</i> admit it. You are perfectly justified in +believing that her distress arises <i>solely</i> from what people have said,’ +and this time the lady, with a magnificent gesture of renunciation, +really did get to the door, and left Sainty in a whirl of conflicting +emotions. Was it possible that he had touched the heart of this +beautiful young creature? It was inconceivable that <i>she</i> should be in +love with <i>him</i>, and he turned with a pathetic smile to the long glass +between the two tall windows. Yet her mother had seemed to hint it. If +it were so, then there was nothing simpler than saving her from trouble. +A word would do it. But it could not be; the thing was unthinkable. And +he fell to wondering if he wished to think it, or not. What was his +feeling towards her? Was this protecting, pitying tenderness, this +longing to interpose between her and sorrow, was this love? It was very +unlike what he had dreamed it to be. But was not everything in life +strangely unlike our young idea of it? And ought he to consider his own +feelings in the matter at all? If, however innocently, he had led her to +think he cared for her, if in her youth and inexperience she had +mistaken his friendship, his interest in her studies, for a warmer +feeling; above all, if the inscrutable workings of the female heart had +led her for some mysterious reason to return it, was he not in honour +bound to think only of her happiness in the matter? If a young and +beautiful woman had done him this honour, was it for him, him of all +people, to feel anything but humblest gratitude? The thought was<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_208">{208}</a></span> not +without a certain sweetness that a woman had recognised the qualities of +his head and heart, to the extent of forgetting his lack of all that +women most prized in man, strength, courage, virility. He acknowledged +that a man could not have done so, that had the positions been reversed, +had he been handsome, vigorous, physically attractive, she ugly, +misshapen, unhealthy, no beauties of the soul would have stirred in him +the wish to make her his wife. He bowed his head in awe before the +greater spirituality of woman; even a thoughtless London girl brought up +among worldly surroundings and low ideals was capable of higher flights +than the most refined and least carnal of men. And he had presumed to +patronise, almost to look down on her, because she had not dulled the +edge of her originality with much reading. After all, why did he +hesitate? Had he not dreamed of some such possibility as this, yet +hardly dared to hope for it? Was it likely that two women would be found +willing to overlook his many deficiencies? was not this precisely the +one chance of his life? His mother had said she wished him to marry. His +mother! Strange that he had not thought of her sooner! He would go and +consult his mother; <i>she</i> would know better than any one how to advise +him.</p> + +<p>Lady Charmington listened indulgently to his recital. She did not seem +surprised.</p> + +<p>‘I thought all that poetry reading would come to something of the sort,’ +she said.</p> + +<p>‘I can’t make out now,’ said Sainty, ‘whether what is troubling her is +anything more than resentment of idle gossip, the natural repulsion of a +delicate-minded girl from having her name coupled with a man’s.’</p> + +<p>‘Oh, I suspect it is more,’ said his mother. ‘But you? Are you fond of +the girl on your side?’</p> + +<p>‘I don’t know that I am in love with her, even now, and I certainly +never dreamed of the possibility of <i>her</i> being in love with <i>me</i>.’</p> + +<p>‘Well, her mother certainly gave you to understand that<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_209">{209}</a></span> she was; it is +unfortunate if you have made the poor girl care for you, and don’t feel +you can return it.’</p> + +<p>‘Good heavens, mother! If it were possible that such a creature had +really stooped to love me, I ought to thank her on my knees.’</p> + +<p>‘I don’t quite see <i>that</i>; but I should be sorry to have any one able to +say that you had trifled with her. You see, her mother left her in my +charge; and I suppose I ought not to have let you be so much alone +together.’</p> + +<p>‘But surely,’ cried Sainty, ‘you don’t think I am capable of taking +advantage of the confidence reposed in me, to—to—— Oh! the idea is +ludicrous; you must see its absurdity.’</p> + +<p>‘I must say you have given the girl every reason to think you liked +her,’ said his mother judicially. ‘I have never seen you show the same +desire for anybody’s society before; it is not surprising if she mistook +the nature of your attentions. Pretty girls are not in the habit of +having young men so devoted to the improvement of their minds.’</p> + +<p>‘I would not “behave badly,” as people call it, for worlds,’ said +Sainty. ‘I only can’t get over the extreme grotesqueness of its being +possible for me to do so. In spite of both you and Lady Eccleston, it +still seems to me quite incredible that I should rouse any such feeling +in her.’</p> + +<p>‘There is a very simple way of finding out,’ said Lady Charmington.</p> + +<p>‘But how if in her kindness and inexperience she is mistaking pity, +gratitude, affection—call it what you will—for Love? It is possible +even (God forgive me for thinking of such a thing!) that the +surroundings, the place, the name, the whole business may have acted on +her almost unconsciously, and helped her to mistake her own heart.’</p> + +<p>‘Judge not,’ said Lady Charmington, with all the air of one who had +never done such a thing in her life; ‘I should be sorry to think so +badly of the poor child as that.’</p> + +<p>‘Oh, I didn’t mean to blame her. I am sure she would not <i>consciously</i> +have let such considerations weigh with her; but it seems so abnormal +that any woman should feel any<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_210">{210}</a></span>thing like love for me, that I am still +trying to find some explanation to fit the facts.’</p> + +<p>Lady Charmington laid her hand on his shoulder. ‘My dear boy,’ she said, +‘you are not called upon to understand <i>her</i> feelings; what you have got +to do is to try and understand your own. It has been the dearest wish of +my heart to see you happily married; especially since your brother’s +behaviour has brought such bitter sorrow and disgrace upon us all. Here +is a nice, good girl, well brought up, and I think she loves you. The +question is whether you like her well enough to make her your wife.’</p> + +<p>Sainty shook his head. ‘The question is whether I could make her happy,’ +he said; ‘what have I to give her in exchange for the priceless treasure +of a good woman’s love?’</p> + +<p>Dinner that evening was a cheerless meal. Lady Charmington, never a +great talker, was more than ordinarily silent. Belchamber made several +attempts to start a conversation on indifferent subjects, and Lady +Eccleston chattered feverishly, with one eye on him and one on her +daughter, who sat sullen and defiant and ate nothing. Sainty’s heart +smote him as he looked on her. Whether their two mothers were right or +not, he would speak to her after dinner. If she took him, he would +consecrate his life to her happiness. If, as he still thought far more +likely, their wishes had misled them, and she did not care for him, she +had only to refuse him, and her pride was healed. Then, when her friends +said, ‘We thought you were going to marry Lord Belchamber,’ she would +only have to say, ‘He wanted me to, poor man, but I couldn’t do it.’ +That he was thinking entirely of <i>her</i> happiness showed how little he +was really in love with her, but that neither affected his decision nor +seemed to him to matter in the least.</p> + +<p>Lady Charmington was a skilled and experienced knitter, and Lady +Eccleston, who kept a bit of property crochet to hook at when she was +with other women who worked, became surprisingly interested in the +intricacies of the garment on<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_211">{211}</a></span> which her friend was engaged. Her voluble +inquiries and apologies for her own stupidity kept up a running +accompaniment to the click-clack of the needles and Lady Charmington’s +occasional terse explanations. Cissy had withdrawn to the extreme other +end of the long room in which they sat, and pretended to immerse herself +in a book. Sainty drew a chair up to hers, so as to interpose the view +of his own back between her and the two older women.</p> + +<p>‘Miss Eccleston,’ he said, ‘I have got something I want to say to you.’</p> + +<p>Cissy looked up from her book. ‘Yes?’ was all she said. Her attitude +expressed only weariness; she did not appear to be at all fluttered.</p> + +<p>‘You are worried, unhappy,’ Sainty went on. ‘I am afraid you have been +annoyed by people gossiping about your stay here, about the relations +between you and me.’ He spoke in a low voice, for her ear alone; he was +looking into her eyes, trying to surprise some indication of what effect +his words had on her. Cissy did not look down or betray any +embarrassment.</p> + +<p>‘I suppose mamma told you that?’ she said.</p> + +<p>‘I can’t bear to see you like this, and to know that, however +unintentionally, I am the cause.’</p> + +<p>‘Oh! that’s all right; I am sure you meant nothing but what was kind.’</p> + +<p>‘Miss Eccleston—Cissy, I want to tell you I am quite well aware of the +extreme unlikelihood of your being able to care for me. I understand +that you should be angry and sore at vulgar people’s mistaking the +nature of our friendship. I am not silly or vain enough to suppose that +you would be willing to marry me; but remember if any one ever says +anything more to you about this, your position is quite simple; you have +only to say you have refused me——’</p> + +<p>Cissy never shifted her calm, level gaze. ‘Lord Belchamber,’ she said +quietly, ‘am I to understand that you are proposing to me?’</p> + +<p>‘I don’t for a moment expect you to accept me; I just<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_212">{212}</a></span> want you to know, +and other people to know, that if you don’t it is entirely because you +don’t wish to.’</p> + +<p>‘I see; you mean you will make me a sham proposal, on the distinct +understanding that I say “no,” so that I may have the satisfaction of +telling my friends that I might have been a marchioness if I’d liked; +but you’d be awfully sold if I said “yes.”<span class="lftspc">’</span></p> + +<p>‘You know I don’t mean anything of the sort,’ said Sainty. ‘But I know +how hopeless it is that a girl like you should care for a man like me, +and I wouldn’t insult you by supposing that anything I have to offer +could make any difference. I don’t want to add to your troubles the pain +of thinking I had hoped you might accept me and that you have got to +disappoint me.’</p> + +<p>‘Then it <i>is</i> a <i>bonâ fide</i> offer that you are making me?’ said Cissy +sardonically; her tone expressed anything but exultation, and though she +still looked at him her eyes seemed to be looking at some one else a +long way off. ‘It’s the queerest proposal, I should think, any one ever +made,’ and she gave a little dry laugh. ‘Take care I don’t accept it. +Whatever you may think, a little pauper like me might well be tempted by +what you have to offer, as you call it.’</p> + +<p>‘I don’t like to hear you talk like that,’ Sainty said. ‘I know it is +only a joke, but there are things I don’t like joked about. That’s the +way you used to talk, but you’ve been so different lately.’</p> + +<p>‘Lord Belchamber,’ said Cissy, ‘let’s understand one another. If you are +making me an offer out of chivalry, that I may have an answer to +people’s malicious chatter, I can only say I’m very much obliged to you; +but if you really want me to marry you, I’m quite ready to do so. I +can’t say fairer than that, can I? After all,’ she added in a softer +tone, ‘quite apart from worldly considerations, I think I might do much +worse for myself; you’ve been very good to me, and you’re a much better +sort than—than most of the men I’ve met,’ and for the first time she +looked away, and gave a little sigh.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_213">{213}</a></span></p> + +<p>Sainty was much moved. ‘Cissy,’ he said, ‘do you really mean that in +spite of everything you think you could love me a little?’ and he tried +to take her hand; but at the touch of him the girl flung herself back +into the furthest corner of the big chair in which she sat, and her +glance once more crossed his, steel-bright like a rapier. ‘Do I +understand,’ she asked, ‘that I have your authority to announce our +engagement to our respective parents?’</p> + +<p>Sainty stared blankly; he could only nod. Cissy wheeled her chair +sharply back, and called out, ‘Mamma! Lord Belchamber has proposed to +me, and I have accepted him.’</p> + +<p>Lady Eccleston was across the room in two bounds. ‘My darling, what a +way to tell me such a thing! You really are the strangest child. What +can Lord Belchamber and Lady Charmington think of you? Dear Lady +Charmington, you must forgive my Cissy; she’s so excitable, I think +happiness has turned her head a little; and mine too, for that matter, +for it would be useless to pretend I’m not delighted, only it is all so +sudden, so unexpected,’ and she clasped her daughter to her heart, and +kissed and wept over her in the most approved fashion. Cecilia did not +return her mother’s kisses; she looked at her with a very queer eye +indeed, before which Lady Eccleston’s effusiveness drooped a little. She +turned to her future son-in-law and held out both her hands. ‘Dear +Sainty (I may call you Sainty?), I must kiss you too,’ she cried.</p> + +<p>As Sainty submitted to the threatened salute, it struck him as grimly +humorous that it should not be his intended who kissed him, but her +mother.</p> + +<p>Cissy crossed the room, and picked up the ball of wool which Lady +Eccleston had shed in her rapid transit, and by which she was still +fastened like a spider to the place where she had been sitting. ‘Lady +Charmington,’ she said, ‘mamma has adopted your son with great +readiness; have you nothing to say to me? Are you not pleased?’</p> + +<p>Lady Charmington had risen and laid aside her work. ‘Of course I am +pleased,’ she said; ‘I have wished, of all<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_214">{214}</a></span> things, to see Sainty +married; but, my dear,’ she added, something in the girl’s manner +seeming to strike her as peculiar, ‘I hope you are not taking this +solemn step lightly; have you examined your heart, and asked God’s +blessing on what you are doing? Are you sure you love my son enough to +be happy with him, and to make him happy?’</p> + +<p>But Lady Eccleston was a whirlwind of tears, protestations, laughter, +and congratulation; she caught them all up, and swept them away in the +current of her rejoicing. No one else was allowed to say anything.</p> + +<p>Sainty also had drawn near, and now stood before his mother. She took a +hand of each of the young people in hers, and said solemnly ‘God bless +you, my children.’</p> + +<p>At the moment Sainty had a vision of the intensity with which she had +cursed her other son, on a like occasion, and thought irresistibly of +the fountain that ‘sent forth sweet water and bitter.’ The context rang +in his head like a knell: ‘My brethren, these things ought not to be.’</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_215">{215}</a></span></p> + +<h2><a id="CHAPTER_XVI">CHAPTER XVI</a></h2> + +<p class="nind"><span class="smcap">The</span> wedding was fixed for the first week in June. As Lady Charmington +said, there was no reason for delay, though it must be owned that +neither of the young people seemed very eager to press on the date. Lady +Eccleston could not have borne a wedding in Lent, and Lady Charmington +had a lingering old Scottish superstition, of which she was heartily +ashamed, against May marriages. All things considered, the beginning of +June seemed plainly indicated. Everybody would be in town then, and it +was to be a London wedding. Cissy grumbled a good deal at having to miss +the season; but her mother affected to treat her lamentations as a joke.</p> + +<p>‘Of <i>course</i> she doesn’t mean it,’ she said, in answer to Sainty’s +expression of his willingness to consult Cissy’s wishes in everything. +‘You know how absurd my children are; they always must make a joke of +everything, but it doesn’t mean that their hearts are not in the right +place; under all their nonsense, which I never check, for I do so love +to see them merry, they have very serious feelings about all the big +things of life.’</p> + +<p>A cousin of Lady Eccleston’s, who was married to a newly-made peer with +a large income, and who had never before shown the slightest inclination +to do much for her poorer kinsfolk, expressed her approval of Cissy’s +brilliant match by offering the use of her house for the occasion.</p> + +<p>‘It is very good of dear Louisa,’ said Lady Eccleston, ‘and I must own +we should have been sadly squashed in our little <i>bicoque</i>. Still, if we +hadn’t always been <i>as</i> sisters, I couldn’t have taken it from her. Poor +dear! It is such a bitter regret to her having no children of her own. +Natur<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_216">{216}</a></span>ally, mine are a great deal to her; and I can quite understand her +pleasure in having Cissy married from her house. Don’t think I’m +ungrateful to the dear creature, Sainty, but I own in my heart I would +rather have had the girl go to her bridal from her own and her mother’s +little home; but that is <i>entre nous</i>, my dear boy; I wouldn’t hurt poor +Louisa’s feelings for worlds.’</p> + +<p>Sainty found being engaged very different from anything he had read of +it. Things seemed so little changed with him, that he wondered at times +if it could really be he who was to be married in a few weeks. Was it +possible that at a date definitely fixed, and not very far distant, his +whole being was to undergo this tremendous transformation, was +henceforth to be linked in closest union with a creature of whom he knew +practically nothing, and that not for a season, like any other +circumstance in life, but as long ‘as they both should live,’ ‘till +death did them part’? The prospect terrified rather than attracted him.</p> + +<p>Sometimes he tried to feel elated at the thought that he was to join the +ranks of normal happy people who love and are loved, was to lead about a +wife like other men, and hold up his head among his fellows. He told +himself that this supremest gift was far beyond anything he had dared to +hope. It was to no purpose. He might be flattered, grateful, touched, +but he was conscious of none of that blissful thrill that is said to +transfigure existence and make a heaven on earth. Sometimes he wondered +how it had all come about so suddenly. Everything he had done had seemed +not only natural, but inevitable at the time. He had walked into the +situation as simply as going in to dinner; yet now there were moments +when the thought of what they had both undertaken appalled him. He was +as frightened for Cissy as for himself. Did she know what she was doing, +what it meant? A dozen times a day he recalled the scene in the library, +her hard, unflinching gaze, the mocking tones of her voice. Was that the +way that a woman made the ‘irrevocable sweet surrender’ to a man who had +won<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_217">{217}</a></span> her heart? If she had made a mistake, if she did not love him, +ought she not still to be saved from the fate she had accepted, even at +the eleventh hour?</p> + +<p>He saw extremely little of his betrothed. He had never had much to do +with engaged couples, but he had an impression that they were generally +left a good deal alone together, that people and things combined to +respect the privacy of mutual love; yet from the day of his engagement +it was no exaggeration to say that he had hardly seen Cissy alone for +five minutes. It is true that she had not actually left Belchamber next +morning; but after their surprising freedom from other claims, both she +and her mother seemed now all impatience to be gone, and during the time +that they remained, they were mostly shut up in their own rooms +announcing the event to a hundred correspondents, or dashing off their +thanks for the congratulations that arrived by every post. ‘She must +really get home, and begin to see about clothes; there was none too much +time, and this was such a bad time of year; just when every one was +busy.’ Cissy was sure, if she delayed another day, she ‘shouldn’t have a +decent rag to her back, and should have to be married in her +petticoats.’</p> + +<p>From the day they went to town there began a round of shoppings and +tryings-on, of scribbling notes, unpacking, cataloguing, and rapturously +thanking for wedding-presents, which, as Cissy was marrying a rich man +with a house full of beautiful things, were, of course, far more +numerous and costly than if she had married a curate, or a captain in a +marching regiment. Then the list of people to be invited to the wedding +had to be discussed <i>ad infinitum</i>, at first with regard to the size of +the house in Chester Square, and after the cousin’s offer, to be +enlarged, amended, and corrected. With every fresh batch of presents, +the number swelled of those whom it was deemed indispensable to ask, +till it seemed to Sainty that there was not a stranger in the whole +great indifferent city who had not been called in to assist at his +nuptials.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_218">{218}</a></span></p> + +<p>He also had come to town, as in duty bound, and was staying with his +uncle Firth, but though he spent several hours a day in Chester Square, +he found himself horribly in the way there. Lady Eccleston and Cissy sat +squashed sideways by the open drawers of their respective +writing-tables, like people playing a perpetual duet on two organs with +all the stops pulled out. The absurdly inadequate pieces of furniture on +which women transact business became so littered with lists, letters, +acceptances, refusals, the drawers so bulged with stacks of +silver-printed invitations and stamped envelopes, that the little hands +with the scratching pens seemed by their perpetual movement to be +feverishly preserving an ever narrowing space for themselves, as ducks +keep a hole open in a rapidly freezing pond.</p> + +<p>Of happy interchange of rapturous feelings, murmured talks in quiet +corners, or those long palpitating silences that lovers know, too +blissful to be marred by talk, our engaged couple had no experience. +Though Sainty was far too delicate-minded for the mere physical aspects +of courtship to appeal strongly to his imagination, it did occur to him +that an occasional embrace was not inappropriate between people about to +be married; but on the one occasion when he attempted anything of the +sort, he had been repulsed with such energy and decision that he had +immediately desisted. He had a conviction that Cissy thought him a fool +for accepting defeat so easily, but to struggle for a kiss like an +enamoured costermonger was repugnant to all his ideas. So he continued +to meet and greet his promised bride as though she were the most +indifferent of strangers.</p> + +<p>One morning at breakfast he asked his uncle if he ought not to make his +betrothed a present. Lord Firth came out from behind the morning paper +with a bound.</p> + +<p>‘My dear boy! do you mean to say you haven’t done so?’</p> + +<p>‘Not yet,’ said Sainty; ‘but I supposed, of course, I should have to.’</p> + +<p>‘Not even a ring?’ asked Lord Firth. Sainty was forced to admit it.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_219">{219}</a></span></p> + +<p>‘Why, the very day she accepted you, you ought to have given her a ring; +if you hadn’t got one fit to offer her, you should have telegraphed to +town at once for some. You must get one at once and take it to her; and, +of course, you must give her other things too, a tiara or necklace or +something really handsome, and a bag or dressing-case. You know the kind +of thing. Find out from her mother what she’s got, and which she would +like, and get the duchess to help you choose things; <i>she</i> knows what’s +what. They must think it very odd that you haven’t done it already.’</p> + +<p>‘There are the emeralds,’ said Sainty.</p> + +<p>‘Of course she’ll have them to wear,’ said his uncle, ‘but you can’t +<i>give</i> them to her, because they are heirlooms. As it happens, the one +thing you are rather poor in is jewellery. Your grandmother had a lot, +but it was her own, and you may believe she didn’t leave any behind her; +your mother never cared for it, and never had much. She will probably +give your wife, or leave her, what she has; but of course you must see +that she has the proper things, and do the thing well. Don’t be stingy +about it.’</p> + +<p>The duchess was delighted to help, and echoed Lord Firth’s astonishment +at Sainty’s dilatoriness in the matter.</p> + +<p>‘You really are the most extraordinary boy,’ she said. ‘I’m just going +for my walk; we’ll go round to Rumond’s at once and see what he’s got.’</p> + +<p>‘We’ve been expecting a visit from your lordship,’ said the great +jeweller unctuously, ‘ever since we heard the happy news. May I be +permitted to offer my congratulations on the event? We have always had +the honour of supplying your family, and hoped that on such an occasion +you would not desert us. I was remarking to Mr. Diby only the other day +that I had been wondering we did not get a telegram to go down to +Belchamber—either he or I would have been delighted; but you preferred +to wait till you came to town: quite right, quite right.’</p> + +<p>They were ushered into a little sanctum, where presently on a mat of +dark blue velvet were displayed treasures which<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_220">{220}</a></span> made Sainty blink, and +of which the prices gave him cold shivers down his back. The duchess +handled and appraised the gems with the sangfroid of long habit; but her +grandson had never in his life had occasion to buy any jewellery, and +had not the faintest idea of what such things were worth. To deck the +bright curls of a woman with the cost of a hospital, or hang the price +of a working-men’s college round her neck, seemed to him absolutely +vicious; it had a horrible flavour of that life into which he had +obtained his only glimpse at Arthur’s supper-party—poor Arthur, whom +almost alone he would have cared to have near him on his wedding-day, +and who he knew would not be there, because his wife could not be asked.</p> + +<p>He left the shop with a horrible sense of guilt, and a feeling that the +act which in him would be applauded as a fitting generosity was very +much in the same category with his brother’s prodigalities, not +differing in kind, but only so much more blameworthy as it was so much +greater in degree. Arthur, he felt sure, would not have hesitated to +hang the girl of his heart in jewels, nor have wasted a thought on what +it cost, and again he wondered whether his qualms were the result of his +well-known parsimony, or one more proof that he was not really in love +with her who was to be his wife.</p> + +<p>It was soon clear that Cissy did not share his views on these subjects; +the evening on which his presents arrived in Chester Square was the only +occasion since their betrothal on which she expressed anything +resembling affection for him. Her eyes sparkled like the diamonds in her +little crown as she tried the things on, and pirouetted about the room +with them. She waltzed up to Sainty and dropped him a deep curtsey. ‘How +does my lord and master think I look?’ she said coquettishly; and then +in a sudden gust of gratitude she caught his hands in hers, and for the +first time bent forward and kissed him. Sainty blushed hotly; this kiss, +which spontaneously given would have meant so much to him, was like the +stamp on a receipt for cash value<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_221">{221}</a></span> received; and it was the last, as it +had been the first, of their singular courtship.</p> + +<p>As the weeks passed, Cissy grew stranger and more unlike herself. The +intervals of feverish gaiety, which had marked the earlier stages of her +engagement, became rarer, and were succeeded by fits of gloom and +depression that seemed utterly foreign to her nature. Whatever she might +be at other times, that came to be the mood in which she invariably +received Belchamber. She never willingly addressed him, and there were +days when it seemed beyond her power to speak peaceably to him. +Sometimes she was so rude that Lady Eccleston would playfully +remonstrate, or Tommy would burst out with, ‘Hang it all, Cissy, you’ve +no right to speak to Sainty like that. If I was him, I’m jiggered if I’d +stand it.’</p> + +<p>They had never from the first been allowed many unwitnessed interviews, +but now it seemed to Sainty that it was Cissy herself who carefully +avoided any occasion of finding herself alone with him, and if ever she +could by no means escape, she would take refuge from his attempts at +conversation in sullen monosyllables, and sometimes even in absolute +silence.</p> + +<p>One day he asked her in desperation if she felt she had made a +mistake—if she wanted to be released. ‘It is not too late,’ he said, +‘but it soon will be; if you repent of what you have done, if you want +me to give you back your freedom, in mercy to yourself, to me, speak +while there is yet time.’</p> + +<p>‘Cissy,’ he pleaded, after waiting in vain for any answer, ‘if you don’t +feel that you love me enough, don’t do a thing that will ruin both our +lives.’</p> + +<p>‘Do I seem as if I loved you?’ she asked brutally.</p> + +<p>‘So little, that I can’t help feeling that the idea of marrying me is +repugnant to you. If so, never mind me; have the courage to put a stop +to the whole thing; a word from you will do it.’</p> + +<p>‘Oh! will it? It is not as simple as all that.’</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_222">{222}</a></span></p> + +<p>‘I will help you in any way I can; I will do anything you want.’</p> + +<p>Cissy continued to stare into the fire in silence; she had never once +looked at him. ‘I don’t know what I do want,’ she said at last, +hopelessly.</p> + +<p>Sainty was about to say more, but at that moment, with a great +admonitory rattling of the door-handle, Lady Eccleston hurried in, with +her arms full of parcels.</p> + +<p>‘More presents, children,’ she cried gaily; ‘here, Sainty, come and take +this top one off, or I shall drop it. That makes three hundred and +seventy-nine. Ouf! I’m glad I’ve no more daughters to marry.’</p> + +<p>‘Listening! I thought so,’ cried Cissy, starting up, and without a +glance at the gifts from which her mother was beginning to remove the +wrappings she left the room. At No. 379, fans and smelling-bottles, and +even small articles of jewellery, were becoming a drug in the market. +Lady Eccleston got very red, but took no notice, affecting to be +absorbed in undoing a bit of ribbon that had got into a knot. ‘<span class="lftspc">“</span>With +best wishes, Mr. and Mrs. Bonham Trotter,”<span class="lftspc">’</span> she read; ‘really very good +of them. We hardly know them, and I hadn’t meant to ask them. It is the +seventeenth pair of paste buckles, but they are pretty though not old, +and they come in for shoes. Who’s this? “Every good wish, Mr. Austin +Pryor.” What a beauty! It is the prettiest fan she has had; really +charming! What <i>can</i> this be? A pincushion! “Fondest love from Miss +Henrietta Massinger.” What rubbish. I wish people wouldn’t send all this +trash. Give me the green book on my writing-table, Sainty, and let’s +enter them before I forget it. Three more notes for that poor child to +write, and she’s tired out; any one can see it.’</p> + +<p>‘Lady Eccleston,’ said Sainty, ‘do you think Cissy’s <i>only</i> tired? To me +she seems very unhappy——’</p> + +<p>‘Tired, my dear boy, worn out; her nerves are in fiddle-strings; I shall +be thankful for her sake when it’s all over,’ and she murmured as she +wrote, ‘Pair of paste buckles, Mr. and Mrs. Bonham Trotter, 377. +Tortoiseshell fan,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_223">{223}</a></span> Watteau subject, Mr. Austin Pryor, 378. Embroidered +velvet horseshoe pincush——’</p> + +<p>‘Do stop writing a minute, and listen to me,’ said Sainty. ‘It’s your +daughter’s happiness that is at stake. Tell me, truly, do you think she +loves me?’</p> + +<p>‘Loves you! My dear Sainty, what a question! <i>Of course</i> she loves you,’ +cried Lady Eccleston. ‘Miss H. Massinger, No. 379,’ and she looked up +with a bright smile, as she rubbed energetically on the blotting-paper. +‘Have you been having a lovers’ quarrel?’ she asked.</p> + +<p>‘No, no, nothing of that sort; but you yourself must have seen how oddly +she behaves. She never will be alone with me for a minute if she can +help it; she hardly ever speaks to me, and if I speak to <i>her</i>, as often +as not she doesn’t answer me. It is the queerest way of showing love.’</p> + +<p>Lady Eccleston smiled again, a little indulgent smile full of <i>finesse</i>.</p> + +<p>‘My dear child,’ she said, ‘is <i>that</i> all? How little you know girls. +Can’t you understand that to a girl of Cissy’s temperament, so +absolutely pure and modest, marriage represents the unknown, the +terrible; the prospect of it fills her with a thousand tremors and +apprehensions. Believe me, a girl who can approach her wedding-day with +calm nerves and a cheerful, smiling face, is either a cow, and has no +sensibilities, or else she knows a great deal too much.’</p> + +<p>‘But she looks at me really as if she <i>hated</i> me,’ Sainty persisted. ‘If +she has mistaken her feelings, if the idea is repugnant to her, if she +feels that, having once given her word, she is bound, either out of +consideration for me, or fear of all the talk, to go through with +things, is it not our duty, yours and mine before all others, to save +her from herself while there is yet time?’</p> + +<p>‘Dear modest fellow! Every word you say makes me love you more, and +convinces me how exactly you are suited to such a nature as Cissy’s; I +see how well you will understand her; how patient, how gentle you will +be with her. As to her behaviour to <i>you</i>, I know; I feel for you a +dozen times<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_224">{224}</a></span> a day; but you must not doubt her affection. Good gracious! +I treated my poor dear husband a thousand times worse when we were +engaged. My mother used to say she didn’t see how he stood it; but the +dear man had endless patience; he never doubted; and he soon succeeded +in reconciling me to my fate,’ added the lady, with a modest simper, +‘when once we were married.’</p> + +<p>‘Maidenly tremors are all very well,’ said Sainty, ‘but Cissy’s +behaviour gives me the impression of a much deeper seated repugnance. +Don’t, for pity’s sake, let her wreck her life if she isn’t sure she +cares enough for me to marry me.’</p> + +<p>‘You are generous, considerate, unselfish as ever,’ cried Lady +Eccleston. ‘But trust <i>me</i> who know her so well. My dear Sainty, do you +suppose if I were not absolutely sure this marriage was for my child’s +happiness, that I, her mother, who must have her welfare at heart, +should not be the first to oppose it?’</p> + +<p>After that there seemed nothing more to be said. Still Sainty was not +satisfied, and he determined to carry his perplexities to his uncle, on +whose sterling commonsense he had often leaned comfortably in boyhood.</p> + +<p>Lord Firth looked grave, and pursed up his mouth judicially.</p> + +<p>‘This is awkward,’ he said, ‘infernally awkward. Do you mean to say you +want to get out of it?’</p> + +<p>‘Oh no! not for myself at all. I don’t say I’m desperately in love; but +I don’t know that I ever should be. As long as I thought Cissy cared for +me, I was very much honoured, and ready to devote my life to making her +happy; but as the time comes nearer, I am more and more convinced that +she does not love me. She may have felt sorry for me; she may have let +herself be dazzled by what she would gain in a worldly way. I don’t +pretend to understand why she took me; but I am sure that she repents +what she has done, that, if it could be managed for her, she would be +glad to be released.’</p> + +<p>‘Have you told her so? Have you offered to release her?’</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_225">{225}</a></span></p> + +<p>‘Yes.’</p> + +<p>‘Well, what did she say?’</p> + +<p>‘She said nothing. When I pressed her she said she didn’t know what she +wanted. Then her mother came in, and Cissy went out of the room.’</p> + +<p>‘Did you say anything about it to the old woman?’</p> + +<p>‘Yes; I said what I’ve just told you.’</p> + +<p>‘And what did <i>she</i> say?’</p> + +<p>‘Oh, she said girls were always like that, that I didn’t understand +them—which God knows I don’t—that a modest girl was always in a funk +before marriage, and that she would be all right afterwards.’</p> + +<p>‘Hm,’ said Lord Firth. ‘Well, I’m an old bachelor, and don’t know much +about them either; they’re queer creatures. I always vaguely distrust +that Eccleston woman; but I’ve no reason for supposing she would sell +her daughter, and I must say the girl never struck me as being +particularly under her mother’s thumb. On the contrary, she’s always +been rather pert to her when I’ve seen her.’</p> + +<p>‘I can’t make it out; it all seems a hopeless tangle,’ said poor Sainty.</p> + +<p>‘The whole business struck me, when I heard of it, as being rather rash +and ill-advised,’ said his uncle. ‘If I had been consulted, I should +have suggested you had better both have been a little surer of your own +feelings before announcing the engagement. I suspected your mother and +Lady Eccleston of cooking up the affair when I heard of the Ecclestons +being so much at Belchamber, but I didn’t feel called upon to interfere. +It was obviously desirable that you should marry, and if you fancied +Miss Cissy, I knew nothing against the girl, though I don’t much care +for the mother. Besides, you are of age, and capable of arranging your +own life without the interference of a guardian.’</p> + +<p>‘Then you think there is nothing to be done?’</p> + +<p>‘I don’t see what. You say you’ve offered the girl to break it off, and +she didn’t seem to wish it, or at least wasn’t sure, and that her mother +assured you she was only shy.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_226">{226}</a></span> What more can you do? If <i>you</i> want to +back out, it’s another matter. Though it would look very bad so near the +time, I suppose it might be done.’</p> + +<p>As a last resort, Sainty wrote to his mother, though he felt sure what +her answer would be; and sure enough Lady Charmington wrote with no +uncertain pen. ‘If you had any misgivings you had better not have been +in such a hurry to propose. Now it is altogether too late to go back on +your word. I consider that you are bound in honour almost as if you were +already married. It would be abominable to throw the girl over at the +eleventh hour, when she has got her things, and all the invitations are +out for the wedding. Think of the mortification to her, of the scandal +it would cause. People might even say you had found out something +against her. It would be enough to prevent her making another match, for +every one would know of it, and talk about it.’</p> + +<p>Sainty was struck for the hundredth time with the inevitability of his +mother’s misapprehension. She passed over in silence all question of +Cissy not caring for him, which was the one point on which he had +insisted, and instantly assumed that his misgivings arose from nothing +but the fatal weakness of his character, which made flight his one +impulse in face of any decisive act.</p> + +<p>Sainty had made his last effort, and proceeded to drift resignedly with +the stream. There was just one other person to whom he had momentarily +thought of applying for counsel and help, and that was his old friend +Mrs. de Lissac; but Alice had behaved rather strangely, he thought, +about the whole matter. On first coming to London, he had gone to see +her as a matter of course; but though she had made a grand dinner for +him and Cissy in honour of the engagement, and had showered magnificent +presents on them both, the old cordial welcome was somehow lacking. She +seemed ill at ease with him, and had fluttered hastily away from all +attempts on his part to talk about Cissy, displaying positive terror if +he showed any disposition to become confidential.</p> + +<p>Nothing was easier than to discourage Sainty from talking<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_227">{227}</a></span> about +himself. If his confidences were not met, as Alice de Lissac had always +hitherto met them, more than half-way, they died a natural death.</p> + +<p>The day of Belchamber’s nuptials dawned inevitably in its turn. No +convulsion of nature destroyed Lord Firth’s comfortable bachelor +quarters, or buried the north side of Chester Square in ruins. Sainty +got through the morning somehow, in a sort of waking dream, listening +abstractedly to Gerald Newby, who had come up from Cambridge at his +request to act as his ‘best man,’ and had much to say on many subjects, +from the marriage-service of the Church of England—of some parts of +which he strongly disapproved—to the tyranny of custom which imposed +the high hat and frock coat, garments neither comfortable, convenient, +nor æsthetically beautiful.</p> + +<p>Lady Charmington, who was staying at Roehampton with old Lady Firth, +brought her mother in for an early lunch as the wedding was fixed for +half-past two.</p> + +<p>At the appointed time Sainty found himself planted by a great bank of +palms and heavy-scented white flowers that made him feel sick. From +where he stood the whole great church was visible. Dimly, as through a +mist, he could descry his mother, straight and stern, in puritanical +drab, beside the huddled white chuddah and nodding plumes of his +grandmother, the duchess strapped into a petunia velvet, with a silver +bonnet whose aigrette seemed to sweep the skies, his Aunt Eva in a +Gainsborough hat, taking rapid notes for the <i>Looking-glass</i>, and +Claude, slim, cool, and elegant, his beautifully gloved, pearl-grey +hands crossed upon his cane, which he had rested on the seat beside him +as he stood sideways looking for the bride. Behind them a sea of faces, +mostly unknown, of light colours and black coats, of feathers, flowers, +and laces, stretched back to where, in a cloud of pink and white, the +bridesmaids clustered round the door, holding the great bouquets of +roses he had so nearly forgotten to order for them.</p> + +<p>The organ boomed, and the knowing-looking little choristers<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_228">{228}</a></span> in their +stiff surplices went clattering down the aisle followed by a perfect +procession of smug ecclesiastics, among whom Sainty caught a fleeting +glimpse of dear old Meakins from Great Charmington. Lady Eccleston, +emotional, devotional, and gorgeous as the morning, rustled hastily to +her place in the front pew where George and Randolph were already +nudging each other and giggling. Then the little white-robed boys began +to come back, shrilly chanting, and as the choir separated to right and +left Sainty could see Tommy, very solemn and as red as the carnation in +his buttonhole, and on his arm a vision of soft shrouded loveliness, +coming slowly towards him. All the riddle of the future was hid in that +veiled figure. How little he really knew what was in the little head and +heart under all that whiteness; was it happiness or misery she was +bringing him? an honoured, dignified married life, an equal share of +joys and sorrows, ‘the children like the olive branches round about +their table’? or a loveless existence, the straining bonds of those +unequally yoked, the little sordid daily squabbles that eat the heart, +perhaps even shame, dishonour ...? What thoughts for a bridegroom +stepping forward to meet his bride at the altar! But who is master of +his thoughts?</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_229">{229}</a></span></p> + +<h2><a id="CHAPTER_XVII">CHAPTER XVII</a></h2> + +<p class="nind"><span class="smcap">The</span> Duke of Sunborough having only a castle in Scotland, a palace in the +Midlands, a detached house with a garden in the centre of London, a +shooting-lodge in the north of England, and an old manor-house on the +border of Wales, had acquired in his stormy youth a little place in +Surrey some twelve or fifteen miles from town, a villa with terraces and +cedar-trees and hothouses and shady lawns sloping to the river, where, +if Rumour may be credited, there had sometimes been fine goings-on, but +which was now only used on rare occasions for what it has become the +fashion to call ‘week-end parties.’</p> + +<p>This modest retreat, which would have seemed to most people a good-sized +country-house, had been lent to the young couple for their honeymoon, +and thither they repaired, for greater state and privacy, in a large +closed carriage with four horses and postillions, their two new +dressing-bags sitting solemnly opposite to them on the back seat, while +the servants and luggage went by train.</p> + +<p>Cissy, attired in the latest fashion and the palest hues, with a very +white face and very red eyes and nose, sat huddled in one corner and +stared out of the window, occasionally dabbing her features with a +little damp ball of a pocket-handkerchief. From the other end of the +long seat, on which a third person could easily have found room between +the little bride and bridegroom, Sainty watched her compassionately. He +contrasted the woebegone aspect and silent aloofness of his companion +with the cheerful garrulity of the same young lady when she had driven +about the country with him only a few months before. Then, had she +seemed depressed or unhappy, he would not have hesitated to ask the<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_230">{230}</a></span> +cause of her melancholy, to offer help or at least consolation. Why, +now, was he afraid to attempt to comfort or even to make a movement +towards her? The explanation seemed a strange one: then she had been an +acquaintance, now she was his wife. His wife! The words struck with a +certain irony on his startled consciousness. It was that half-hour in +church which was to make them ‘one flesh’ which had thrust them so far +asunder.</p> + +<p>At last the silence became unendurable.</p> + +<p>‘Cissy,’ he said suddenly, ‘are you very miserable?’</p> + +<p>His voice breaking in on the monotonous sounds of their progress +startled himself hardly less than his companion.</p> + +<p>Cissy shook herself and raised her head.</p> + +<p>‘Yes,’ she said defiantly, without looking round.</p> + +<p>‘Because of me?’</p> + +<p>‘Yes—because of you.’</p> + +<p>‘Why, what have I done?’ There was a relief in speech. If she would only +talk, no matter what she said; she might abuse him, accuse him—anything +was better than that horrible mute damp woe. But Cissy would not answer.</p> + +<p>‘Won’t you tell me how I have offended you? What have I done that you +don’t like?’</p> + +<p>‘You’ve married me,’ she snapped at him.</p> + +<p>‘Isn’t that a little unjust?’</p> + +<p>‘Most likely it is, horribly unjust. I don’t care if it is. I hate +myself and you and everybody, and I wish I was dead.’</p> + +<p>‘Cissy, Cissy,’ cried Sainty, dreadfully pained, ‘don’t say such +things.’</p> + +<p>‘Then why did you ask me?’ she retorted; ‘why can’t you let me alone?’</p> + +<p>Sainty told himself that if there was ever a moment for patience it was +now; so much might depend on what he said next. He made a motion as +though he would take her hand, but at that there flashed out of her face +a look so evil, such a genuine naked horror as civilisation seldom lets +us show. Sainty fell back appalled; he felt that he had seen in her eyes +the very bottom of her feeling towards him, and viewed<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_231">{231}</a></span> in the light of +that revelation the whole hopelessness of their future relations stood +momentarily clear before him. He lay back dazed and frightened, thankful +as a man to whom lightning has shown the danger of his surroundings for +the friendly darkness that once more veils them from his sight; and for +the rest of the drive neither occupant of the carriage said a word.</p> + +<p>When at last they drew up at their destination the house was on Cissy’s +side, and as soon as a bowing servant had opened the carriage-door she +jumped out before Sainty could offer her any assistance. A little shower +of rice that had lodged in the folds of her gown fell pattering from her +in the precipitancy of her flight, which caused a discreet grin on the +damp, red faces of the postillions and of the duke’s under-butler, who +had been sent down to help Sainty’s valet with the service.</p> + +<p>Belchamber caught a glimpse of an inscription framed in laurel leaves +stretched across the lintel, of which all that was clear to him were the +words ‘happy pair,’ as he followed his bride into the hall. Here the +women who had charge of the house were drawn up together with Cissy’s +new maid and his own valet.</p> + +<p>The housekeeper had embarked on a little speech, evidently prepared with +care. ‘May I be permitted,’ she was saying, ‘on behalf of myself and +fellow-servants, to welcome your ladyship on this auspicious occasion, +and to wish you and the marquis every happiness, and I am sure we shall +do our very best to make you comfortable, and his lordship too.’ Seeing +that Cissy stared at the woman with a dull eye, Sainty came to the +rescue.</p> + +<p>‘I am sure we are both very much obliged to you all,’ he said, ‘but Lady +Belchamber is very tired, and would be glad to see her room, if you will +show it to her.’ Cissy started at the sound of her new name in the mouth +of her husband, but moved off in the wake of the housekeeper, who had +dropped from the monumental tone of her welcome into a more comfortable +colloquialism. ‘I am sure your ladyship <i>must</i><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_232">{232}</a></span> be tired—it’s a most +trying day; and you’ll like to see your room, and would you like a cup +of tea or anything after your long drive? Dinner isn’t ordered till +eight, and it’s only half-past six. Tea is set out in the morning-room, +but it will be quite easy to bring it up to you. I have tried to think +of everything, but, of course, anything your ladyship wishes +altered....’ Sainty heard her voice growing fainter down the corridor as +Cissy and the maid followed her to the staircase. He watched the little +procession out of sight and then turned wearily into the first room he +came to and dropped with a long sigh upon the gaudy chintz flowers of a +comfortable easy-chair. For him, too, the day had been ‘trying’ in more +ways than one.</p> + +<p>His man brought him a cup of tea and said that ‘her ladyship’ was having +hers in her room and was going to rest till dinner-time. He had not yet +been four hours wedded, and he noted with shocked surprise the distinct +relief with which he hailed the prospect of being free for a little from +the strain of his wife’s presence. Four hours! The morning seemed a +hundred years ago! For the rest of his natural life had he got always to +face this mute resentment? And for what? He had not forced her to marry +him; indeed he had adjured her not to. It was unheard of that she should +treat him as a criminal; he examined his conscience and found that so +far from having anything with which to reproach himself, he had behaved +to her throughout with the most scrupulous consideration. Could Lady +Eccleston be right, and might Cissy’s behaviour be nothing but the +natural nervousness of a modest young woman? Were girls always so +terrified in presence of the bridal mysteries? If that were all, she +might count on his perfect sympathy. No girl could be more of a stranger +to all that side of life than he, or approach it with more invincible +shyness. In all their talks it had seemed to him that the balance of +true modesty had been rather on his side than hers; he had often been +shocked by things she had said, but he could recollect no occasion on +which any remark of his had appeared to embarrass her in the least.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_233">{233}</a></span></p> + +<p>Tired nature must have come to rescue him from his many perplexities, +for he was recalled to consciousness from a doze by the clock striking a +half-hour, and finding it was half-past seven, he decided to go upstairs +and get ready for dinner. He had no difficulty in finding his room. +Through almost the first door on the upper landing he saw his new +brushes adorning the dressing-table, his clothes laid out upon the bed. +As he turned in, he noticed the sharp click of a key in another door +from that by which he had entered, and which evidently communicated with +the next room, for behind it he could hear sounds of people moving +about, the opening and shutting of drawers and cupboards, and +occasionally Cissy’s voice speaking to her maid. That he heard all these +sounds but indistinctly was presently explained to him. Having changed +his clothes he tapped discreetly, and receiving no answer proceeded to +turn the handle; to his pleasure it yielded; he had been mistaken then; +she had not the distrust of him he had fancied. But his gratification +was shortlived; there were double doors between the rooms, and the inner +one was quite securely fastened.</p> + +<p>‘Who’s there?’ cried Cissy sharply.</p> + +<p>‘I hope you’re rested,’ Sainty called in a voice which he tried to make +pleasantly indifferent; ‘I’m going down, shall I tell them to get +dinner, or are you not ready?’</p> + +<p>‘I’ll be down in a minute. Don’t wait for me,’ she called back, but made +no offer to undo the door.</p> + +<p>Dinner was not a cheerful meal, when presently Cissy appeared in a smart +new tea-gown, and took her place opposite to him. She crumpled her bread +and drank a great deal of water, and played with the wine-glasses and +her rings and the lace upon her dress. The meal passed almost in +silence, the two men gliding softly about and handing the dishes. Cissy +ate nothing, and Sainty felt obliged to break and taste a long +succession of undesired meats.</p> + +<p>‘They have given us much too much,’ he said. ‘We must tell that good +lady to-morrow that we don’t want all these things.’</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_234">{234}</a></span></p> + +<p>Cissy assented indifferently.</p> + +<p>‘You’re not eating anything,’ Sainty said, after a pause.</p> + +<p>‘I’m not hungry. I had tea so late.’</p> + +<p>Sainty found himself talking to the servants, and asking for things he +did not want, to break the oppressiveness of the atmosphere.</p> + +<p>If Cissy ate nothing while the servants were present, she made up for it +when they had left the room, by piling a whole dish of strawberries on +her plate, covering them with cream, and eating them voraciously. Sainty +watched her uneasily, with a sudden dread that she might be going mad.</p> + +<p>Things were not much more lively after dinner. The smiling housekeeper +had explained that she had not had the drawing-room lit up as she +thought they would be more ‘cosy’ in the ‘boodwar.’ Cissy sank deep in a +big armchair, and appeared to be immersed in a novel she had brought +with her. Sainty tried to read too, but his attention wandered; his eyes +fell first on his companion, the swirl of diaphanous drapery that +escaped from the arms of her chair and flowed out upon the floor like +water between the piers of a bridge, the little foot in its bead-wrought +slipper, the hands flashing with new rings that held the gaudy +book-cover like a shield between her face and him. From her they roved +to her surroundings. The room in which they sat had been decorated about +the year 1860 by Italian artists. Trellised grape vines were painted on +the walls, mixed with roses and large blue flowers of the convolvulus +family. Birds of gay plumage and highly imaginative butterflies were +sprinkled about them, and here and there a plump cupid in a pink +loincloth stood poised on one foot among the foliage, swinging a basket +of flowers. Cupids, indeed, were everywhere; several of them floated +round a hook in the sky-coloured ceiling, and made believe that it was +not it, but they, who supported the glass chandelier. They crawled in +white marble all over the bulging sides of the low flamboyant +mantelpiece. On the French clock above it, a gilt Eros perpetually +clasped his Psyche, while from the console between the elaborately<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_235">{235}</a></span> +draped windows, a biscuit representation of the same divinity held his +finger discreetly to his lips.</p> + +<p>The note of old-fashioned gaiety which is somehow lacking in our more +correct modern apartments seemed specially to fit the place to be the +frame of love. Its amoretti and impossible flowers, its white marble and +gilding and pale silks, suggested accustomed complicity. In presence of +what human kisses had those little ormolu lovers continued their +indifferent embraces? What scenes of passion had been multiplied in +endless reproduction by those tall opposing mirrors? Perhaps in that +very room, Sainty thought, his grandmother might have been tempted +towards the breaking of those same vows he had that day taken on +himself. He came on her portrait presently in a book of beauty, bound +with much tooling in faded crimson calf, which he was idly turning over +on the red velvet centre-table. He took it over and showed it to Cissy.</p> + +<p>‘Look at grandmamma,’ he said; ‘wasn’t she beautiful?’</p> + +<p>Cissy took the picture and stared at it with no answering smile. It +seemed to have a curious fascination for her. ‘How like!’ she murmured. +‘How very like!’</p> + +<p>‘Oh! come,’ said Sainty, glad to get her to talk about anything. ‘I +can’t say I think her grace looks much like that nowadays.’</p> + +<p>‘I didn’t mean that it was like the duchess,’ said Cissy with a +hysterical gulp. ‘But don’t you see the extraordinary likeness to Cl—— +to your cousin Mr. Morland?’</p> + +<p>Sainty could not have explained why the sudden mention of Claude was +displeasing to him.</p> + +<p>‘He is thought like our grandmother,’ he said shortly, ‘but he is not +nearly so good-looking; the duchess was a great beauty in her youth.’</p> + +<p>Cissy did not discuss the question, but she kept the book absently in +her lap, and when Sainty had returned to his reading, he could see her +turning the pages.</p> + +<p>As the long hours wore away, Belchamber became intolerably weary, and he +suspected Cissy of being not less so; but<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_236">{236}</a></span> when taxed with fatigue, she +eagerly repudiated the idea, and professed a tremendous interest in her +book. ‘I <i>must</i> see how it is going to come out,’ she said; ‘it’s +awfully exciting.’</p> + +<p>Sainty ached all over, but he could not insist. He returned to his own +reading, which he found less stimulating than Cissy seemed to find hers. +After a while he noticed that she had moved into a harder and more +upright chair. She was struggling against sleep; in half an hour she had +not turned a page of the work she found so enthralling. Finally, towards +midnight, he saw the book waving to and fro, the fair head bowed almost +down on it. He went softly over to her, and touched her. With a cry she +started to her feet; the book fell on the floor with a bang.</p> + +<p>‘You must go to bed, Cissy,’ Sainty said kindly; ‘you’re dropping with +sleep.’</p> + +<p>‘I’m not tired; I’m not sleepy,’ she cried. ‘I must finish this—it’s so +interesting.’</p> + +<p>‘Nonsense. I’ve been watching you; you haven’t read a page in half an +hour; you can’t keep your eyes open.’</p> + +<p>Her eyes were open enough now, wide and strange, like those of a hunted +animal. She made a gesture with her hands as though to thrust him back. +‘I can’t—I won’t,’ she panted. ‘You shan’t make me. Keep away. Don’t +touch me.’</p> + +<p>‘My poor child,’ Sainty said, ‘what are you afraid of? Do you think I +would do anything you don’t like? You can’t sit up all night. You are +dead tired, and must have rest. I won’t come near you, if you don’t wish +it.’</p> + +<p>She looked at him but half reassured. ‘Do you mean it?’ she said +doubtfully. ‘Can I trust you?’</p> + +<p>‘I am not accustomed to lie,’ Sainty answered. ‘Do you think I would +take advantage of you by a shabby trick?’</p> + +<p>She sighed, and half turned away, then suddenly faced him again. ‘It is +not enough,’ she cried. ‘It is not only to-night. You may as well know +it first as last. You are odious to me—horrible. <span class="pagenum"><a id="page_237">{237}</a></span>I can +never—never——’</p> + +<p>‘Hush, hush!’ Sainty interrupted her. ‘Take care what you say. You are +tired, excited, overwrought. So am I. Go to bed now, in God’s name. You +know you have nothing to fear. We will talk of this some other time, +calmly if we can, but not to-night, not to-night.’</p> + +<p>‘Yes, now, to-night,’ she insisted. ‘Why put it off? It’s got to be +faced, and why not at once? I tell you you are repulsive to me. I can +never be your wife in anything but name. I thought I could, but when it +comes to the point, I can’t do it. It’s stronger than me. It’s no use.’ +She spread her hands with the gesture of one who renounces a struggle. +On her finger blazed the ring he had given her, and below it shone the +plain gold hoop which he had placed there that morning, the outward and +visible sign of the obligation she was repudiating.</p> + +<p>Sainty staggered as though she had struck him in the face. ‘I don’t +understand,’ he whispered. ‘If you feel like this towards me, if I am +repulsive, loathsome to you, why did you marry me?’</p> + +<p>‘Oh, it’s simple enough,’ she answered, with a little cruel laugh. ‘You +had so many things that I have always wanted, money, position, rank, +everything I have been brought up to think desirable. Since I can +remember, not a girl has been married among our friends that the first +question has not been, was she making a “good” marriage? which meant, +was she getting a big enough share of all these things in exchange for +herself? No one could say I wasn’t. I’ve made the match of the season. +There isn’t a girl I know, or a mother, who isn’t green with envy of me. +You can’t say it wasn’t a temptation.’ And she laughed again +hysterically.</p> + +<p>‘But feeling as you did about me, as you must before the end have known +you felt, why in heaven’s name didn’t you turn back, when I gave you the +chance, before it was too late?’</p> + +<p>‘Do you think I was allowed a minute to think? Wasn’t my mother there +every minute of the day? At the very time you speak of, wasn’t she +listening at the door, and didn’t she<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_238">{238}</a></span> come hurrying in before I’d time +to answer? If for a moment I ever forgot the title, and the money, and +the jewels, the big house, all the things I’d set my heart on, she was +always ready to talk about them, to dangle them before me. If I ever +wavered, she would tell me what a slur it was on a girl whose engagement +was broken off, how no one would ever believe I had given up all these +things of my own free will, how people would say there was something +against me, and how I should never marry. There wasn’t an oldish poor +girl we knew, losing her looks, and still tagging about to balls, and +trying to pretend she was cheerful, that she didn’t remind me of. Never +directly, mind you. They were just casually mentioned. O Lord! if I so +much as suggested to her that she wanted me to marry for money, she was +all virtuous indignation.’</p> + +<p>‘How ghastly!’ Sainty whispered in horror. ‘I’ve read of such things, of +mothers selling their daughters, bullying them into marrying men they +couldn’t love for the sake of an establishment; but I’ve always thought +it was exaggerated, not true to life. I didn’t think a mother <i>could</i> +condemn her own child to lifelong misery.’</p> + +<p>‘Oh, you mustn’t be too hard on mamma,’ Cissy said. ‘She thought she was +doing the best thing for me. Remember she has the very highest opinion +of you, and was quite sure you would make an excellent husband; and she +knew how much I wanted all the other things. If marriage were nothing +but that, nothing but living in the house with a person who was +good-natured and never interfered with one, and provided all the good +things of life for one, it would be well enough. That is what every one +in England always talks to girls as if it were. Mamma would have thought +it most indelicate to suggest there was another side. You are made to +forget that as much as possible. Oh, of course I <i>knew</i>, because I’m not +a fool, and girls are not such ninnies as people think them; but I tried +to forget, and when I didn’t see you, I <i>did</i> forget. That was why, when +I did see you, I was always so beastly to you; for I’m quite ready to +admit I <i>was</i> beastly to you.’</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_239">{239}</a></span></p> + +<p>As Cissy’s terror abated, her engaging frankness began to return to her. +Sainty couldn’t help liking her for it. He began to be so full of +sympathy with her point of view, so sorry for all she must have +suffered, that he almost forgot the cruel wrong she had done him.</p> + +<p>‘Mamma knew I should never be happy with a poor man,’ she went on. ‘She +knew how I cared for all the things you could give me. She was quite +right, I <i>did</i> want them; I wanted them awfully; I want them still as +much as ever: only when it comes to the point I can’t give the price. I +thought I could, but I can’t. Mamma was so far honester than me. She +never supposed that once the bargain was made I should hesitate to pay. +It’s so like me to want things dreadfully, and not to have the courage +to do what’s necessary to get them.’</p> + +<p>Sainty was appalled by her cynicism, even while he admired her +straightforwardness. What became of his dreams of romance, of the eye +that had seen beneath his unattractive exterior, and loved him for the +beauties of his soul? The blue eyes had seen nothing but the sparkling +of diamonds. In her vision of married life he had been only the +necessary evil, the odious, inevitable condition to which she must +submit, if she would have his name and money, as the princess in the +story had to kiss the swineherd to get possession of the toys she +coveted. Still the princess <i>had</i> kissed the herd, and even after all +that she had said he thought he would make one last appeal to her. If +she realised how much he felt for her, how entirely he understood her +unwillingness, how patient, how gentle he was ready to be, perhaps she +might be touched, might learn to think of him with something less of +horror. To him who had all his life wished for nothing but to make other +people happy, it was intolerable to think of himself as the brutal +gaoler, the tyrant before whom this young thing paled with terror.</p> + +<p>In the eagerness of her explanation, Cissy had come nearer to him. They +were standing quite close together, face to face. ‘Cissy,’ he said +gently, ‘is it quite, quite impossible?<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_240">{240}</a></span> Do you think that if we lived +together for a long time, you might in the end get used to me, even come +to care for me a little?’ But at that she sprang back from him again +with an unmistakable gesture of repugnance that said more than words. +‘No, no, no—never,’ she cried hurriedly. ‘I’ve told you it’s no good. I +can’t help it, my mind’s made up. I’d rather give up everything, face +anything, for of course I can’t expect you to keep me. You can send me +back to my mother. Life’ll be hell upon earth, but it’ll be better than +<i>that</i>.’</p> + +<p>With all his desire to be fair to her, Sainty could not but be struck by +her intense egotism, her inability to appreciate any point of view but +her own. She was evidently unaware of the brutality of her attitude +towards him. To his morbid self-depreciation her undisguised horror of +him appeared only too natural. Still, no one likes to be told these +things quite so bluntly.</p> + +<p>‘You have nothing to fear,’ he said a little loftily. ‘After what you +have said, you may be sure I shall never ask the smallest thing of you. +It is a little unfortunate that you didn’t make up your mind rather +earlier, as you have made it up so irrevocably now. Had you but been as +sure of your feelings a month, a week, even twenty-four hours ago, you +might have saved us both from what I hardly dare look forward to.’</p> + +<p>‘I can go home; I had better go home,’ Cissy whimpered. Of course the +sight of distress melted Sainty at once.</p> + +<p>‘Don’t you see,’ he said, ‘that to go home now would make just five +hundred times the talk and scandal that you felt you couldn’t face if +you had broken off your engagement?’</p> + +<p>‘It can’t be helped,’ Cissy sobbed.</p> + +<p>‘You have brought us both into a horrible situation,’ Sainty answered, +‘and I frankly don’t see just now what is best to be done; but I’m sure +that further talk will do no good just now. It is long past twelve +o’clock, and we are both tired out; you can’t go back to Chester Square +to-night,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_241">{241}</a></span> if you want to ever so much. If I were you I shouldn’t get up +to breakfast. Good-night.’</p> + +<p>Some compunction seemed to seize Cissy as she got to the door. She +turned. ‘I’m awfully sorry, you know,’ she said. ‘I suppose, when you +come to think of it, I haven’t treated you any too well; and—and—of +course what I said wasn’t very civil, but I thought it best to be +honest——’</p> + +<p>‘All right, all right,’ Sainty answered hastily; ‘please don’t say any +more about it.’</p> + +<p>As he lay sleepless and uncomfortable on his lonely bed, he wished that +the necessity for honest dealing had impressed itself on his wife a +little sooner. He thought of the night three years before, when he had +lain awake (as he lay now) listening to the sounds that celebrated his +coming of age. Somehow the great festal days of his life did not seem to +bring him personally much enjoyment.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_242">{242}</a></span></p> + +<h2><a id="CHAPTER_XVIII">CHAPTER XVIII</a></h2> + +<p class="nind"><span class="smcap">The</span> Belchambers took possession of their new town-house just in time for +the opening of Parliament in the ensuing year. It was only partially +furnished as yet, and most uncomfortable; but, as Lady Eccleston +remarked with great originality, ‘the only way to get the workmen out of +a house was to move in yourself.’ The first-floor rooms still echoed +with shouts and hammerings, but the upper part of the house was more or +less ready, and so were the dining-room and some back rooms on the +ground-floor, which Cissy had reluctantly decided should eventually be +given up to Sainty. It was astonishing how swiftly she had</p> + +<div class="poetry"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">‘Shaped her heart with woman’s meekness<br></span> +<span class="i1">To all duties of her rank,’<br></span> +</div></div> +</div> + +<p class="nind">except the vulgar and obvious one which she would have shared with the +humblest of wives. Having once made it quite clear that she was to +receive everything and give nothing, she soon ceased to talk of +returning to her mother, and Sainty was amazed at the ease with which +she adapted herself to the awkwardness of the situation. In her place, +he felt sure, he would not have rung a bell, or asked for a postage +stamp, but it never seemed to occur to Cissy that there was anything +curious in the arrangement; she annexed all her husband’s possessions +without scruple or hesitation as soon as she discovered that no +embarrassing condition attached to doing so.</p> + +<p>In spite of her son’s entreaties that she would stay with them, Lady +Charmington had retired to the dower-house immediately after the +marriage, and they had barely returned<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_243">{243}</a></span> from their brief and dismal +honeymoon in the duke’s villa before Cissy began to dispose of +everything at Belchamber as if it had all been hers from earliest +childhood. There had been some talk of a wedding-journey on the +Continent, but Cissy had no desire to prolong the <i>tête-à-tête</i> with +Sainty, which she did not enjoy. It was England, which she knew and +understood, that was to be the scene of her triumphs; and the sight of +strange lands had no charms for her compared to the fun of swooping down +as mistress on the great house, where she had been an unconsidered +little guest, settling which should be her own rooms, having them +redecorated according to the taste of the latest fashionable +upholsterer, and moving into them whatever took her fancy in other parts +of the house.</p> + +<p>She was so happily busy that she almost forgot to regret the Season, and +gave up Ascot without a sigh, contenting herself with Cowes and +Goodwood, which she did with great <i>éclat</i> from a friend’s yacht, while +Sainty enjoyed a fortnight of peace and seclusion.</p> + +<p>Congenial as she found the task of establishing herself in her husband’s +ancestral home, it was nothing to the delirious enjoyment of selecting, +decorating, and furnishing a big London house, regardless of expense; +and all the time she could spare from entertaining shooting parties in +the autumn was devoted to the feverish prosecution of this new delight.</p> + +<p>Of course every one agreed that they must have a town-house. The duke +and Lord Firth were not less convinced of its necessity than the large +circle of acquaintances who hoped to be entertained in it. Even Lady +Charmington, while she winced at the recklessness of the expenditure, +was partly consoled by the sight of her son taking what she considered +‘his proper position in the world.’ She consoled herself with the +thought that it was her long years of careful management that made all +this profusion possible. Sainty must attend the debates in the House of +Lords, and though she was rather scandalised by his Radicalism, she +reflected that the limited number of peers on that side, since the<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_244">{244}</a></span> Home +Rule split, made some small office not improbable for him, when the +Liberals came in again.</p> + +<p>And Sainty, though he cared for none of these things, had no heart to +refuse them to the girl whom he had married. The fact was that the more +he thought about the matter the sorrier he felt for his wife. For his +part, he told himself, he was not made for love, had never expected it +to play any part in his life, and was no worse off than he was before. +The disadvantage of taking a consistently humble view of one’s own +attractions is not without its compensations; thus the wound to his +self-love, of which a vain man would almost have bled to death, was to +Sainty, who had no vanity and very little self-love, only in the nature +of those scratches which smart and feel sore, but rob us of no drop of +heart’s blood. Life was not perceptibly more unpleasant to him than it +had been before, and he had still the same substitutes for a more active +happiness with which he had been accustomed to fill it, his studies, his +schemes of beneficence, the management of his property. But this poor +child, so well fitted by nature to love and be loved, whose one chance +of rising above the empty frivolity of her surroundings might have lain +in the ennobling influence of a great passion, for something how much +less satisfying than a mess of pottage had she bartered her birthright, +a handful of tin counters, a paper crown! In spite of what he considered +her generosity in taking the blame on herself, he was more and more +inclined to regard her as the victim of her mother’s worldliness, +enmeshed like himself in the toils of that careful schemer. It was not +in nature that a creature so young and fresh should be so greatly +influenced by considerations of wealth or rank; he could not think it. +These things had been dangled before her eyes till she had been dazzled +by their false lustre. She was too innocent, he reflected, to realise to +what extent she had sacrificed all chances of woman’s best happiness to +gain them. The question was how to shield her from the consequences of +her own act, to save her from the bitter repentance only too likely to<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_245">{245}</a></span> +follow. To do so might not be permanently in his power; but meanwhile, +if she so keenly desired the undesirable as to be ready to risk the ruin +of her life for it, what was simpler than to give it to her? Jewels, +clothes, a house in town, the means to feed the thankless rich, the +power to walk out of the room before older women—if these things could +make her happy, as far as they were his to give, let her take them in +full measure. They were freely hers. He had no particular use for them +himself.</p> + +<p>Perhaps the spectacle of the ease and gusto with which she flung herself +into her new <i>rôle</i> of the great lady was not without a certain satiric +amusement for him.</p> + +<p>One day he would find her on the pavement before the house, attended by +Algy Montgomery and a grave professional gentleman who looked the ideal +of a racing duke, while a pair of high-stepping bays were driven up and +down for her inspection. ‘Haven’t we more horses than we know what to do +with?’ Sainty would ask.</p> + +<p>‘My dear boy!’ Cissy cried, ‘a parcel of old screws. Jane Rugby was +saying only the other day that we hadn’t a decent pair o’ horses in the +stable.’</p> + +<p>On another, she would be busy comparing designs for carriages. ‘Those +old bathing-machines at Belchamber,’ she remarked loftily, ‘are all very +well for the country; but in my position it would be too grotesque for +me to be seen driving about London in them. The duchess has been awfully +kind about advising me. It was her idea to send for the old chariot and +see if it can’t be done up for drawing-rooms. She says unless it has got +dry-rot or anything, that a couple of hundreds spent on it ought to make +it as good as new; and of course I don’t want to waste money on a +tiresome thing one would never use on other occasions, if by spending a +little on the old one it can be made to do. But I <i>must</i> have a decent +brougham and open carriage at once; you must see yourself there are no +two ways about it. And, come to think of it, you ought to have a +brougham of your own. We are sure to clash and want it at the same time, +if we try and do with one.’</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_246">{246}</a></span></p> + +<p>‘Perhaps one of the bathing-machines from Belchamber might do for <i>me</i>,’ +suggested Sainty, not without malice.</p> + +<p>‘Well,’ said Cissy quite gravely, ‘I don’t know that it mightn’t.’</p> + +<p>‘Who told you of these people?’ Sainty asked, examining the neatly +painted little pictures.</p> + +<p>‘Oh, they make all the duke’s carriages, and <i>they</i> are always smartly +turned out. Your cousin Claude told them to send me these sketches, and +he has promised to go with me to Longacre to see what they have in the +shop.’</p> + +<p>Since she married, Cissy had ceased to mention Claude as ‘Mr. Morland,’ +and the prefix ‘your cousin’ was bridging the narrow chasm between that +and calling him ‘Claude.’ Morland was able to be uncommonly useful to +the pretty new cousin; not only at the coachbuilder’s were his taste and +knowledge invaluable, but at the upholsterer’s, the <i>bric-à-brac</i> shops, +the sales at Christy’s, and he had even been called on to give his views +(and very sound views too) in the more intimate province of the modiste +and the dressmaker. Sainty was obviously of no assistance. What could be +more natural, if the lady needed counsel in such matters, than to turn +to a near kinsman of her husband, and one so well qualified to help? It +is true that Lady Eccleston was more than ready to assist her daughter +in mounting her establishment on a suitable scale, and would very +willingly have accompanied her to the shops, not, perhaps, without a +hope of gleaning a few scattered ears on her own account from the +harvest Cecilia was reaping with so large a hook; but that unnatural +young person seemed to prefer almost any advice or companionship to her +mamma’s. Ill as he thought of her, for the manœuvres with which she had +compassed his union with her daughter, Sainty could not help a secret +sympathy with the poor lady, who bore her pitiless relegation to a back +place with a smiling stoicism worthy of a Red Indian. The old fiction of +the perfect confidence and sisterlike relation between herself and her +daughter was still gallantly maintained even to him, and when he +reflected<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_247">{247}</a></span> what potentialities of tearful complainings she had +heroically foregone, he came near to feeling actual gratitude. But he +need have been under no apprehension of plaintive confidences; anything +natural or direct had long ceased to be possible to Lady Eccleston.</p> + +<p>‘I cannot have mamma dropping in to lunch whenever it suits her,’ Cissy +remarked ruthlessly. ‘I have told her she must not come more than once a +week, unless she’s asked.’</p> + +<p>‘But I thought you said you meant to let people know you were always at +home for lunch?’</p> + +<p>‘So I do; it is a very convenient way of seeing my friends. That’s just +why I’ve had to speak to mamma. I should have her here every day if I +didn’t. And it would bore a lot of younger women, who don’t know her +particularly well, like Vere Deans or Ella Dalsany, to find her here +perpetually—not to speak of the men.’</p> + +<p>Sainty did not retort that Lady Deans and Lady Dalsany were not so very +much younger that Lady Eccleston. It was no affair of his; and it soon +became evident that Cissy’s mother was not the only relation whom it +bored her friends to meet at her luncheon-table. Sainty had been brought +up in a certain old-fashioned code of manners. His mother, seeing that +he was shy and awkward in company, and being not less so herself, had +insisted rather unduly on the ceremonial side of social life. He had +been taught that hospitality demanded that he should receive and take +leave of guests with some form, accompanying them to their carriages, +and putting on their cloaks, which the groom of the chambers, who was +much taller and unencumbered with a stick, would have done much better. +But he was not long in discovering that these attentions were by no +means demanded by the ladies of the set into which the duchess and +Claude had made haste to introduce his wife.</p> + +<p>If Cissy’s friends found Sainty tiresome, it must be admitted that he +found them no less so. The repulsion was certainly mutual. He wondered +sometimes what had become of all the people she had known and liked, and +from whom<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_248">{248}</a></span> she had received kindness, during the three or four seasons +that had preceded her marriage; they seemed to have vanished like smoke. +She was absorbed in a little knot of married women, for the most part +considerably her seniors, much in the world’s eye, and none of them +exactly qualified for the <i>rôle</i> of Cæsar’s wife. Their conversation was +extremely esoteric, and the minute fragments of it which were +intelligible to him shocked him profoundly. Occasional paragraphs in the +papers assured him that ‘young Lady Belchamber,’ or ‘pretty little Lady +Belchamber, who was among the most attractive of last season’s brides,’ +was ‘very smart’ or ‘quite in the innermost set’; from which he was fain +to derive such comfort as he might. He once ventured to ask Cissy why +she never saw anything of the de Lissacs; he had hoped something for her +from Alice’s influence. ‘I thought you and the girls were very +intimate,’ he said.</p> + +<p>‘Oh! girls bore me,’ she answered; ‘and besides, they are not the least +in it; they wouldn’t have anything in common with the people they’d meet +here. Of course with their money they <i>might</i> have done anything, but +poor dear Mrs. de Lissac has no <i>flair</i>, don’t you know; she simply +doesn’t take any trouble. I’ll ask them, if you like, some day when I’m +having a duty dinner.’ And she did.</p> + +<p>‘Why do we never see anything of you?’ Sainty asked of his old friend on +that occasion. ‘I had hoped that when we came to town we should be much +together.’</p> + +<p>‘Well—here we are!’ said Alice, with rather frosty playfulness. ‘And +you know,’ she added more gently, ‘how welcome you always are in +Grosvenor Square.’</p> + +<p>‘Cissy is always at home at lunch, you know,’ Sainty persisted. ‘Why +don’t you come in sometimes?’</p> + +<p>‘Lady Belchamber has never told either the girls or me that she was at +home at lunch,’ said Alice, freezing again, and went on hurriedly to +praise the beauty of the house and the taste of its mistress. Sainty +looked round him. ‘Cissy has a genius for spending money,’ he said +gloomily. ‘Wait till you see the drawing-rooms; these rooms are nothing +to the<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_249">{249}</a></span> plunges she is making upstairs.’ Before Mrs. de Lissac could +answer, they were swooped upon by Lady Eccleston bringing Lady Deans +with her.</p> + +<p>‘Dear Alice,’ she cried, ‘Lady Deans fears you don’t remember her; you +met at Belchamber. She is going to have a stall at the World’s Bazaar, +and this is such an opportunity to have a little quiet talk about it. I +have been telling Lady Deans that you are one of our <i>very</i> kindest +helpers, and that you have given the most superb things; a few <i>really</i> +good things that can be raffled for are such a help, and one can always +raffle the same things two or three times over—no one ever knows.’</p> + +<p>‘Why shouldn’t we have a lottery?’ asked Lady Deans. ‘I mean a <i>real</i> +lottery, not for sofa-cushions and things, but for money prizes like +they have abroad. I’m sure it’ld catch on.’</p> + +<p>‘But I thought lotteries were illegal,’ Sainty objected.</p> + +<p>‘Oh! not at bazaars, or for a charity,’ cried Lady Eccleston. ‘I know +dear Father Stephen of St. Rhadegund’s, Houndsditch, told me they had a +most successful one for their parish room and made heaps of money. I +think Lady Deans’s is a lovely idea.’</p> + +<p>‘Well—it’s gambling, you know,’ said Sainty. ‘I suppose you wouldn’t +allow a roulette table——’</p> + +<p>‘Why don’t you have a Derby sweep while you’re about it?’ suggested Algy +Montgomery. ‘You could sell the tickets at the bazaar, and as the Derby +won’t be for a good couple o’ months later you could forget to draw it +at all. People would only suppose some other fellow had won, don’t yer +know.’</p> + +<p>Lady Eccleston was enchanted with the notion. ‘Dear Lord Algy! <i>Could</i> +you work it for us?’ But Mrs. de Lissac, inured as she was to bazaar +morality, was, as a clergyman’s daughter, a little alarmed at any +connection with the turf. ‘How are you getting on with the people for +the Café Chantant?’ she asked, to change the subject.</p> + +<p>Lady Eccleston rattled off a list that seemed to contain<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_250">{250}</a></span> every one of +any celebrity in the theatrical or musical world.</p> + +<p>‘And have you got them all?’ asked Lady Deans.</p> + +<p>‘Well, I’ve written to a good many of them, and one or two have +answered,’ said Lady Eccleston; ‘but I shall pop them all down—their +names will look splendid on the programme.’</p> + +<p>‘But will they come?’ asked Sainty.</p> + +<p>‘Oh <i>dear</i> no, they won’t come; very few of them will <i>come</i>. But some +will; I shall make sure of one or two, and we can get some really good +amateurs; and every now and then some one can get up and say that Ellen +Terry regrets she couldn’t manage it at the last moment, or something. +We shall let people in for ten minutes at a time in batches; they’ll +think they just missed some of the best people——’</p> + +<p>‘Seems to me you <i>will</i> “let ’em in,”<span class="lftspc">’</span> chuckled Lord Algy.</p> + +<p>‘Do you think,’ asked Lady Deans, ‘there would be any chance of getting +Lady Arthur to sing or dance, or anything? I suppose, Lord Belchamber, +<i>you</i> couldn’t ask her for us?’</p> + +<p>‘But she never <i>could</i> sing or dance, or do anything,’ interposed Lord +Algernon.</p> + +<p>‘Oh! that wouldn’t matter, as long as she would appear. You see, all the +story of her marriage and everything made her a celebrity.’</p> + +<p>‘But it was all two years ago,’ Lady Eccleston interrupted. ‘People have +forgotten all about it,’ and she deftly piloted the discussion to other +projects, so that Sainty was spared the necessity of making any answer +to this astounding proposition.</p> + +<p>The bazaar in connection with which so many happy suggestions had been +offered was one of Society’s periodic sacrifices to philanthropy. +Certain fair ones, to whom no form of self-advertisement came amiss, +were ready to dress up in the cause of charity and display themselves to +a wider public than that which usually had the opportunity of admiring +them, on the understanding that none of the trouble of organisation +should fall upon them, and that the date should<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_251">{251}</a></span> be fixed for before +Easter, when there wasn’t much else going on. On these conditions, Lady +Eccleston and a little band of zealous fellow-workers had secured a most +imposing list of stall-holders. It was calculated that the suburbs and +the Stock Exchange would come in their thousands to see and converse +with the ladies whose names and doings Lady Eva Morland made weekly +familiar to them in the pages of ‘Maidie’s Tea Table’ in the +<i>Looking-glass</i>. The proceeds were to be handed to a charity in which a +very great personage was interested, and the bazaar was to be opened on +at least two of its three days by different members of the royal family. +Lady Eccleston was in her element, and running the whole concern. If it +was not she who had the brilliant inspiration of making the various +stalls represent the countries of the earth and dressing the fair +vendors in national costume, at least she took the credit for it. In +spite of his mother-in-law’s repeated injunctions to him to attend the +opening, Sainty had not the slightest intention of doing so. Indeed, he +had hoped, by liberal contributions, to get off altogether, but Alice de +Lissac had reinforced Lady Eccleston with gentle persistence.</p> + +<p>‘I think you should put in an appearance,’ she said, ‘just to support +your wife, you know; it will look queer if you don’t, when she and her +mother are so much interested. <i>I</i> should have thought you would come to +the opening’; and finally Sainty was fain to buy immunity from being +present at this ceremony with a promise to visit his wife’s stall in the +course of one afternoon. It was not till somewhat late on the last day +of the three that he brought himself to redeem his given word.</p> + +<p>By the time he arrived, the whole show, though brilliantly lighted and +to his perception still disagreeably crowded, had become a little the +worse for wear. The stalls were denuded of half their contents, the air +had a vitiated second-hand taste, and a fine impalpable dust, raised by +the passing of so many feet, hung like a light haze over everything. +Tired dishevelled girls, looking curiously sham in their fancy dresses<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_252">{252}</a></span> +by the side of people in everyday garb, and flushed under the rouge that +had been thought a necessary part of their costume, moved among the +crowd making a last effort to dispose of the remainder of their wares, +excited by competition to perilous lengths of flirtation with unknown +and rather common young men, with whom on no other occasion they would +have thought of exchanging a word.</p> + +<p>Sainty was patiently elbowing his way like Parsifal among the +flower-maidens, and meditating on the mystery of what was and was not +permitted to the London girl, when he was suddenly confronted by Mr. +Austin Pryor. Every buttonhole of the young stockbroker’s neat +frock-coat was decorated with faded vegetation and his arms loaded with +a number of quite useless purchases.</p> + +<p>‘Well, Belchamber,’ he began, ‘I’ve got a bone to pick with your wife; +too bad of her, I call it. I’d an awful good time here yesterday with +her, and she made me promise to come again to-day and bring a lot of our +fellows from the city. I told ’em all how ripping she looked in her +Polish get-up, and now they’ve all come and she isn’t here; she’s gone +and given us all the slip. Most unprincipled of her, I call it.’</p> + +<p>Sainty, while expressing suitable distress at the faithless behaviour of +his spouse, was secretly not sorry to be spared her encounter with the +gallant Lotharios of Throgmorton Street, when he thought of the +fragments of conversation he had already overheard in passing.</p> + +<p>‘I don’t know what has happened to her, I’m sure,’ he said politely; ‘I +expected to find her here myself.’</p> + +<p>When at last he arrived at the lath and canvas pavillion, much bedraped +with liberty muslin and flags, across the front of which a scroll +displayed the legend, ‘Poland—Marchioness of Belchamber,’ he found only +the de Lissac girls and another maiden, clad in little hussar caps and +dolmans hung coquettishly on one shoulder, resentfully eyeing the ebbing +tide of custom, while Alice and Lady Eccleston, aided by her obedient +son Thomas, were feverishly tying parcels in the background.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_253">{253}</a></span></p> + +<p>‘Have you written on that one, Tommy,’ Lady Eccleston was saying, ‘Mrs. +Brown, Elm Lodge, Streatham? Oh dear, <i>which</i> parcel is the big yellow +cushion? I am sure that was the one she bought. Well, never mind, this +is a cushion anyway, it feels soft; that’ll do. Ah, Sainty, you’ve come +a little late, dear. Everything is over.’</p> + +<p>‘What’s become of Cissy?’ Sainty inquired.</p> + +<p>The young ladies were evidently not in the best of tempers, and this +innocent question served to open the floodgates of their wrath.</p> + +<p>‘Cissy’s gone,’ Norah de Lissac said crossly, ‘and left us in the lurch. +She <i>said</i> she was tired, but <i>I</i> think she was only bored. When it got +dull and shabby and all the nice people had gone it didn’t amuse her any +more.’</p> + +<p>‘It puts us in such a foolish position,’ Gemma chimed in. ‘People +naturally come here to see her, and when they don’t find her they are +not best pleased. One man asked me if I was Lady Belchamber, and when I +said I wasn’t, he said, “Then which of you is?” Of course I had to say +we none of us were, and then he was quite rude and said, “Then you’ve no +business to put her name up over the stall.” It wasn’t at all pleasant.’</p> + +<p>Norah took up her parable again. ‘She didn’t even take the trouble to +put on her costume to-day, just came in her ordinary clothes, and of +course we looked like dressed-up fools beside her. If she had just sent +us word she wasn’t going to we wouldn’t have put ours on either.’</p> + +<p>‘Oh, dears, it would have been a great pity,’ said Lady Eccleston, +emerging from a pile of brown paper with her mouth full of pins. ‘You +look charming in your dresses; they really suit you better than Cissy; +and it would have been so flat if none of you had been in costume, for +there really <i>is</i>n’t much in the stall itself to suggest Poland, I must +admit I think Cissy really <i>was</i> tired, you know; she has had a hard two +days of it.’</p> + +<p>‘Well, we were tired too,’ said the implacable Norah. ‘She’s not the +only person who has had a hard two days.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_254">{254}</a></span> Can’t we go home now, at +least, and get off these ridiculous clothes?’ she asked, turning to her +step-mother. Alice looked distressed and murmured something about ‘not +deserting Lady Eccleston.’</p> + +<p>‘Oh, don’t <i>think</i> of me,’ cried that lady. ‘You and the dear girls go. +Tommy and I can soon finish what’s left to do. The people are thinning +fast, and we’ve done very well. I <i>can’t</i> thank you enough for all your +splendid help’; and she embraced the whole party with a last galvanic +effort at cheerful enthusiasm.</p> + +<p>Sainty saw the de Lissac party to their gorgeous equipage, and was just +turning away from the door when a small voice at his elbow demanded, +‘Shall I please to call the kerridge, m’lord?’ and looking down he had a +vision of two large appealing eyes and a white kid forefinger pressed +tightly to a curly hatbrim. He recognised the diminutive boy who +decorated Cissy’s coach-box when she rode abroad.</p> + +<p>‘Yes,’ he said; ‘if the brougham is here, I may as well take it. Lady +Belchamber has gone home.’</p> + +<p>In the course of the drive he wondered why he had taken the trouble to +come to the bazaar, and who had been benefited or pleased by his visit.</p> + +<p>He had hardly got to his room and sat down to his book by the fire, with +a sigh of relief, when a servant came to him.</p> + +<p>‘If you please, my lord, Gibson wants to know if there are any more +orders for the carriage.’</p> + +<p>‘Not for me,’ Sainty answered, his mind on what he was reading. ‘Ask her +ladyship.’</p> + +<p>The man looked surprised and still lingered doubtfully.</p> + +<p>‘Well,’ said Sainty, ‘what is it?’</p> + +<p>‘If you please, my lord, my lady hasn’t come in yet.’</p> + +<p>‘Oh, I think she must have——’ Sainty was beginning but stopped +himself. He saw no reason for discussing Cissy’s movements with the +servants. ‘Then you must wait for orders till she does,’ he said.</p> + +<p>He wondered a little why, if she left the bazaar because<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_255">{255}</a></span> she was tired, +she had not come home. But after all, Norah’s explanation was probably +the correct one. She was bored with the whole thing and took the +shortest cut for freedom; it was not Cissy’s way to allow herself to be +bored. ‘In any case it is no affair of mine,’ he thought, as he turned +again to his book.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_256">{256}</a></span></p> + +<h2><a id="CHAPTER_XIX">CHAPTER XIX</a></h2> + +<p class="nind"><span class="smcap">After</span> Easter, when Cissy had a morning-room and a boudoir, and the +drawing-rooms were practically finished, Sainty entered into undisputed +possession of his two back rooms, and spent more and more of his time in +them. Only faint echoes of the turmoil in which Lady Belchamber had her +being penetrated to that peaceful seclusion. Evening after evening Cissy +would dine out with a few of her special cronies and their attendant +swains, and go to the theatre or the opera till it was time to begin the +round of balls or parties, from which she returned in grey summer dawns, +far too tired for there to be any question of her coming down to +breakfast next morning. Sometimes Sainty did not set eyes on her for +days together. Gradually he slipped back into his old studious life, +snatching sketchy little meals from trays, when he remembered to eat +anything, and as little a part of the life of the house as if he were in +lodgings round the corner.</p> + +<p>In May, Lady Charmington came to town, to attend the meetings of the +‘Ladies’ No Popery League,’ of which she was a leading member.</p> + +<p>‘My mother writes me she is coming to London,’ Sainty said. ‘Of course +she will come to us.’</p> + +<p>‘Well, she can, if you wish it,’ Cissy answered; ‘but I warn you you’re +preparing trouble for yourself. She won’t like the way we live, and when +she doesn’t like a thing, she is not always silent and accommodating. +She’ll expect a family breakfast at 9.15, with prayers at 9. I don’t +suppose she ever breakfasted in her room in her life. I don’t know where +<i>you</i> breakfast, but <i>I</i> certainly shan’t come down.’</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_257">{257}</a></span></p> + +<p>‘I suppose you couldn’t, just for the time she’s here?’ Sainty +suggested.</p> + +<p>‘I’m not such a humbug as to alter my way of life to please her. She may +as well find out first as last that I am not cut on her pattern.’</p> + +<p>‘I think she has pretty well made that discovery already,’ Sainty +retorted.</p> + +<p>‘Well,’ said Cissy, ‘she can come if she likes, and if you want her, but +she must take us as she finds us. I told you she wouldn’t like it. She’d +be a great deal happier at Roehampton with Lady Firth. She could come in +to her meetings, and if she wanted to lunch here any particular day, I +could always tell people to keep out of the way.’</p> + +<p>‘You can’t say I interfere with you much, or often ask you to do +anything to please me,’ said Sainty earnestly; ‘but when we have a great +house here, and my own mother wants to come up, I do think it would look +strange for us not to take her in.’</p> + +<p>‘Well, please yourself. After all, I was only thinking of you. <i>I</i> can +generally hold my own, but if your mother gets her back up, as she +inevitably will, <i>you</i>’ll have the devil of a time of it.’</p> + +<p>Sainty had presently occasion to prove the accuracy of his wife’s +forecast. Acting on Cissy’s hint, he dutifully appeared each morning to +give Lady Charmington her breakfast. The first day, she lingered before +sitting down, as though she were waiting for something.</p> + +<p>‘Won’t you make the tea for me, mother?’ Sainty asked. ‘It’s like old +times, you and I having breakfast together.’</p> + +<p>‘You don’t have prayers, I see,’ Lady Charmington remarked, as she took +her seat. ‘Or were they earlier? I can quite well come down sooner, if +you wish it.’</p> + +<p>‘Well, you see, Cissy never comes down to breakfast, and, as you know, I +am not a great eater, so when we are alone, I generally have a cup of +tea and an egg in the study.’</p> + +<p>‘Why doesn’t your wife come to breakfast? is she ill?’</p> + +<p>‘Oh no, she’s well enough. But she’s out late at parties and things +every night, and I’m glad she <i>does</i> rest a little in the mornings; it’s +the only time she does.’</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_258">{258}</a></span></p> + +<p>‘I confess I’m a little disappointed in Cissy,’ Lady Charmington +remarked, after contemplating the toast-rack judicially for a time in +silence. ‘I never thought her a very deep or earnest nature, but I did +<i>not</i> expect to find her so entirely given up to worldly pursuits.’</p> + +<p>‘Cissy’s young and pretty, and people make a great deal of her. After +all, it’s natural at her age that she should like to enjoy herself.’</p> + +<p>Lady Charmington sniffed. ‘Enjoyment! People nowadays seem to think of +nothing but enjoyment. We were not put into the world to enjoy +ourselves.’</p> + +<p>‘Well, most of us fulfil the object of our being pretty thoroughly +then,’ Sainty said, ‘and yet every one seems to <i>want</i> to be happy; and +it is a good deal to expect of the few who have it in their power that +they should voluntarily forego what most people fail to obtain.’</p> + +<p>‘I don’t like to hear you talk like that, my boy; you don’t seem to have +a proper sense of your blessings. You have very much to be thankful +for.’</p> + +<p>Lady Charmington saw nothing incongruous in finding fault with some +acrimony if things were not to her liking, but she was always swift to +rebuke a complaining spirit in others.</p> + +<p>‘Her poor mother, who, if a little too fond of society, has a very +sincerely religious side to her, must be sadly distressed at her +daughter’s light-mindedness.’</p> + +<p>The thought of Lady Eccleston as a pious matron wounded by her child’s +care for earthly matters was too much for Sainty.</p> + +<p>‘Why, Lady Eccleston goes wherever a candle’s lighted,’ he said; ‘or if +she doesn’t, it’s because she’s failed to get an invitation.’</p> + +<p>‘Censorious, censorious!’ replied his mother. ‘Who art thou that judgest +another man’s servant? You should watch against that spirit; it’ll grow +on you.’</p> + +<p>Sainty was only too glad to have diverted the precious balms to his own +head, which had been accustomed to that form of unction for too many +years to be easily broken. He<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_259">{259}</a></span> saw his mother off to the first of her +meetings before there was the smallest chance of her encountering her +daughter-in-law, and then betook himself to his own rooms to read the +papers. As he drew near to the fire that his languid blood demanded in +this uncertain season, his eye fell on the letters he had not as yet +thought of opening. As a rule his correspondence was not exciting. It +consisted mainly of advertisements and begging letters. The first that +he took up this morning had such a family look of these last, that he +opened it with a weary certainty of his correspondent’s need for £3, 5s. +6d. to prevent the bed being taken from under his sick child; but though +it was written on cheap paper in a hand carefully made to appear +illiterate, its contents were far other than he had expected.</p> + +<p>‘Ask your wife where she was on the third afternoon of the World’s +Bazaar. A friend.’</p> + +<p>Sainty had never in his life received an anonymous letter, and the +experience was distinctly unpleasant. He shook it off into the fire as +St. Paul did the other venomous thing, but failed to get the poison out +of his system so cheaply. In case it should not work, his nameless +‘friend’ took care to repeat the dose, and several other communications +of a like tenor followed the first, but none of them produced in him the +unpleasant sensations of that chilly May morning, when he stood watching +the sparks run along the blackened paper and the gray ash writhe and +twist for its final flight up the chimney. After a time he came to +regard them as more or less in the natural order of things, and even +ceased to read them; but the writer showed such skill in varying the +address, that in no case was he able to detect one without opening it. +Some contained but a single sentence, others were much longer, but all +suggested doubts of his wife’s conduct, and recommended a surveillance +of which the very notion was repugnant to him. Of course he could take +no notice of such things. He wondered if he ought to speak to Cissy +about them, only to dismiss the idea as impossible. Still less could he +mention them to any one else. Eventually he decided<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_260">{260}</a></span> that there was but +one way to treat an anonymous letter, which was to behave as if it had +not been received. None the less they stirred in him a vague uneasiness. +The feeling that somewhere about one an unknown enemy is watching for a +chance to hurt, fills life with an unpleasant sense of ambush. He could +think of no one who had cause to wish him ill. The enmity, then, must be +to Cissy. A disappointed rival? He needed no reminder of the extreme +unlikelihood of any one’s grudging her the possession of his affections. +But how if the rivalry were for the possession of some one else’s +affections? That possibility was not without its sting. For him there +could be no question of jealousy, in the ordinary sense of the word; but +he began to apprehend the possibilities of scandal, to understand that +his acceptance of the anomalous part which his wife had thrust upon him +by no means exhausted her power of injuring his happiness or his honour; +in short, that he was saddled with an obligation to guard what he did +not possess.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile he found himself in the no less ironical position of having to +champion her many doings, which in his heart he disliked, against his +mother, with whom he secretly sympathised. Lady Charmington was far from +having said all her say on that first morning at breakfast. Cissy’s +prediction of her disapproval of their London life was amply verified. +Occupied with the matters that had brought her to town, and going into a +totally different world from her daughter-in-law’s, she was as ignorant +as her son of the things that would most have stirred her wrath; but she +found quite enough to rebuke in the house itself. Cissy’s idleness and +dissipation, her late hours, her card-playing, her neglect of her +household duties, and the consequent waste and profusion, her +Sabbath-breaking, and the completeness with which she ignored her +husband and her home (not to speak of her guest and mother-in-law) were +each and severally the subjects of the elder lady’s severe +animadversions to the offender herself when occasion offered, but far +more often to the patient ears of poor Sainty, who had to defend the +culprit as best he might.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_261">{261}</a></span></p> + +<p>Another fruitful topic of maternal discontent was Lady Belchamber’s +failure to provide an heir to the property. This, it may well be +supposed, was not an agreeable topic to Sainty, nor one on which he had +any ready rejoinders at his command.</p> + +<p>‘You have been married close on a year,’ said Lady Charmington, ‘and I +see no signs or hope of a child. I said something to Cissy about it one +day, and she laughed disagreeably, and said she was glad of it. I asked +if she didn’t think she had any duty to the family in the matter. I am +almost ashamed to tell you what she answered: that a baby was a great +tie and a nuisance, and she hoped if she had to have one, it would be at +a convenient time of year, when it didn’t interfere with things.’</p> + +<p>‘I don’t suppose very young women ever <i>want</i> to have a baby,’ Sainty +said doubtfully, feeling something was expected of him.</p> + +<p>‘Cissy is not so young as all that. She must be two-or three-and-twenty. +I can’t imagine any woman marrying and <i>not</i> wanting to have a child. I +am sure when I married I prayed most fervently that I might give my +husband a son.’</p> + +<p>‘Well, you know, the answer to your prayer was not quite all you could +have wished,’ suggested Sainty.</p> + +<p>Lady Charmington ignored the interruption. ‘It is not as though she were +not a perfectly normal healthy young woman,’ she said, ‘for I never was +taken in for a minute by all that business of the shock to her nervous +system at Belchamber. Constant dissipation, racketing about morning, +noon, and night, and tight lacing are not the ways to go about having an +heir. I only hope she mayn’t do anything else, if she’s so afraid that +the duties of a wife and mother will cut her out of a party or two.’</p> + +<p>‘O mother!’ Sainty expostulated.</p> + +<p>‘If she is not going to have any children, what was the use of your +marrying?’ continued his aggrieved parent. ‘We are just where we were +with regard to that other woman. <i>She</i><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_262">{262}</a></span> has children fast enough! Cissy +seems to think she has come into the family merely to have what she +calls a good time, and spend the money that I pinched and scraped +together for you for so many years. I have <i>never</i> seen such sinful +waste as goes on in this house.’</p> + +<p>Lady Charmington was only putting into words what her son had often, +with some bitterness, asked himself. What was the use of his marrying? +He had not perhaps quite so crudely admitted, even in his inner +consciousness, how much he had been influenced in making up his mind to +such a step by the thought of excluding the children of Lady Arthur from +the succession to his name and estates, but it had none the less been a +powerful motive with him. Had his brother passed his examinations, gone +into the army, and in due course married some commonplace, +unobjectionable young lady, it is more than doubtful if even Lady +Eccleston would have succeeded in dragging Sainty into matrimony. For +one thing, she would have had to reckon with Lady Charmington as an +enemy instead of an ally, which would have put a quite different +complexion on the affair. The young man reflected sometimes with dumb +rage on how his life was turned topsy-turvy, haled from familiar field +and woodland to this hated city, that a girl, who was really no more to +him than any other, should junket from morning till night with a set of +people he could not endure, and squander money, with which he might have +benefited millions of his fellow-creatures, on her senseless, unoriginal +pleasures. And all for what? Sooner or later the children of his +undesirable sister-in-law would sit in his place, and inherit his +patrimony as surely as if he had followed his natural bent, and led a +peaceful, laborious life remote from all connection with Lady Deans and +her play-fellows. And with it all Cissy had not even the common decency +to avoid the tongue of scandal, as these odious anonymous letters showed +him. He really did think she might have spared him that. Day after day +he thought of saying something to her on the subject, and always he was +prevented by lack of courage or opportunity, or else some<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_263">{263}</a></span> unfortunate +speech of his mother drove him back into the position of his wife’s +involuntary champion.</p> + +<p>‘Cissy tells me she is going away for Whitsuntide,’ Lady Charmington +announced one day, with the sniff that indicated much more than met the +ear in this apparently simple announcement.</p> + +<p>‘Is she?’ said Sainty, anxious not to commit himself.</p> + +<p>‘Has she not even deigned to let you know?’ inquired her ladyship +scornfully.</p> + +<p>‘I think she <i>did</i> say something about the Suffords having asked her +there.’</p> + +<p>‘Were <i>you</i> not included in the invitation?’</p> + +<p>‘I really don’t know; I never asked. I didn’t want to go. I suppose Lady +Sufford went through the form of asking me, but she probably knew I +shouldn’t come. It would be too terrible if I were obliged to go +wherever Cissy does.’</p> + +<p>‘The arrangement seems to suit <i>her</i> perfectly,’ said Lady Charmington; +‘but I can’t see why you shouldn’t go.’</p> + +<p>‘It would add to no one’s pleasure, and take away considerably from +mine,’ said Sainty promptly.</p> + +<p>‘Always pleasure!’ cried Lady Charmington. ‘The invariable argument! no +thought of duty!’</p> + +<p>‘If a thing which is purely a question of amusement doesn’t amuse one, +why make a duty of it?’ argued her son.</p> + +<p>‘Well, if it is not your duty to go about with your wife, I should have +thought it was hers to stay at home with you. Of course I quite +understood that she mentioned her plans to me with the delicate +intention of letting me see that she could not keep me beyond next week; +but she need not trouble; I had settled to go to mother on Tuesday in +any case. She has failed very much lately, and I shall have to be with +her more. By the way, I found she was rather hurt that Cissy had never +once been to see her since she came to town in February, nor asked her +to come in and see your new house.’</p> + +<p>‘Dear me!’ said Sainty, ‘I ought to have thought of it. Of course we +should have been only too delighted to see granny, if I had only thought +she would care to see the<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_264">{264}</a></span> house; but she seems always so absorbed in +other things, it never occurred to me. It was very stupid of me. I’ve +been several times to see her, but she always talks as if it was such a +business to drive into London. I never dreamt of asking it of her. And +she says her sight has got so bad, that I wasn’t sure how much she would +see if she came.’</p> + +<p>‘She would probably see a great deal that would shock her, as I have,’ +said Lady Charmington. ‘Have you ever calculated at all what this house +is going to cost you by the time it is finished?’</p> + +<p>‘Oh, I’ve kept pretty good track of the expenses. I’ve paid for a good +deal of the work as it went along. It has all been done much more +extravagantly than I thought necessary. Indeed, as far as I am +concerned, I shouldn’t care if we had no London house at all; but Uncle +Cor seemed to think it indispensable, and he doesn’t consider that we +have done much we need not. He is always afraid that, with my saving +tendencies, I shall fail to do myself credit. He needn’t be uneasy as +long as Cissy is on hand to provide the antidote.’</p> + +<p>‘There is a great difference between having things suitable to your +position and being foolishly and wickedly extravagant,’ remarked Lady +Charmington.</p> + +<p>‘Perhaps I have deliberately rather given Cissy her head about this +house,’ Sainty answered, ‘to keep her hands off Belchamber; there was a +great deal she was thinking of doing there, but I hope I have put a stop +to that.’</p> + +<p>‘Belchamber!’ cried out his mother in horror. ‘What could she want to do +there? It was always kept in perfect repair; there wasn’t a door knob +missing nor a tap out of order, and when you came of age there was an +immense amount of money spent in cleaning and restoring. I always +thought it quite unnecessary her doing up those rooms in that ridiculous +way last summer. They looked to <i>me</i> more like an improper person’s +apartments than like anything in an English lady’s house.’</p> + +<p>‘Well, I can’t say I always admire Cissy’s taste, myself; there’s a +little want of knowledge about it.’</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_265">{265}</a></span></p> + +<p>Sainty did not judge it necessary to tell his mother how far reaching +had been Cissy’s plans for the remodelling of Belchamber; he had +surprised them by an accident, and had promptly and firmly opposed them. +He could not bear the desecrating touch of fleeting fashion on anything +so artistically and historically complete as the home of his childhood, +and had been glad to purchase its immunity from the threatened changes +by larger concessions in the matter of the London house. Perhaps, even +so, Cissy would not have abandoned her projects without a struggle, but +for the appearance of a most unlooked-for ally to her husband in the +person of Claude Morland, who had supervened in the height of the +discussion and thrown all the weight of his authority into the scale for +the saving of Belchamber.</p> + +<p>‘Sainty is perfectly right,’ he said, with his most pontifical air; ‘it +would be vandalism. There isn’t a more beautiful specimen of its period +in England than the great saloon or the Vandyke dining-hall; they are +perfect. And the red, yellow, and green rooms, though they are later and +not so pure, have a great <i>cachet</i> of their own, and are perfectly <i>de +l’époque</i> as far as they go. No, no, my dear Cissy, it would be a sin. I +am all for your using the rooms, and living in them; but, believe me, +you mustn’t touch them. Do what you like here; you have a clean slate to +work on; but don’t attempt to “improve” Belchamber.’</p> + +<p>Sainty was astonished at the meekness with which Cissy abandoned her +cherished schemes, but much too grateful to Claude for backing him up to +resent this evidence of his cousin’s greater authority. He knew, too, +that he owed it to him that the London house, if a little over-decorated +and too obviously costly, was, on the whole, harmonious and in good +taste.</p> + +<p>By dint of unremitting vigilance and almost superhuman tact, the date of +Lady Charmington’s departure had almost been reached without any more +serious encounter than a few skirmishes between her and her +daughter-in-law; but one afternoon, having heard his mother come in, and +gone in<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_266">{266}</a></span> search of her, Sainty saw at a glance that a battle royal was +raging. Cissy was lolling exasperatingly calm and contemptuous among the +piles of cushions she delighted to heap upon the furniture, while Lady +Charmington sat stiffly erect, an ominous light in her eye, and a pink +spot burning in the centre of each sallow cheek. Her son heard her voice +as he entered, and quailed at the familiar tone of it.</p> + +<p>‘I am well aware,’ she was saying, ‘that nothing <i>I</i> say will have the +smallest influence on your behaviour, but none the less I feel it my +solemn duty to protest, when I see things going on of which I entirely +disapprove.’</p> + +<p>‘Why trouble, if you are so sure that you will produce no effect?’ asked +Cissy.</p> + +<p>‘Because <i>I</i> have some consideration for my son’s honour, to which you +and he seem to be equally indifferent.’</p> + +<p>‘Oh! His honour!’ protested Cissy.</p> + +<p>‘Yes; his honour,’ persisted Lady Charmington. ‘When I was first +married, a young woman of your age, a young wife not a year married, who +received men alone, sprawling about on sofas in that kind of indecent +clothing, would have been considered to have lost her character.’</p> + +<p>‘Mother!’ interposed Sainty.</p> + +<p>‘Oh, it’s largely your fault for allowing such things,’ his mother +flashed out at him. ‘If you were more of a man, your wife would never +dare treat you as an absolute nonentity in your own house.’</p> + +<p>‘But what’s it all about?’ asked Sainty. ‘What has Cissy been doing?’</p> + +<p>‘I’m sure <i>I</i> don’t know,’ answered Lady Belchamber. ‘You had better ask +your mother.’</p> + +<p>‘I came in just now,’ said Lady Charmington,’and found her with that +flimsy rag she calls a tea-gown half off her back lolling about among +the cushions there with Algy Montgomery. I don’t call it decent.’</p> + +<p>‘Why, Algy’s a sort of relation, you know,’ answered Cissy; ‘his +stepmother’s Sainty’s grandmother; it makes him a kind of uncle.’</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_267">{267}</a></span></p> + +<p>‘Kind of fiddlestick! a good-for-nothing young rip in the Life Guards, +of six-or seven-and-twenty at the outside.’</p> + +<p>‘Do you suppose, if I were doing anything that wasn’t perfectly +innocent, that I shouldn’t have taken jolly good care that you didn’t +come spying in?’ inquired Cissy, with lofty scorn.</p> + +<p>Lady Charmington choked. ‘It is not my habit to spy,’ she cried, ‘and I +am not accusing you of actual misconduct; but it’s not only to-day that +I object to. It’s your general mode of going on. Yesterday you were shut +up for ever so long with that vulgar little Mr. Pryor, and you drive +Claude all over London in your brougham. No honest woman should take any +man in her brougham, no matter who it is, that isn’t her husband or her +brother.’</p> + +<p>‘Would her grandfather be admissible?’ asked Cissy sweetly. ‘I must say +for a high-minded person who angrily repudiates the idea of spying, you +seem to be strangely well informed as to all my movements.’</p> + +<p>‘Cissy!’ expostulated Sainty.</p> + +<p>‘Well, what is it?’ she asked, turning to him politely.</p> + +<p>‘I have been deceived in you, very much deceived,’ Lady Charmington +broke out. ‘When you wanted to marry my son, you were all sweetness and +honey to me; now you’ve attained your object, you insult me. From the +day I arrived here you have studied in every way to let me see I was +unwelcome; there wasn’t an attention you could have paid me you didn’t +pointedly omit, or a possible slight that you neglected to put upon me. +I can well see that a mother-in-law in the house by no means suited your +book.’</p> + +<p>‘Even such a sweet affectionate one?’ interposed Cissy.</p> + +<p>‘Mark my words,’ continued the exasperated dowager, ‘you will come to +grief. You are playing a dangerous game, my lady. You have no +conscience, no principle, no sense of duty to restrain or save you. If +you forget God and go after your own vain amusements from morning till +night, you will assuredly make shipwreck in the end.’</p> + +<p>‘Well, at least you will have the satisfaction of thinking it was not +for want of being warned.’</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_268">{268}</a></span></p> + +<p>‘Your sarcasms will never prevent my speaking my mind. I have seen +nothing in this house against which I do not think it incumbent on me, +not only as the mother of your husband but as a Christian woman, to bear +testimony—luxury, waste, riotous living, and indelicate behaviour. I am +going away, and I know you will be glad to be rid of me, but I couldn’t +have reconciled it to my conscience to go without speaking.’</p> + +<p>‘I must say you have eased your conscience very thoroughly, and most +agreeably. Is there anything else your sense of duty impels you to +mention before you go?’</p> + +<p>At this, Lady Charmington fairly lost her temper. She strode over to +Cissy, and Sainty flung himself between them, afraid that she was going +to strike her. ‘You little minx!’ she cried. ‘You little selfish, vulgar +minx! You have lied and wheedled your way into this family, and grabbed +all you could lay your hands upon, and what have you done in return? The +one thing that was asked of you, to bear a child, and give the house an +heir, you have most lamentably failed in doing.’</p> + +<p>Cissy sprang to her feet, a curious evil look in her face, and for a +moment the two women looked into each other’s eyes. ‘Oh! in the matter +of a baby, take care I don’t astonish some of you yet,’ she cried.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_269">{269}</a></span></p> + +<h2><a id="CHAPTER_XX">CHAPTER XX</a></h2> + +<p>‘But you will come to <i>my</i> ball,’ said the duchess with decision. The +‘but’ was in answer to Sainty’s assertion that he did not go to balls. +‘<i>Vous vous faites ridicule, mon enfant.</i> That you shouldn’t accompany +your wife everywhere, that I can see; it would be silly; but equally it +is not right never to be seen at all. People ask if anything is wrong +with you that you can’t appear, if you are half-witted or have fits.’</p> + +<p>‘It is very kind of them to occupy themselves with my affairs,’ said +Sainty. ‘I shouldn’t have supposed that most people remembered that I +exist.’</p> + +<p>‘But it is perhaps as well they <i>should</i> remember it sometimes,’ said +his grandmother, with a significant glance at Cissy.</p> + +<p>‘I should have thought the one form of entertainment from which a lame +man might have been held excused was a dance,’ Sainty persisted.</p> + +<p>‘Ah! there are dances and dances,’ replied the duchess. ‘This is not a +dance <i>où l’on dansera</i>, it is a serious entertainment. I don’t say it +will be amusing; I don’t give this kind of thing for my own amusement or +for other people’s; there will be ministers, public men, royalties; +<i>enfin</i> a solemn thing, and you are of the family. You must come, +mustn’t he, Cissy?’</p> + +<p>‘Oh, certainly, if you wish it, dear,’ Cissy answered lightly. ‘I should +think it would just suit him. He will find people to whom he can talk +about the housing of the working classes. You know how I always <i>love</i> +coming to Sunborough House, but not to <i>this</i> kind of thing; you have +said yourself how it bores you.’</p> + +<p>Sainty smiled at his wife’s complete assumption of equality<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_270">{270}</a></span> with his +grandmother, both in age and position. He couldn’t help reflecting how +enchanted Lady Eccleston’s daughter would have been a short year ago at +the prospect of attending the function of which she now spoke so +slightingly as being for the uninitiated.</p> + +<p>‘Well, you will both come, like good children,’ said the duchess easily. +‘We don’t live only to amuse ourselves, you know.’</p> + +<p>And so it came about that Belchamber found himself attending the ball in +question, and very much lost in that glittering throng. At first he had +been amused by the show, as he might have been by a scene in a +pantomime. The pompous men, bearers of great names or high positions, +stuck about with orders, the indecent bejewelled women, the lights, the +flowers, the music: it all made an effect of some gorgeousness, with the +really stately beautiful house as a background. But after an hour or so +he became aware of a sense of intolerable weariness. He had taken it for +granted that he and Cissy would be entirely independent of each other, +and that after he had shown himself to his grandmother and the duke, and +amused himself for a little while with the pageant, he would be free to +depart whenever it pleased him; but to his astonishment Cissy had +remarked that she had no intention of staying late and she would be very +much obliged if he would take her home in his brougham. ‘I want Gibson +early to-morrow morning,’ she explained, ‘so I don’t want to take him +out to-night, and I haven’t been in bed before three one night this +week. We can just show ourselves, and then slope.’</p> + +<p>Once at the ball, however, she seemed to find it less dull than she had +anticipated, for Sainty several times caught sight of her dancing, which +she had announced that she certainly should not do, and had quite failed +in his endeavour to get speech of her to tell her that he would walk +home and leave the carriage for her. The night was fine and his own +house not five minutes away. Any one but Sainty would simply have gone +and left his wife to find it out. But this<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_271">{271}</a></span> was a course which his +invincible conscientiousness forbade his taking. As he hung forlornly +about, hustled by the people who crowded in and out of the rooms, he +thought that surely no sound in nature was so ugly as that of a quantity +of human voices all talking at once and endeavouring to dominate each +other. He came presently on Mrs. de Lissac, who always soothed his +exasperated nerves; but after all he need not go to a ball to see <i>her</i>. +‘We could have had a much pleasanter talk in your house or mine, without +having to try and outshout a hundred other people,’ he said.</p> + +<p>‘I never can quite get over the strangeness of being here at all,’ Alice +answered. ‘It always seems rather like a fairy story to me, when I think +of my very simple bringing-up at the rectory, that I should come to rub +shoulders with all these grandees.’</p> + +<p>‘It is a fairy story in which you have certainly been the good fairy,’ +said Sainty warmly. ‘I can’t tell you the difference it has made to me +having you in London to come and talk to sometimes.’</p> + +<p>‘It is dear of you to say that. I like to think that to you I am not the +rich woman and possible subscriber or hostess, but just your old govey +that you loved when you were a little boy. Sometimes, dear,’ she added, +with a timid look of great tenderness, ‘I fancy you are not much happier +now than you were then.’</p> + +<p>Sainty passed the back of his hand wearily across his eyes. ‘Happy,’ he +said; ‘is anyone happy? Think of the lives that are being led within a +mile of us to-night; can any one be happy with the cry of those millions +in his ears? Certainly not these people with their eternal desperate +pursuit of amusement who are afraid of being left for five minutes in +company with their own thoughts.’</p> + +<p>‘Poor boy! you certainly are <i>not</i> happy or you would not be so bitter. +It is dreadful to think of those poor people. I often wonder if we have +a right to be so rich when there are so many starving; but my dear +husband says this is Socialism, and if we weren’t rich we couldn’t give +away so<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_272">{272}</a></span> much, and certainly he is very generous; and he says that all +these things that I feel as if it was wrong to spend so much on give +employment to lots of poor people to make, who would be out of work if +there were no rich people to buy things.’ She brought out this +time-honoured piece of argument with such a triumphant pride in her +spouse’s wisdom that Sainty thought of nothing less than combating it.</p> + +<p>‘There is one form of happiness that <i>you</i> ought to enjoy in +perfection,’ he said, ‘that of being and doing good.’</p> + +<p>Alice blushed. ‘Oh, you mustn’t call me good,’ she said; ‘but I was +going to say, if there is a lot of misery and poverty, I’m sure there +has never been so much done towards relieving it as nowadays.’</p> + +<p>‘The “World’s Bazaar,” for instance,’ said Sainty.</p> + +<p>‘Well—yes, dear—that and other things. And I’m sure if, as you say, +being and doing good makes us happy, you ought to know it too.’</p> + +<p>‘I!’ cried Sainty. ‘Whom do I make happy?’</p> + +<p>‘Oh, you are always doing kind things for people, and see how happy you +make your wife.’</p> + +<p>‘My wife’s happiness is very much independent of me; indeed, I am rather +the principal drawback to it.’ The words slipped out almost before he +was aware. Even to this kind old friend he had never spoken of his +relations with his wife, and this seemed neither the time nor the place +he would have chosen to do so. Mrs. de Lissac looked pained, but she +took advantage of his little outbreak to say, ‘I have sometimes wanted +to speak to you about your wife, but have not quite liked to. I think +you and she should be more together. You leave her too much to herself. +She is very young and pretty to be so independent, and perhaps a little +thoughtless.’</p> + +<p>‘Talking of Cissy,’ Sainty interrupted, ‘can you tell me where she is? +As a beginning of acting on your advice, you see we have come into the +world together to-night, and I am actually waiting to go home till she +is ready.’</p> + +<p>A sinuous young lady, clad in a sheath of some glittering,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_273">{273}</a></span> shimmering +blackness, turned at the words and held out her hand. ‘How d’ye do, Lord +Belchamber?’ she said. ‘I don’t believe you remember me. Are you asking +for Lady Belchamber? I saw her not five minutes ago with Mr. Morland.’</p> + +<p>With a start Sainty recognised Amy Winston. The unrelieved black of her +dress, and of a long pair of gloves that were pulled up to her elbows, +lent a baleful pallor to her face and neck, and above her brow there +shone in her dusky tresses a single diamond star which, if real, was a +very remarkable ornament to belong to a single woman said mainly to +support herself by the manufacture of magazine tales and occasional +verse. At sight of this siren good Mrs. de Lissac fell back into the +crowd, while the young man to whom Miss Winston was talking, after a +half glance at Sainty, made off not less hastily, so that they were left +facing one another.</p> + +<p>‘I remember you perfectly, Miss Winston,’ Sainty said, ‘although we have +not met very lately. You were kind enough to say you had seen Lady +Belchamber. I wish you would tell me where I should find her; she wanted +to go home early to-night, and I think may be looking for me.’</p> + +<p>‘She didn’t appear to be, ‘replied the young woman, with the faintest +suspicion of insolence; ‘nor, I must say, did she seem in any particular +hurry to get home. She was going into the garden with <i>le beau cousin</i>. +Didn’t you know the garden was lit up? it is one of the great features +of the Sunborough House parties. Let’s go and look for them.’</p> + +<p>Sainty couldn’t well refuse. He was thinking how much more indecent a +very low-necked bodice was on a thin woman than on a fat one.</p> + +<p>‘Wasn’t that Ned Parsons who left you just now?’ he asked, as they made +their way towards the staircase.</p> + +<p>‘Yes. He has become very fashionable since his book was such a success; +he goes everywhere now. By the way,’ she added, with a little laugh, ‘I +suppose that’s why he bolted at sight of you; he thinks you haven’t +forgiven him for the liberty he took with your coming-of-age party.’</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_274">{274}</a></span></p> + +<p>‘I should have thought he had quite as much reason to fear my +grandmother; yet I find him at her house.’</p> + +<p>‘Oh, well—a great ball like this is hardly being at people’s house, you +know; it doesn’t count. But as a matter of fact he and the duchess have +quite made it up. They met at Lady Eva’s, and the duchess prepared to +crush him. “I hear, Mr. Parsons,” said she, in her most regal manner, +“that you have put me in a book.” “Who can have told you such a thing?” +Ned asked, with touching innocence. “The duchess in my book is old and +ridiculous; how <i>could</i> she be meant for you?”<span class="lftspc">’</span></p> + +<p>Sainty couldn’t help laughing. As they emerged into the cooler and less +crowded garden, his guide waited for him to come up beside her. Hitherto +she had preceded him, worming her way through the crowd with a deftness +bred of long habit, at which Sainty marvelled, and talking lightly to +him over her shoulder.</p> + +<p>‘One doesn’t often see you at this sort of thing,’ she said.</p> + +<p>‘It is only the second ball of my life,’ Sainty answered. ‘You were at +my first too.’</p> + +<p>‘Ah! the famous ball immortalised by Parsons. Is it possible that it can +be three years ago?’</p> + +<p>‘Nearly four now.’</p> + +<p>‘Good heavens! so it is. How old we are all getting! Your wife was there +too; it was the year she came out. How little any of us thought what was +going to happen, except perhaps dear Lady Eccleston. I shouldn’t wonder +if <i>she</i> had had an inkling even then.’</p> + +<p>Sainty did not like his companion’s tone, but hardly knew how to resent +it. He had hoped by a rather stiff silence to intimate his want of +appreciation of her particular form of humour, but she continued to +chatter quite unabashed by his unresponsiveness.</p> + +<p>‘Cissy is quite a success,’ she continued; ‘it is astonishing how +quickly she has caught on. I don’t know any one who has more admirers, +unless perhaps it’s Mrs. Jack Purse, and she’s been much longer on the +scene of battle.’</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_275">{275}</a></span></p> + +<p>‘And who may she be?’ Sainty asked, hoping to divert the stream of Miss +Winston’s malevolence from his own vegetable patch.</p> + +<p>‘Lord Belchamber, where <i>have</i> you lived? I wish she could hear you; +she’d die of it. Why, Mrs. Jack is smartest of the smart. She knows +hardly any one but Jews and royalties. I was quite astonished to find +her at the Suffords’ at Whitsuntide. Hylda Sufford said she couldn’t +imagine why she came to her, but I think the Guggenheim’s party for the +prince falling through had something to do with it.’</p> + +<p>‘My wife didn’t tell me she met you at the Suffords’.’</p> + +<p>‘Oh, I don’t know how I came to be asked, but I was.’</p> + +<p>‘And did you amuse yourself?’</p> + +<p>‘Oh, we had great fun. One night we all dressed up for dinner. Hylda was +a harlequin and Ella Dalsany the columbine.’</p> + +<p>‘Do you mean to say that Lady Sufford came down to dinner in tights +before the footmen?’</p> + +<p>‘Gracious, yes! And Gladys Purse was Mephistopheles and Lady Deans +Marguerite; but we all thought Cissy had the best idea.’</p> + +<p>‘And what was that?’ asked Sainty nervously. He had neither asked nor +received any account of the Suffords’ country-house party.</p> + +<p>‘Why, she just put on her best frock and all her diamonds, and said she +was the Traviata.’</p> + +<p>Sainty was not sure that this inspiration of his wife’s exactly appealed +to him. He walked in gloomy silence.</p> + +<p>‘Didn’t she tell you about it?’ asked Miss Winston. ‘She had a +tremendous success. Mrs. Jack, with her red legs and cock’s feather, was +nowhere. Cissy has one immense pull over Gladys Purse as far as the +younger men are concerned. It’s terribly expensive to admire Mrs. Jack; +whereas a charming but impecunious youth like Claude Morland gets many +little advantages by the way from his devotion to his pretty cousin.’</p> + +<p>In spite of an effort to keep her talk on the level of<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_276">{276}</a></span> impartial +ill-nature, Miss Winston could not quite help a touch of scornful +bitterness in her mention of Claude.</p> + +<p>Scattered images had been loosely grouping themselves in Sainty’s brain +as she talked, half-forgotten incidents of his coming-of-age party, the +softly opening door, his encounter with his cousin in the sleeping +house, his examination of Claude as to his feelings for this same +lady—it seemed to him that he began to detect a certain method in the +apparently purposeless gossip with which she was favouring him. And +then, blinding in its sudden illumination, there flashed across his mind +the recollection of the anonymous letters. Here was the key to their +authorship thrust suddenly into his mind. He felt the quick instinctive +recoil of a man about to tread on something nasty, and then a sort of +shuddering pity for what the creature at his side must have suffered. +None knew better than he how they were wounded who put their trust in +Claude Morland. He wanted to turn and hurry from her, or at least to +find something that should stop the flicker of her evil tongue. He found +nothing better to say in the shock of the moment than ‘Do you think you +ought to talk to me so about my wife?’</p> + +<p>Sunborough House has, for the heart of London, a relatively large +garden, which being cunningly illumined with Chinese lanterns and little +coloured lamps, the next day’s papers were already reporting that the +effect was ‘fairy-like.’ Despite these beauties and the somewhat chilly +allurements of an English summer night, only a few of the most +flirtatiously inclined had been persuaded to drag their expensive skirts +over the sooty London grass, and Sainty and his companion had the +further end of the enclosure, which they had now reached, practically to +themselves. As he made his feeble protestation, they came, round a tree, +upon the glass doors of a sort of little summer-house which backed up +against the high railing that divided the garden from the Park.</p> + +<p>Miss Winston gave one glance into the lighted interior. ‘I think we are +<i>de trop</i> here,’ she said, turning to Sainty, and, slipping nimbly from +his side, she vanished in the soft<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_277">{277}</a></span> shadows of the shrubbery. Almost at +the same moment the door was opened from within with such suddenness +that Sainty, who had not the agility of the fair Aimée, could only save +himself from being struck by throwing himself back into the angle formed +by the tree and the railing, and in this small space he now found +himself made a close prisoner by the open door, which was firmly held in +position by the broad back of a man, as he could see through the glass. +He reflected that his position was not a dignified one, that as the +inmates of the summer-house were evidently leaving it, he had only to +stay quiet till they were gone, and then push the door and follow them +at his leisure; and they need never know how nearly he had been tricked +into playing the spy upon them. Miss Winston had evidently counted on +finding her quarry there (perhaps from personal knowledge of his +cousin’s habits), and had hoped that she could so excite his jealousy +that he would not be able, once there, to resist the temptation of +looking. He had no doubt as to whom he would have seen, even before he +recognised Claude’s voice. He was relieved to hear that there was +nothing lover-like in it. Morland spoke in brief business-like tones +through which pierced a scarcely disguised note of annoyance. ‘Then you +won’t see him?’ he said, pausing against the door, evidently continuing +some discussion they had been having.</p> + +<p>‘I daren’t,’ Cissy answered. ‘I’m sure it would kill me.’</p> + +<p>‘Then you must do the other thing; there are not two ways about it; and +the sooner the better. If you’re right, you’ve no time to lose. But are +you quite sure?’</p> + +<p>‘Oh yes, quite. I wasn’t at first, but I am now.’</p> + +<p>‘It’s cursedly unfortunate——’</p> + +<p>They spoke low, and as they moved off he could hear no more.</p> + +<p>Sainty pushed the door, and stepped out from his temporary prison. Of +the fragment of dialogue that he had overheard he did not understand a +word; indeed, he did not pay it any particular attention at the time; he +supposed it to refer to some of the many plans the two were always +discuss<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_278">{278}</a></span>ing. He was accustomed to Cissy’s use of needlessly strong +language. ‘I should simply die of it’ was a common phrase with her for +expressing dislike of the most trivial things. It was not till months +after they were spoken that the words came back to him with a new +significance.</p> + +<p>He followed the retreating figures up the garden, his feeling one of +relief at the failure of an ill-natured plot of which he had been meant +to be the victim. Miss Winston’s motive was not difficult to guess. It +all seemed like something in a novel or a play, curiously theatrical and +unlike life; but at least the <i>dénouement</i> had been essentially +undramatic.</p> + +<p>When he reached the front hall, he found Cissy already cloaked among the +group of people who were waiting for their carriages.</p> + +<p>‘Where <i>have</i> you been?’ she said. ‘I’ve been looking everywhere for +you. I told you I wanted to go home early. I thought you must have +gone.’</p> + +<p>‘I was looking for you,’ Sainty answered. ‘I was told you had gone into +the garden, so I went there after you; but we must just have missed.’</p> + +<p>In the brief transit to their own door neither spoke. Sainty was +wondering if he ought to say anything to Cissy of the ill-will that was +dogging her footsteps, to put her on her guard against evil tongues. A +woman in her exceptional position could not be too careful to furnish no +weapons to scandal. Yet it was not only Miss Winston’s vengeful jealousy +that had warned him to look after his wife. Had not kind little Mrs. de +Lissac tried to suggest that he left her dangerously unguarded? Even the +duchess had hinted the advisability of his being more with Cissy. It was +evident that she was being talked about. Cissy herself seemed to provide +him with just the necessary opportunity for speech, so difficult to find +in their divided lives. To his surprise, instead of going immediately +upstairs on arriving at home, she followed him into his rooms on the +ground-floor. His study, though of Spartan simplicity compared to the +rest of the house, had the indefinable pleasant air of rooms much<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_279">{279}</a></span> lived +and worked in. Everything in it was meant for use, and daily used. Books +seemed to accumulate round Sainty like some natural growth. The one lamp +with its plain green shade lighted the comfortable litter on the big, +serviceable writing-table, and on another table near it was the humble +appliance by help of which, as in his college days, he sometimes +refreshed himself with a midnight cup of tea if he was working late.</p> + +<p>‘How cosy you are in here,’ Cissy said, looking about her. ‘I must have +spent five times as much on my boudoir, but with all its silk walls and +cushions and frills and furbelows it doesn’t look as homey as this.’</p> + +<p>‘You’re never in the house for long enough to do more than scratch off a +dozen notes,’ said Sainty, ‘unless you have people with you. Nothing +ever looks like a home in which people don’t live.’</p> + +<p>‘I think it’s the books,’ Cissy went on. ‘They are wonderful furniture. +I really must get some.’</p> + +<p>She lingered, wandering about the room looking at one thing and another. +‘What’s this for?’ she asked, coming to the old kettle with its lamp.</p> + +<p>‘Sometimes I like a cup of tea if I’m working. It’s a bad habit I got +into at Cambridge.’</p> + +<p>‘How shocking for the nerves, my dear,’ cried Cissy, with a lifelike +imitation of old Lady Firth. ‘Well, you might have a decent-looking +kettle and teapot. I shall have to give you one. Do you mean you could +make a cup of tea now, this minute? What fun! Do make me one. I’m cold +and famished. It will be lovely.’</p> + +<p>Sainty obediently set about lighting the spirit-lamp and preparing the +demanded refreshment. He was not a little puzzled by this latest caprice +of his wife.</p> + +<p>Cissy went to the door, and called the butler. ‘You needn’t sit up,’ she +said. ‘Give me a candle, and then put out the lights and go to bed.’ She +came back, and flung herself into an armchair, her summer wrap of satin +and lace billowing foamlike round her.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_280">{280}</a></span></p> + +<p>Sainty, as he made the tea, was wondering how he could introduce the +subject on which he wanted to speak. It was not once in six months he +would have such an opportunity. He must not let it slip. And yet he was +unwilling to sermonise when for once she was in so friendly a mood. He +brought the cup of tea to her, and stood looking down at her as she +gulped little teaspoonfuls of the hot liquid.</p> + +<p>‘You have never told me anything about your visit to the Suffords’,’ he +said.</p> + +<p>Cissy looked up suddenly. ‘What about it?’ she asked distrustfully.</p> + +<p>‘I mean about the dressing up for dinner and all that. Was it amusing?’</p> + +<p>‘Oh, <i>that</i>!’ said Cissy indifferently, but with an air of relief. ‘I +didn’t suppose it would amuse you to hear about such nonsense. Who told +you?’ she asked, with a return of suspicion.</p> + +<p>‘Miss Winston. I met her to-night. I hadn’t seen her for years.’</p> + +<p>‘That’s a nasty cat,’ Cissy remarked with conviction. ‘She hates me.’</p> + +<p>‘Oh, you know it?’</p> + +<p>‘Know it? Of course I know it. Why——’ She seemed to think better of +what she was going to say, and checked herself. ‘What did she say about +me?’ she asked.</p> + +<p>‘She spoke in a way I didn’t like,’ Sainty answered. ‘For some reason +that woman is your enemy, and I wanted to tell you to be on your guard +against her.’</p> + +<p>‘Oh, thanks, that’s all right. I’m not afraid of Aimée Winston,’ and she +smiled a little cold smile at her own thoughts.</p> + +<p>‘Don’t you think,’ said Sainty, with some hesitation, ‘that you are a +little imprudent sometimes? a little careless of appearances? that, in +fact, you rather give a horrid woman like Miss Winston occasion to take +away your character?’</p> + +<p>‘Oh, my character!’ said Cissy lightly. She had set<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_281">{281}</a></span> down her tea-cup, +and was pulling off her long gloves, and rubbing her round white arms +softly over each other.</p> + +<p>‘I think, you know,’ Sainty went on, ‘you are beginning to be talked +about a little. It was not only Miss Winston, but some one else, a nice +woman, who——’</p> + +<p>‘Mrs. de Lissac, for a fiver!’ interjected Cissy. ‘There’s another woman +who don’t love me, though not for the same reason.’</p> + +<p>‘Well, it <i>was</i> Alice, as it happens,’ Sainty admitted; ‘but she only +said the kindest things, that you were too young and pretty to be left +so much to yourself. You know even the duchess implied that I ought to +be seen with you sometimes.’</p> + +<p>‘Well,’ said Cissy imperturbably, ‘why aren’t you? It seems to me that +it is <i>you</i> who are failing in your duties, according to all these +ladies, not me.’</p> + +<p>The coolness of the retort took Sainty’s breath away for the moment.</p> + +<p>‘But you know,’ he stammered, ‘that there is nothing you would like +less. I have never pretended to any right to control your actions. You +know you are free to amuse yourself as you like. All I ask is that you +won’t compromise yourself, won’t get talked about, and—and all that.’ +He ended rather lamely. He half expected an outburst. To his surprise +she leaned towards him, and laid her hand very gently on his.</p> + +<p>‘Don’t you think,’ she said, and her voice was kind, ‘that you <i>are</i> +rather to blame perhaps? If I <i>am</i> talked about, isn’t it partly your +fault? Can I help it if other men admire me?’ She had unclasped her +cloak, as the tea warmed her, and now, as she rose, it slipped from her +and fell into the chair. She was standing very close to him, a beautiful +woman, her beauty enhanced by everything that dress could do for it. Her +breath was on his cheek, the faint heady fragrance of her garments +troubled his nostrils, the dazzling fairness of her bare shoulders was +close under his eyes. He drew back a little, bewildered. ‘I don’t +understand,’ he murmured. ‘I have tried not to annoy you. You remember +what you said. After that I naturally could not trouble you.’</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_282">{282}</a></span></p> + +<p>Cissy sprang suddenly away, and caught up her cloak. There was in her +movement something of the recoil of a spring that has been forced too +far in one direction and has suddenly escaped.</p> + +<p>‘Ah, no,’ he heard her whisper, ‘I can’t——’ and then aloud, with a +sudden scornful flash, ‘No, <i>of course</i> you can’t understand,’ she said. +‘Heavens! it’s nearly three ... and I, who meant to go to bed early. +There’s a fate against it. Give me my candle. Good night—or what’s left +of it.’ She hurried past him, almost snatching the candle from his hand. +The feeble flicker of it had vanished from the great well of the +staircase, while he still stood in the doorway dumbly wondering.</p> + +<p>What had she meant? Was it possible that she repented of her cruelty, +that she wished——For a moment it had seemed so. Yet he could not +believe it. Vividly he recalled the night of their wedding, her agonised +repetitions that she never could be his. And yet her following him to +his room, her words, still more her looks. He stood there long +irresolute, wondering if he were losing a great opportunity. Once he +started to go and seek her. He looked up at the skylight far above, +where the first faint coming of morning was making a pale twilight. He +listened, but in all the silent greyness of the big house he could hear +no sound but the innumerable ticking of clocks. A breath of chill +discouragement seemed to steal down to him where he stood. He had a +vision of the grotesque figure he should cut, misled by his own fatuity, +and meeting closed doors, or the half concealed impertinence of a +waiting-maid, and slowly he turned back into his own rooms and shut the +door.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_283">{283}</a></span></p> + +<h2><a id="CHAPTER_XXI">CHAPTER XXI</a></h2> + +<p class="nind"><span class="smcap">From</span> the time of their coming to London it had required no effort on +their part for the Belchambers to be very little together, but after the +ball at Sunborough House, Sainty was aware that they avoided each other. +On the rare occasions when they met, he was conscious in his wife’s +manner of a more thinly veiled contempt, while on his side he felt a +shyness with her which was the beginning of dislike.</p> + +<p>There was something almost frightening to him in the absolute quality of +her egotism. In the scene of which he had been a horrified witness +between her and his mother, Lady Charmington had by no means displayed a +conciliatory courtesy, but if she had been rude she had at least lost +her temper in a thoroughly human manner—she had <i>cared</i>. Had Cissy +shown heat in return, he could easily have understood it. What revolted +him in her attitude was the complete indifference as to what her +mother-in-law thought of her, or whether they were on good terms or ill. +The way in which, when she wanted nothing more of them, people simply +ceased to exist for her, seemed to him monstrous. She had summarily +declined to make any overtures towards peace, alleging, not without +justice, that she was the injured party. ‘Lady Charmington had insulted +and abused her in her own house, and she had taken it with the meekness +of a lamb. She really could not see what there was for <i>her</i> to +apologise about; she was quite ready to <i>accept</i> an apology if her +mother-in-law wished to make one’; but that lady, oddly enough, showed +no signs of any such desire. She had departed next day without so much +as seeing Cissy again, merely mentioning to her son before she left that +he would probably suffer the<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_284">{284}</a></span> curse of childlessness, as a punishment +for his wife’s behaviour and his own inability to guide and chasten her.</p> + +<p>So the young couple drifted more and more apart, Sainty realising with a +terrified fatalism the extent to which this creature, at once so hard +and so capricious, who bore his name and spent his money, yet had never +been his wife and had become almost a stranger to him, had it in her +power to injure him irretrievably.</p> + +<p>After the duchess’s ball he received no more anonymous letters, which +confirmed him in his theory of their authorship. Miss Winston, having +played her trump card in the disclosure she thought she had made to him, +evidently judged it useless to continue the letters which were meant to +lead up to it. One day, however, the post brought him an envelope which, +at first sight, he made sure was the beginning of a new series. He was +on the point of destroying it, unopened, when he was aware of his own +coat-of-arms and crest gorgeously emblazoned on the back, and a closer +inspection proved that the illiterateness of the handwriting was not +feigned but perfectly genuine. It was from Lady Arthur, and contained +the unwelcome news that his brother had been ill, more seriously than +she had at first imagined, and a request that he would come and see him. +‘He won’t make the sign,’ she wrote, ‘and I expect he’d be very angry +with me if he knew I was writing, but all the same I know it would be a +comfort to him to see you. He’s worrying about money matters. You see, +being so ill has made him think if he was to die what would become of me +and the children.’ It was put rather crudely, but Sainty admitted that +it was a legitimate cause for solicitude, and hailed this proof that +Arthur was taking thought for others. Even if it were the others who +were taking thought for themselves, a poor woman could not be blamed for +wishing to secure the future of her helpless offspring. He decided that +he must go down and see his brother. He was sorry Arthur had been so +ill; he never remembered him ill in his life, since the measles and +chicken-pox of early childhood.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_285">{285}</a></span></p> + +<p>Sainty did not judge it necessary to say anything to Cissy about his +expedition; it required no diplomacy on his part to conceal any of his +movements; if he should be absent for a week, she would neither know nor +care, and he found by consultation of Bradshaw that he could go and +return in the long summer day. It was a relief to him that he need not +spend a night in the house of kinsfolk whom he did not receive in his +own. The situation was awkward and unpleasant, and when he thought of +all that Arthur’s marriage had made him do and suffer, it must be +confessed that he approached his brother’s home and wife with invincible +repugnance.</p> + +<p>The Chamberses had taken up their abode (of course in a hunting country) +in an old vicarage from which a victim of shrunken tithes had been glad +to move into a smaller house. Arthur had added new and magnificent +stables that had cost Sainty a pretty penny before they were completed. +The house itself might have been transplanted bodily from the heart of +Belgravia. It was of such commonplace and uncharacteristic architecture +that even the process known to Lady Arthur as ‘Smartenin’ the old place +up a bit’ had failed materially to disfigure it. It was approached +through all the dignity of a lodge gate and ‘carriage sweep,’ which +swept round a mound of damp laurels opposite the front door, and +deposited Sainty at a small Ionic portico of stucco pillars. Having +confided his name and business to a dingy man in a shiny dress-coat who +opened the door to him, Belchamber was told ‘<span class="lftspc">’</span>is lordship was expecting +of ‘im, and would ‘is lordship please to walk this way,’ and followed +the butler upstairs to Arthur’s room. He smiled to see how exactly the +interior of the house corresponded with his anticipations: everything +was modern, ugly, expensive, and already shabby. A great litter of caps, +gloves, sticks, and hunting-crops encumbered the hall, together with a +female garden-hat ornamented with huge red bows and faded muslin +poppies. A strong smell of cooking pervaded the staircase, and from some +of the many open doors came the sound of wome<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_286">{286}</a></span>n’s voices in dispute, and +high above all else the shrill wailing of a baby.</p> + +<p>It was with a conflict of feelings that Sainty found himself once more +face to face with Arthur, whom he had not seen since his fruitless +attempt to detach him from the woman who was now his wife. They had +parted as boys, they met again as married men, and with no particularly +happy experiences behind them. Sainty noted with pained surprise how +much of his brother’s good looks had been what the French call ‘the +devil’s beauty.’ That boyish freshness was gone for ever, and the face +had gained nothing of manly dignity in its place.</p> + +<p>The young man was sitting propped with pillows in a big easy-chair, +arrayed in a gorgeous silk dressing-gown. His recent illness had given +him a pinched bluish-white look about the nose, but the colour had set +and hardened on the cheek bones, and the eyes had a tired shifty look. +The beautiful curls were already worn a little thin at the temples, and +an absurd little fair moustache seemed to be ineffectually trying with +its waxed points to conceal the two lines that ill-temper had traced +beside the nostrils.</p> + +<p>‘Very good of you to come,’ he said, as he held out his hand.</p> + +<p>‘I’m so sorry to hear you’ve been ill. What was it?’ Sainty asked, as he +sat down beside him, struggling with a lump that would rise in his +throat.</p> + +<p>‘I fancy I’ve been pretty bad,’ Arthur answered. ‘Some superior form of +mulligrubs. I don’t believe the damn fool of a doctor knows quite what +<i>was</i> the matter. I think he was frightened himself. He gets into +corners with Topsy and whispers, till I want to break his head. I’ve +pulled through all right, but, of course, another time I mightn’t, you +know, and that’s what I wanted to see you about.’</p> + +<p>There was no suggestion that he wanted to see him for any other reason. +They met after two years of absence and estrangement, and after what +seemed a very fair chance that they might never meet again. The elder +brother was husky<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_287">{287}</a></span> with emotion, the younger as unmoved by any thought +of their common past as though it were his solicitor whom he had +summoned to the discussion of a matter of business.</p> + +<p>His coldness reacted on Sainty, and helped him to steady his voice as he +answered, ‘Your wife intimated in her letter that you were troubled +about money matters.’</p> + +<p>‘That’s it. You see, as long as I live I’ve got this cursed pittance. A +fellow can’t live like a gentleman on it, but at least we don’t starve. +But as the missus pointed out to me, if I was to hop the twig, there’d +be just nothing for her and the kids; so I made her write and tell you I +was ill; I thought I owed it to her. She grumbles a good deal, and she’s +a damn bad manager, and we have our rows, but she’s not a bad sort of an +old girl. Last winter she went without a pony for her shay, so as I +could keep another hunter. Now that was rather decent of her. I’m not +very partial to the kids myself; it’s unbelievable how they yell; but I +shouldn’t like ’em to be left in the gutter, you know.’</p> + +<p>‘Do you know me so little, Arthur, that you could suppose, if anything +happened to you, I shouldn’t provide for your wife and children?’</p> + +<p>‘Well, you were never a particularly free parter, you know, old man, and +then you didn’t approve of the connection. How was I to know?’</p> + +<p>‘Of course, in case of your death, I should continue the same allowance +to your widow.’</p> + +<p>‘Would you now? Well, <i>that’s</i> all right. But I say, suppose <i>you</i> were +to kick? you’re not so remarkably strong, you know, yourself.’</p> + +<p>‘In that case, your boy comes in for the whole thing, and of course the +trustees would make a suitable provision for his mother.’</p> + +<p>‘Oh, gammon! we don’t count on that, you know. What’s to prevent your +having children yourself? By the way, isn’t Lady Belchamber showing any +signs yet?’</p> + +<p>‘Er—no; as a matter of fact—not——’</p> + +<p>‘Well, she’d better look sharp, or we shall begin to<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_288">{288}</a></span> indulge unholy +hopes. But, bar chaff, you couldn’t put it in writing, could you, about +the allowance going on in case we were both to what the papers call +“join the majority”?’</p> + +<p>‘If it will be any comfort to you I can, but I should think you could +trust me; and in case I should ever have an heir, I promise at once to +add a codicil to my will, providing for your children.’</p> + +<p>‘Well, let’s have that in writing too; then there can’t be any mistake +about it, and Topsy’ll let me alone. She’s got her damned old mother +with her (she’s an old vulgarian, I tell you), and the two of ’em have +nagged my life out of me about this. I never will have old Mother Mug +here, but I was going to town for a lar—on business, if I hadn’t been +taken ill, and so I said she could have her to keep her company while I +was away, and I’m blowed if the old devil didn’t turn up, just the +same.’</p> + +<p>‘How do you like this place on the whole?’ Sainty asked.</p> + +<p>‘It isn’t bad in the winter; just between two packs, you know; and one +or two of the people round have given me some shooting. But at this time +o’ year it’s simply infernal; not one blessed thing to do. As I told +you, if it hadn’t been for this cursed illness, I was going to town for +a bit; if I didn’t get away now and then I should rot and burst.’</p> + +<p>‘Is there nobody you see or like in the neighbourhood?’</p> + +<p>Arthur winced. ‘Well, you see,’ he said, ‘most of the huntin’ lot go +away in the summer, and the regular county sort of set ain’t +particularly lively; and then the women jib a bit at Topsy. One or two +of ’em have called, but not many. Our parson and his wife toady her +freely; they ain’t particular as long as she’s my lady, and will give +’em money for the school treat. I assure you she’s becoming quite the +charitable religious lady; nothing else to do, poor girl. But most of +these county women are a damned stiff-backed lot; they ain’t like +Londoners.’</p> + +<p>At this point in the conversation the dingy butler, who looked like the +‘heavy father’ of a not very prosperous<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_289">{289}</a></span> travelling company, came to say +that ‘lunching was served, and Lady Harthur Chambers ‘oped Lord +Belchamber would do ’er the honour to come down.’ He also brought +Arthur’s meal on a tray, over which the invalid let fly a volley of +curses: ‘the napkin was dirty, the soup was cold, the bread was stale; +he could take it back to the damn cook and tell her,—— her, if she +couldn’t send up a decent basin of broth to a sick man,—— her, and—— +her, she’d better—— well go.’</p> + +<p>To this rolling accompaniment, Sainty got himself out of the room, +saying he would come up again after lunch, and was conducted by the +seedy retainer into the presence of his sister-in-law, who received him +with much state.</p> + +<p>The three years that had elapsed since their last meeting had not +treated Lady Arthur more kindly than her husband. They were in her case +three years considerably nearer to the term of youth. In the days of the +supper at the Hotel Fritz she had been a decidedly handsome young woman, +if a little over-florid. In the interval she had grown more florid and +less handsome, and suggested an impression of having run to seed. A +growing tendency to corpulence was resisted by violent compression, with +disastrous results to the complexion, imperfectly corrected by a +plentiful application of <i>blanc de perle</i>. Her attire was gorgeous +beyond the needs of the occasion, but left somewhat to be desired in the +matter of tidiness, and exhaled a heavy scent of musk that made Sainty +feel sick. She presented him to her mother, a terrible warning of what +she was on the highroad to become. This lady was a shorter and twenty +years’ older edition of Lady Arthur, more coarsely painted, more frankly +vulgar, more consentingly fat, and she wore an olive green wig of Brutus +curls.</p> + +<p>‘Do you like the country, Mrs. de Vere?’ Sainty asked, as they sat at +meat together in heavy silence.</p> + +<p>‘Muggins,’ the lady corrected, with a giggle. ‘De Vere was Maria’s—I +mean Cynthy’s—stage name.’</p> + +<p>‘My <i>Nong de Tayarter</i>,’ said her daughter, with a warning<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_290">{290}</a></span> look at the +dingy man, who was handing the potatoes with an air of forced +abstraction.</p> + +<p>‘Well,’ said Mrs. Muggins, ‘I was connected with the profession myself +when I was young; there’s nothing to be ashamed of in it. It’s an art, +and nowadays very highly considered. But you was askin’, my lord, if I +liked the country. For a little visit like this, I don’t say, but to +live in, year in, year out—no thank you. It may be all very well for +them that were born to it, but give me London. I like to see my +fellow-creeturs. I should think Cynthia’d die of the mopes in this +place. I should, I know, if I was her.’</p> + +<p>‘It isn’t very lively,’ assented her daughter.</p> + +<p>‘I can’t think whatever you find to do all day,’ said the elder lady.</p> + +<p>‘I have my children,’ said Cynthia, with the air of a Cornelia, ‘and I’m +getting quite interested in the village and the poor people.’</p> + +<p>‘Well, it wouldn’t amuse <i>me</i>,’ said her mother. ‘I call it cruel of +your brother, my lord, to keep her mewed up in a place like this. Such a +winter as she’s had. It’s all very well for him, ‘untin’ five days a +week, and shootin’ with Squire this, that, and the other, but what fun +does <i>she</i> get out of it, poor child? Their stuck-up wives don’t even +come and see her, and the moment the ‘untin’ and shootin‘ ’s over, my +lord was off to London and Newmarket, if he hadn’t been took ill. He was +hardly here a week last summer. Does he offer to take <i>her</i>?—not him, +not if he knows it.’</p> + +<p>‘Three weeks at the sea was all the change <i>I</i> got last year,’ said Lady +Arthur.</p> + +<p>‘And <i>that</i> I had to make you insist upon, or you wouldn’t have got +<i>that</i>,’ chimed in mamma.</p> + +<p>‘It was more for baby’s sake than my own,’ said Cynthia; ‘the child +needed sea air.’</p> + +<p>‘Dear little Arthur was baby then,’ explained Mrs. Muggins; ‘the second +little dear wasn’t even expected. Now there’s two of ’em they’ll want a +change more than ever.’</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_291">{291}</a></span></p> + +<p>‘You have two children?’ Sainty said. ‘Are they both boys?’</p> + +<p>‘Both of ’em,’ assented Lady Arthur proudly. ‘Poor as we are, there’s +many people would be glad of my two little boys, or even one of ’em,’ +and she pointed this delicate allusion by a side glance at her mother, +as who should say ‘I had him there.’</p> + +<p>The ill-concealed hostility of these people, the way they abused his +brother to him, his sister-in-law’s hint at the want of ease in their +circumstances, all combined to make Sainty’s visit thoroughly +uncomfortable.</p> + +<p>‘What’s been the matter with Arthur?’ he asked, to change the subject.</p> + +<p>‘Eating and drinking too much,’ responded Mrs. Muggins readily. ‘And so +I told him. “Arthur, my boy,” I says to him, “you mark my words: you’re +digging your grave with your teeth.”<span class="lftspc">’</span></p> + +<p>Lady Arthur simpered. ‘It’s rather awkward to talk about insides to +gentlemen,’ she said; ‘but it was of that nature. The doctor said he had +had a narrow squeak of—what was the word?—perrynaitis, or perrytaitis +or something. I told him he couldn’t expect ladies to remember his long +Latin names, but it was some kind of inflammation from what he said.’</p> + +<p>‘What she don’t tell you,’ put in the irrepressible Mrs. Muggins, ‘was +how she nursed him. Three nights she never went to bed nor had her +clothes off her, and, as often as not, sworn at for her pains.’</p> + +<p>‘I only did my duty,’ said Cynthia nobly; ‘but I hope I shan’t often +have to do the same again.’</p> + +<p>‘What she wants,’ said Mrs. Muggins, ‘after being shut up so much, and +the anxiety and all, is a good change. Why don’t you come up and stop +with me a bit, when I go back, and see the theatres and the shops? The +spring fashions are very pretty: sunshades are very tasty this year, I +must say.’</p> + +<p>‘I do want a new sunshade,’ Lady Arthur admitted, ‘and for that matter, +lots of things; but Arthur don’t care <i>how</i> <span class="pagenum"><a id="page_292">{292}</a></span>I’m dressed, <i>now</i>,’ and +she removed a discoloured tear with the untorn corner of an imitation +lace handkerchief.</p> + +<p>As they were leaving the dining-room, she detained Sainty a moment to +whisper in his ear, ‘Has Arthur spoken to you about what I wrote?’</p> + +<p>‘Oh yes,’ said Sainty, ‘we have talked about it. I assured him that +would be all right.’</p> + +<p>Lady Arthur looked relieved. ‘What should I have?’ she asked.</p> + +<p>‘Oh!—er—the same as now,’ Sainty gasped.</p> + +<p>‘You’ll think me very mercenary, I fear,’ said his sister-in-law, with +an attempt to climb back into the grand manner from which she had so +swiftly descended. ‘I don’t care for myself, you know; I’ve worked for +my living before, but a mother must think of her children; even a bear +will fight for its cubs.’</p> + +<p>The ‘cubs’ were presently produced, of course. The baby was a mere +bundle of lace and ribbons; but the elder child, who appeared to be +nearly two, and had been most carefully combed and starched and +decorated for the occasion, was set upon two chubby legs within the +door, and stared stolidly at his uncle. Sainty tried hard to see +something of Arthur in the little boy who would probably be his heir, +but the younger Arthur was a most unmistakable miniature edition of Mrs. +Muggins, with the same prominent eyes and hanging lower lip, and even +his ‘oiled and curled Assyrian locks’ suggested a sort of childish +imitation of the Brutus wig. His grandmother was fully aware of the +likeness, and evidently thought it must be a cause of unmixed +gratification to Lord Belchamber.</p> + +<p>‘He favours our side of the family,’ she said proudly, ‘and, though I +say it that should not, a handsomer little picture of a cherub I don’t +think you’ll easily find.’</p> + +<p>‘Give uncle a sweet kiss, dearie,’ said the proud mother; but on +Sainty’s stooping to receive the embrace, the amiable infant set up such +a piteous howl, in which the baby promptly joined, that both children +had to be conducted into retirement.</p> + +<p>‘I think,’ said Sainty, ‘if you’ll let me, I’ll go up and see<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_293">{293}</a></span> my +brother again for a few minutes. I see I must be leaving in about half +an hour, if I am to catch the afternoon train up. I told the fly to come +back for me.’</p> + +<p>‘Well, if you <i>must</i> go,’ said his sister-in-law, ‘there’s no good +pressing you to stop. I’m afraid the lunch was not what you’re +accustomed to. No doubt you have a French cook and every luxury, but +<i>we</i> have to cut our coats according to the cloth, you know. I may not +see you again before you go, I’m going to take mamma for a bit of an +airing. I hope Lady Belchamber is well. She has no children, I think.’</p> + +<p>‘Well,’ said Arthur, when Sainty returned to him, ‘what do you think of +old Mother Mug? <i>She’s</i> a beauty, isn’t she?’</p> + +<p>‘She seemed to think you were a little inconsiderate about your wife, +that she needed a certain amount of change and amusement; and, indeed, +that poor woman must have a dull life, so very different to everything +she has been accustomed to.’</p> + +<p>‘No doubt the pair of ’em have been abusing me finely, and, of course, +you take their part. What the devil’s she got to complain of, I should +like to know? Haven’t I made an honest woman of her, and jolly well +muckered my own life by doing it? I suppose she expects me to give up +the little fun I do get, and take her to London and show her round. +Don’t you marry your mistress, old man. You can take it from me, it +isn’t good enough. But there!—you <i>are</i> married, and you haven’t got a +mistress.’</p> + +<p>Sainty did not escape without the usual demand for money, which Arthur +irritated him by calling a loan.</p> + +<p>‘What’s the good of talking like that?’ Sainty said. ‘You know you +haven’t the slightest intention of repaying it. As you are always +rubbing it into me that you can’t live on what I give you, is it likely +that next quarter, or next year, you will be able to save the amount you +require out of the same insufficient allowance?’</p> + +<p>‘You don’t suppose I enjoy having to ask you for every dirty penny I +want?’ retorted the invalid sullenly.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_294">{294}</a></span></p> + +<p>‘Then why don’t you try to live within your income, and then you +wouldn’t have to?’</p> + +<p>‘I must say you always make it as unpleasant as possible.’</p> + +<p>‘Well, don’t let’s wrangle about money; I give it just the same. I’ll +send you a cheque. Good-bye, and I hope you’ll soon be better.’</p> + +<p>‘And these are the people who are to come after me!’ Sainty said to +himself bitterly as the train took him back to London. He had a vision +of Belchamber, his beloved Belchamber, overrun and ravaged by these +barbarians; of Cynthia ‘smartenin’ the old place a bit,’ with the aid of +Mrs. Muggins’s suggestions as to what would be ‘tastey’; of Arthur +cutting down the trees and selling the books and pictures to buy more +horses and lose bigger bets; of that unattractive child with its stiff +curls and goggle eyes coming in turn to make final havoc of the ruin its +parents had left. And it was for this end that he had given his name, +his future, his honour, into the keeping of a beautiful parasitic +creature without heart or conscience, who obeyed no law but her own +imperious appetites!</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_295">{295}</a></span></p> + +<h2><a id="CHAPTER_XXII">CHAPTER XXII</a></h2> + +<p class="nind"><span class="smcap">Although</span> Belchamber had become a very different place from the home of +his childhood, it was still a relief to Sainty to get into the country. +It must be confessed that the parties with which Cissy delighted to fill +the house were extraordinarily unexacting in the attention they demanded +from their host, so that he was able, as in London, to lead very much +his own life, undisturbed by his wife or her guests. Except at dinner, +or in occasional passage meetings, as he slunk from the library to his +own sacred quarters in the western pavilion, he seldom met any of them.</p> + +<p>Moreover, the young couple were, for the moment, nearly alone. Most of +the society which Lady Belchamber specially affected was either at Cowes +and Goodwood, or devoting a fortnight to the care of its property and +the reception of its schoolboys before the annual round of Scottish +visits. Sainty had been passingly surprised at Cissy’s decision to +forego a very gay house-party in Sussex, and return quietly to +Belchamber at the beginning of August. The young woman did not seem to +be in her accustomed health; indeed, she admitted she was quite done up, +and needed rest; there had even been a talk of ‘waters.’ She had begun +to be not quite herself before they left London, and then there had been +the curious incident of her fainting at her own party.</p> + +<p>Quite early in May, before Lady Charmington’s unfortunate visit, Cissy +had announced her intention of giving some kind of entertainment, but +the difficulty of deciding on what form it should take, and the +impossibility of finding an evening when it would not interfere with +something else she wanted to do, had combined to defer the execution of +the plan till<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_296">{296}</a></span> nearly the end of the season. She found it so much easier +to go to parties which other people had the trouble of arranging than to +take the trouble to arrange one for herself, that Sainty had begun to +hope the whole thing might fall through, when she suddenly fixed a date, +called in Lady Eccleston to assist her, and telegraphed to Roumania to +offer a fabulous sum to a celebrated violinist, who had not been heard +in England that summer. By eking out this star with the only two +expensive singers who had not yet left the opera, and rigorously +excluding from her invitation-list any one to whom it could be a +pleasure or excitement to be present, she managed to have a very +brilliant and select little gathering indeed, which, but for the +unfortunate <i>contretemps</i> above mentioned, would have been an +unqualified success. The right dowagers were slumbering in the front +row, the right younger people were jostling and chattering in the +doorways, the talented performer was executing his most incredible +calisthenics, when Sainty, jammed into a far corner of one of the big +rooms, became aware of a bustle and commotion near the door of the +boudoir. People moved and heaved and whispered, and ceased to bestow +even a perfunctory attention on the music, which came rather abruptly to +an end. He saw Claude Morland elbow through the crowd with a bottle and +a glass, and some one near him said ‘Lady Belchamber has fainted.’</p> + +<p>Among the many duties thrown unexpectedly on him by the catastrophe, +appeasing the anxiety of the guests and soothing the susceptibilities of +the artists, he was startled by the speech, accompanied by a meaning +pressure of the hand, with which Alice de Lissac took leave of him. ‘I +am <i>so</i> glad,’ she whispered; ‘<i>now</i>, I feel sure all will come right.’ +Enlightenment as to her meaning came most unexpectedly from his +mother-in-law next morning when he inquired of her after his wife’s +health. Lady Eccleston, who had been the last to depart the night +before, arrived at an amazingly early hour, and after a long visit to +her daughter was still able to appear in Sainty’s apartments almost +before he had finished his<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_297">{297}</a></span> breakfast. She was evidently in high +good-humour and began by embracing him tenderly.</p> + +<p>‘How did you find Cissy?’ Sainty asked. ‘I haven’t sent to ask after her +yet for fear of disturbing her. She seemed quite worn out last night; I +think she has been doing much too much.’</p> + +<p>‘She is not <i>ill</i>,’ said Lady Eccleston, with a world of meaning. ‘I +will not allow that she is <i>ill</i>.’</p> + +<p>‘I am glad to hear it,’ said Sainty. ‘I thought she looked very seedy +last night, I must say.’</p> + +<p>‘She will admit nothing,’ continued her ladyship. ‘I think I have told +you <i>how</i> delicate and reticent she is on certain subjects. Even to +<i>me</i>, her mother, and you know we have always been like sisters, she +will tell nothing. Do you know what I think? she will tell no one till +she has told <i>you</i>. That’s it; you may be sure that’s it. She will run +no risk of your hearing it from any one but her. For heaven’s sake don’t +let her know I have even hinted at anything——’</p> + +<p>‘What <i>do</i> you mean, Lady Eccleston?’ Sainty gasped, a supposition of +which only he knew the full grotesqueness beginning to dawn on him.</p> + +<p>‘Dear, sweet, innocent Sainty!’ cried Lady Eccleston, in a transport of +archness. ‘You and my girl are made for one another. You are like a pair +of child-lovers in a fairy-tale. I have told nothing, remember that; I +will tell nothing. I will not rob dear Cissy of the joy of announcing it +herself. Besides, as I say, I can only conjecture; she has absolutely +refused to admit it.’</p> + +<p>‘Dear Lady Eccleston,’ cried Sainty, in great perturbation, ‘I can’t +pretend to misunderstand you; but, believe me, I think you are wrong. I +am sure—I am <i>almost</i> sure—it cannot be as you suspect.’</p> + +<p>Lady Eccleston shook her head and pursed her lips mysteriously. ‘A +mother is not deceived,’ she said. ‘But recollect I have told you +nothing. Cissy would never forgive me. I will not even congratulate you +till <i>you</i> tell <i>me</i>. Meanwhile I shan’t breathe a word, not a word. +Trust me’; and<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_298">{298}</a></span> she again folded her son-in-law to her heart. ‘It was +the one thing wanting to our happiness,’ burst from her, as it were +involuntarily, as she hurried away, leaving Sainty too much bewildered +to protest.</p> + +<p>Two days later they went into the country. Cissy was certainly not +feeling well. She asked Sainty if he would mind going sooner than had +been settled; she thought rest and country air would set her up. No, she +wouldn’t see a doctor; there was nothing wrong with her. ‘I’m just +knocked up with being on the go, morning, noon, and night, for months.’</p> + +<p>‘Your mother suggested the weirdest explanation,’ said Sainty.</p> + +<p>Cissy flushed crimson and then grew so pale that he feared she was going +to repeat the performance of the night before.</p> + +<p>‘Mamma really is a bigger fool than I thought,’ she said hotly. ‘I +didn’t think she would have had the idiotcy to carry that nonsense to +<i>you</i>. What did you say?’</p> + +<p>‘What could I say? I told her it was impossible, but she would listen to +nothing.’</p> + +<p>‘Of course it’s impossible! no one should know that better than <i>you</i>.’</p> + +<p>On the afternoon of his first day at Belchamber Sainty ordered his +little cart and drove as in duty bound to pay his respects to his +mother. He had not seen Lady Charmington since she had left his house in +wrath, and though he had written to her several times he had received +only the briefest and coldest answers. It was not, therefore, with any +very pleasing anticipations of the coming interview that he set out to +visit her.</p> + +<p>It was one of those perfect, cool autumnal days which English people +mistake for summer. The open spaces of the park were dappled with +pleasant temperate sunlight like the flanks of the deer that fed there. +Hundreds of rabbits squatted in the familiar glades or tilted themselves +hastily into covert as he passed. Never had his home looked lovelier or +more peaceful, or appealed more strongly to him. The woods and coppices +called to him with a thousand voices,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_299">{299}</a></span> and his poor heart, starved of +all human emotion, answered as only the lonely and despised among her +children can answer to the great cry of Nature the universal mother.</p> + +<p>Then, as he drove along the smooth green alleys, there came to him the +recollection of his brother and of the woman his brother had married. +Ever since his visit to them Sainty had thought much about his +sister-in-law, and had striven in his own mind to do her justice; +terrible as she was to him æsthetically, he was forced to admit that she +was a better sort than her husband. She did think of her children and do +her duty by them according to her lights, whereas Arthur thought of no +one but himself. After all, were Cissy’s ideals in life, except +superficially, much less vulgar than Lady Arthur’s? He sometimes +wondered if it were not better to have been frankly improper before +marriage and settle down into an irreproachable wife and mother, than to +be a frivolous little worldling, refusing to live with her husband, and +lending numberless occasions to the tongue of scandal.</p> + +<p>Argue as he would, and rigidly impartial as he strove to make his mental +attitude, the thought of his successors poisoned the beauty of the day +for him and blotted out the sunshine. It was vain to tell himself that +Cynthia’s standard of personal conduct was higher than Cecilia’s. Her +ghastly veneer of gentility shocked his taste more than even her +mother’s frank vulgarity or Arthur’s callous selfishness. To think of +her and her shiny-faced babies at Belchamber was to profane his most +sacred associations.</p> + +<p>He soon found that he need not have doubted his mother’s welcome. She +received him with what, for her, was almost cordiality. On the rare +occasions when Lady Charmington assumed a staid and humorless jocosity, +she was wont to affect a Scottish accent and manner of speech, and +Sainty noted with surprise this mark of unusual hilarity. ‘Come ben the +house, man,’ she remarked; ‘the sight of ye is good for sair een.’</p> + +<p>‘How pretty you have made everything,’ said Sainty. ‘Your borders are +lovely. There is no one like you for a garden, mother.’</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_300">{300}</a></span></p> + +<p>Lady Charmington looked round her with a certain pride. ‘Yes, I think +I’ve improved the place,’ she said. ‘Do ye know these late-flowering +delphiniums? this is the only kind that blooms as late as this. I +thought at one time my hollyhocks were going to have the disease, but +I’ve brought them through it.’</p> + +<p>‘They are lovely; and how beautiful these roses are.’</p> + +<p>‘That’s the pink Ayrshire; it’s not so common as the white. You know the +big bush in the corner of the west wing, I brought it from Scotland with +me soon after I married; these are some cuttings from it I took a few +years ago, and last autumn I moved them here; haven’t they grown?’ Thus +talking on safe subjects, they entered the house, where Sainty’s +admiration was claimed and freely given for various ingenious +arrangements and improvements.</p> + +<p>‘And how’s Cissy?’ asked Lady Charmington presently, a certain subdued +excitement in her look and manner.</p> + +<p>‘It is very good of you, mother, to ask after her so kindly,’ Sainty +answered. ‘She doesn’t seem to me very well; she’s a little knocked up +with all her gaieties, I think, but she won’t admit there’s anything +wrong with her which a little rest and country air won’t set right.’</p> + +<p>‘Wrong with her! certainly not; what should ail her?’ cried Lady +Charmington, with the same curious air of meaning more than she said.</p> + +<p>‘I hope,’ Sainty began awkwardly, ‘that you won’t remember her rudeness +and bad behaviour to you last May; it would be terribly painful to me to +have you on bad terms with one another. I quite admit she behaved +shockingly to you, but I hope you will overlook it. I feel sure if you +will come and see her you’ll find her ready to meet you more than +half-way.’</p> + +<p>‘I bear no malice,’ said Lady Charmington, with bewildering good-humour; +‘and indeed I could find it in my heart to forgive her at this moment +worse things than a little incivility to myself.’</p> + +<p>‘That’s very kind of you,’ Sainty said; ‘but why specially at this +moment?’ He was beginning to feel uncomfortable.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_301">{301}</a></span></p> + +<p>Lady Charmington leaned forward and looked sharply in his face.</p> + +<p>‘Is it possible you really don’t know?’ she said. ‘You are the queerest +couple I ever came across. I made sure you had come here to announce it +to me, and I didn’t want to take the wind out of your sails by letting +you see that I knew it already.’</p> + +<p>‘Know what? announce what?’ cried Sainty. He was beginning to divine his +mother’s meaning; his mind reverted to his conversation with Lady +Eccleston. Why did all these women persist in mocking him with +congratulations on the impossible as though it were an accomplished +fact? ‘Have you heard from Lady Eccleston?’ he asked, with apparent +irrelevance.</p> + +<p>Lady Charmington pounced on the implied admission.</p> + +<p>‘Oho! So you are not quite as ignorant as you pretend! But why should +you try to keep it from <i>me</i>, when you must know it is the bit of news +which it would give me more pleasure to hear than anything in the +world?’</p> + +<p>‘Dear mother,’ said Sainty, ‘do you suppose if I had any such news to +tell as you seem to imagine, that I shouldn’t have rushed to you with +it? But it’s not so. It can’t be so.’</p> + +<p>‘But why shouldn’t it be so?’ asked Lady Charmington.</p> + +<p>‘Believe me, it’s impossible,’ Sainty was beginning, and then +recollected that he couldn’t tell his mother <i>why</i> it was impossible. ‘I +don’t know what’s come to everybody,’ he said lamely.</p> + +<p>‘Why did you ask if I had heard from Lady Eccleston? It shows you +guessed what I meant.’</p> + +<p>‘Because she too has run away with the same idea, and when I told her +that she must be mistaken, she only became more positive.’</p> + +<p>‘You see,’ said Lady Charmington triumphantly, ‘her own mother thinks +so, and <i>she</i> ought to know.’</p> + +<p>‘But really, really, I feel sure you are all wrong. I don’t want you to +build on this, mother, because I know what a disappointment it will be +to you.’</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_302">{302}</a></span></p> + +<p>‘Do you mean to say your wife is not going to have a baby?’</p> + +<p>‘I certainly think not; she said herself her mother had been talking +nonsense. Did she tell it to you as a fact, in so many words?’</p> + +<p>‘Lady Eccleston’s style is sometimes a little involved, but I certainly +took her letter to mean—— Oh yes—there’s not a doubt of it; she +<i>can’t</i> have meant anything else.’ Lady Charmington turned over a pile +of letters on her writing-table, and selecting one began to mumble +through it. ‘Um, um, London emptying fast, just on the wing myself, +cannot go till I’ve found some one to read to my dear blind ... um, um, +um. Ah! here it is: “I cannot refrain from giving you a hint of the +great news. I know how it will rejoice your heart. But don’t betray me +till the dear children tell you themselves. I should not say a word +about it, only they are both so absurdly reticent and sensitive; it is +quite possible they may neither of them mention it. Dear Cissy was +almost angry with me; she tried to make out I was mistaken, but a +mother’s eye! you and I know when....” Well, we needn’t go into all +that; but you see, her mother’s convinced.’</p> + +<p>‘Well,’ said Sainty, ‘I can only set on the other side that Cissy denies +it herself.’</p> + +<p>‘How about her being taken ill at the party?’ It was evident that Lady +Eccleston had gone into details.</p> + +<p>‘People may faint without being in that condition,’ protested Sainty; +‘no one should know that better than I. Believe me, you are all building +too much on that momentary loss of consciousness, which may as likely as +not have come from tight lacing.’</p> + +<p>Lady Charmington shook her head impatiently. ‘Her mother says she has +never been known to faint before in her life; and any one can see with +half an eye she has always laced....’</p> + +<p>After this the conversation languished perceptibly. It was obviously +futile to go on discussing the prospects of an heir, when the parties +principally concerned agreed in denying<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_303">{303}</a></span> that there <i>were</i> any +prospects. Lady Charmington, ‘convinced against her will,’ was very much +‘of the same opinion still’; but balked of the topic on which she burned +to dilate, she resolutely declined every other which her son brought +forward. Sainty’s well-meant efforts to extract information on local or +farming subjects were killed by the stony indifference she opposed to +them, so that he presently took his leave, without obtaining more than a +very qualified and doubtful agreement to his suggestion that she should +come and see Cissy.</p> + +<p>At first the pertinacity of their two mothers in attributing miraculous +offspring to Cissy and himself had seemed only a peculiarly galling +mystification. Sainty never knew at just what moment a horrible solution +of the puzzle had begun to suggest itself to him as possible. Had he +fought against the conviction from the first, or did it come to him +slowly and insidiously as his mother marshalled the reasons for her +belief against his repeated denials? He could put his finger on no point +in time when the suspicion had flashed into his brain; but by the time +he reached his own door again, it seemed to him that there had been no +hour of his unhappy married life when this terror had not sat grinning +behind every trivial incident. He determined to see his wife, to know +the worst at once. He asked for her, but learned she was out. ‘Her +ladyship had gone driving late, after tea, and had not come in yet.’ He +had no chance of speech with her through the evening, but when at last +she went to her room, he followed boldly, hardly waiting for the answer +to his knock before entering the room.</p> + +<p>Cissy had thrown herself on the sofa, and the loose sides of the +tea-gown she had worn at dinner had a little fallen back. At the sound +of the opening door she started up, and drew her draperies so swiftly +about her that Sainty could not be sure if he had noticed or only +imagined a slight change in her figure.</p> + +<p>‘You!’ she cried.</p> + +<p>‘Yes,’ he said, in as steady a voice as he could. ‘I want<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_304">{304}</a></span> to speak to +you, and I could find no other chance of seeing you alone.’</p> + +<p>Their glances crossed and he read in her eyes a confirmation of his +worst suspicions. Still he must be sure, must hear it from herself. She +had looked startled, almost frightened, as she faced him, then her face +took on a dogged sulky expression.</p> + +<p>‘Well?’ she said.</p> + +<p>‘I went to see my mother this afternoon,’ Sainty began.</p> + +<p>‘Your mother,’ Cissy broke in. ‘Oh! <i>she’s</i> been making mischief.’</p> + +<p>‘On the contrary, she was all amiability and delight, ready to make it +up with you, to forgive everything “at this moment,” as she said.’</p> + +<p>‘That’s very kind of her; but why?’</p> + +<p>‘She was bursting with congratulations and excitement; she had had a +letter from your mother.’</p> + +<p>Lady Belchamber muttered something very unfilial about her parent. ‘And +what did <i>you</i> say?’ she inquired.</p> + +<p>‘I? What <i>could</i> I say? I said they were both mistaken. That you had +told me it was not true; and of course it isn’t—it <i>can’t</i> be; I don’t +need to be told that.’</p> + +<p>He was pleading against his own certainty; from the time he came into +the room, he knew what he should hear before he left it. Yet with his +whole heart he was begging her still, if it were possible, to deny the +shame that had come upon his house. He stood mute and suppliant before +her, and she looked at him almost pityingly. Then with a little +discouraged gesture she turned away and sat down again on the sofa.</p> + +<p>‘It <i>is</i> true,’ she said quietly. ‘You may as well know it first as +last. In any case I couldn’t conceal it much longer; and now that mamma +has guessed it, she will have told it to at least fifty people already. +She little knows what she’s doing,’ she added, with a hard laugh that +jarred on Sainty’s overstretched nerves.</p> + +<p>He had been sure of it, had known it. Yet now that the<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_305">{305}</a></span> words were +spoken, that the fact confronted him, admitted, undeniable, irrevocable, +he staggered with the blow.</p> + +<p>‘You are going to have a child?’ he gasped.</p> + +<p>She nodded, and for all answer threw back the covering she had pulled +across herself.</p> + +<p>‘But it is not mine.’</p> + +<p>‘Yours!’ impatiently. ‘How should it be?’</p> + +<p>‘Good God!’</p> + +<p>There was a silence. Sainty moved restlessly about, as agitated as +though it were he who was making the confession. Cissy was far the more +self-possessed of the two. She sat upon her sofa watching his agonised +motions with a faintly inquisitive distaste, as a person of imperfect +sympathies might observe the contortions of some creature he had +unwittingly injured.</p> + +<p>‘I suppose,’ she said presently, ‘you want to know whose it is?’</p> + +<p>‘No, no!’ cried Sainty shudderingly. ‘That least of all. For God’s sake +don’t tell me!’ and he made a step towards her, as though he would have +choked back the name he feared to hear.</p> + +<p>Cissy stared. ‘Queer!’ she ejaculated.</p> + +<p>There was another pause. A clock struck midnight, and was echoed loudly +or faintly by others near or distant. Sainty counted the strokes, and +was conscious of irritation when one began before another finished and +embroiled his counting.</p> + +<p>It was again the woman who spoke first, and the question was +characteristic, severely practical.</p> + +<p>‘What are you going to do about it?’</p> + +<p>‘I don’t know—I can’t think. Give me time—give me time to think.’</p> + +<p>Cissy looked at him with undisguised contempt. ‘<i>I</i> should know what to +do,’ she said. After a while she added, ‘Of course I can’t stay here +now.’</p> + +<p>‘I don’t know—I don’t know,’ Sainty kept repeating. ‘We must do nothing +in a hurry. Think of all it means, all the consequences.’</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_306">{306}</a></span></p> + +<p>Cissy shrugged her shoulders. ‘It seems rather late for that,’ she +remarked. ‘Besides, we can’t keep it to ourselves indefinitely, you +know.’</p> + +<p>‘At least give me to-night to get my ideas into some sort of order,’ +Sainty pleaded. ‘You can’t be surprised if this is rather a shock to me, +can you?’ he added, almost apologetically.</p> + +<p>Cissy laughed. ‘I wonder if any man ever took this announcement in just +the same way?’ she said.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_307">{307}</a></span></p> + +<h2><a id="CHAPTER_XXIII">CHAPTER XXIII</a></h2> + +<p class="nind"><span class="smcap">To</span> Sainty, sitting alone in his old room in the western pavilion, it +seemed that there was no bitterness left untasted. Far into the night he +sat, his elbows on the table, his head buried in his hands. At first all +seemed mere chaos and horror; he was stunned and could not think. But +for the haunting consciousness of misery, he could almost have fancied +that he had slept. Gradually, however, definite images began to emerge +from the bewildered trouble of his brain.</p> + +<p>What was this thing that had come on him, through no fault of his own? +He had done no wrong, snatched no forbidden pleasure; it was those other +two who had sinned and enjoyed. Why must he be pilloried with them, +share the scandal and the punishment? He, with his morbid shrinking from +publicity, to have his private life turned inside out to the scorn and +laughter of the vulgar! He knew well enough how little sympathy he had +to expect; in all times and countries had not the betrayed husband been +a butt for mirth? He wondered why. It seemed hard to him that of the +three characters in the eternal drama of adultery, it should always be +the one innocent person that was selected for satire. Surely it was the +most elementary justice that punishment should fall on him who injures +his fellow, not upon the injured. Yet of they three, who would suffer +most? He, without a doubt, who had the greatest capacity for suffering. +He saw, as in a dream, the dingy scene of the divorce-court, the +headlines in the papers, his name dragged in the dirt. He pictured to +himself the long martyrdom of cross examination, the bar pathos, the bar +wit; he knew how he should flinch and writhe at the stake.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_308">{308}</a></span></p> + +<p>In his case, moreover, the situation was complicated by the coming +child. He had not only to proclaim his dishonour to the world, but must +lay bare to every grinning idiot the grotesque story of his married +life. If the husband whose rights had been invaded was absurd, what of +him who had not even been able to obtain those rights. And he must stand +up in open court and tell this thing of himself, he who felt the mere +idea of marriage too sacred for spoken words! The cruel irony of it all! +Was there no other issue but through that horrible sordid ordeal? What +did men do in his position? What was the <i>beau rôle</i> for the injured +husband? He thought of Dumas’s ‘<i>Tue-la!</i>’ and wondered how it would +have advanced matters if he had murdered Cissy, supposing he had the +strength and courage to do it. It was only to shift the scene; another +court, an added horror, but the same publicity, the same scandal, the +same story to tell, the same agony to undergo.</p> + +<p>He almost regretted the foolish old fantastic code of honour which would +have made it incumbent on him to challenge the seducer, and as likely as +not be killed by him. Death <i>might</i> have been a solution, but there was +no such easy way out of the situation as that. The hand that had done +him so much wrong would not render him that supremest service.</p> + +<p>Hitherto he had succeeded almost without conscious effort in keeping the +inevitable third in this grim trio almost an abstraction. Yet he +remembered how passionately he had refused to know, when his wife had +offered him the name of her lover. Now the figure was beginning to take +shape against his will; a tall figure with a false air of slenderness, a +figure that by the languid grace of its movements counteracted the +slight tendency to heaviness in the hips and shoulders. How well he knew +that back, the sinuous curves of the waist, the sidelong persuasive +droop of the head; he had seen it walking away beside Cissy on the +afternoon of their very first meeting. It had been pressed against the +glass door that held him an unwilling witness on the night<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_309">{309}</a></span> of the ball +at Sunborough House. How clearly the impressions came back to him, the +dusky garden speckled leopard-wise with lanterns, the lithe, shimmering +blackness of the figure at his side trying to instil the doubts he would +not harbour, the swift swing back of the door, the words so clearly +overheard, that then had held no meaning for him. Still it was only a +back, he had not seen the face, the gentle, kindly, sly, mocking face. +He pressed his icy fingers tight against his hard straining eyeballs as +if he could shut it out, that face he would not see. Not <i>he</i>! not he of +all men! Had not his mother mentioned other men with whom her imprudence +was compromising Cissy? Oh! but that back was unmistakable. And then the +voice! low and soft, but so distinct; he could hear it, could hear the +words, counselling the horrible meanness of which he had so nearly been +the dupe. He understood <i>now</i> the secret of her mysterious behaviour in +the library that night. Surely such baseness was unbelievable; even +Cissy had recoiled from carrying out the scheme.</p> + +<p>For one brief moment he wished she could have done it—that he might +have been deceived. ‘I need never have known!’ he cried, and his voice +speaking aloud in the silence of the night startled him like the cry of +a creature that is being killed.</p> + +<p>He raised his head and looked about him. The candle he had brought had +burnt almost to the socket; he rose and lighted two others from it, and +blew it out. The chill of the tireless summer night made him shiver, but +there was that which lay so cold about his heart that he welcomed the +physical discomfort as almost a relief. He moved about the room for a +little, but soon tiring, went and sat down again.</p> + +<p>The same procession of black thoughts kept up their weary circle through +his head; round and round he followed them, yet came no nearer any +light, nor any decision of what it behoved him to do under the +circumstances. Was this the end of all his dreams, all his sacrifices, +all his endeavour for others, all he had hoped to accomplish? Was +everything to<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_310">{310}</a></span> go down in this whirlpool of a disgrace greater even than +that which Arthur’s marriage had brought upon them? It was Arthur’s +marriage that had been the origin of all his troubles. Oh yes, he saw it +clearly enough now; however he had deceived himself at the time, he had +married, had taken on himself the most sacred obligations, for no object +but the mean one of excluding his brother. Perhaps this was his +punishment.</p> + +<p>He saw what a puppet he had been in the hands of two strong-willed +women, an instrument to satisfy the vulgar ambitions of the one, the +angry revenge of the other. What a failure, what a dreary failure he had +been all through! For years he had had but one thought, one object in +life, to steer Arthur past the rocks and quicksands of youth, and anchor +him safe in the harbour of property and responsibility, and with what +result? What had come of all his plans, his careful tact, his delicate +manipulation of his mother and brother? Arthur’s marriage afforded a +comment of grimmest irony on his efforts in that direction. Since then, +as ardently as he had once longed to renounce his birthright in favour +of his brother, he had striven to preserve it from that contaminating +touch, to keep that brother’s wife from sitting in their mother’s place; +and, once more, with what result? To instal in the innermost shrine of +all he held most sacred a woman no less wanton than her sister-in-law, +only without her redeeming qualities and the excuses of her early +training, one who would make his home a wilderness, his name a by-word! +Shame, then, shame either way, and nothing accomplished!</p> + +<p>It is not to be supposed that he thought these things out for himself, +coldly, sententiously, in order, as, for the sake of the reader, they +have to be written down. They were the residuum of all sorts of wild and +whirling fancies, flung up at him, as it were, out of a seething +cauldron of black wretchedness, which was rather sensation than thought. +Not once, moreover, but a thousand times, did each and all of them +appear and vanish in a kind of witches’ dance to his weary<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_311">{311}</a></span> brain, +without perceptible sequence or connection. He seemed somehow to be +outside his own consciousness, to sit and watch these images, as, one by +one, some demon held them up for his tormenting, yet all the while every +nerve in him tingled with the apprehension of how intimately they were +part of himself.</p> + +<p>As he sat gazing stonily at despair, there came a soft stirring of the +stillness, a murmur, a breath; then from without, a faint chirping.</p> + +<p> +‘... as in dark summer dawns,’<br> +</p> + +<p class="nind">he quoted mechanically, and was aware of a vague irritation that he +could not remember the beginning of the line.</p> + +<div class="poetry"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">‘The earliest pipe of half-awakened birds<br></span> +<span class="i1">To dying ears, when unto dying eyes<br></span> +<span class="i1">The casement slowly grows a glimmering square.’<br></span> +</div></div> +</div> + +<p class="nind">He looked. The chintz curtains that veiled the windows were growing +ghostly and transparent. It was the dawn.</p> + +<p>All through the night he had sat with his trouble, yet the morning found +him as helpless and undecided as ever.</p> + +<p>‘To dying ears, when unto dying eyes,’ he repeated dully. ‘Ah! if it +were but that! Death! how easy to die! What a rest, what an escape!’ It +was life, not death, life with its hideous decisions and +responsibilities that he had got to face.</p> + +<p>The candle flames became more spectral as the light slowly broadened, +the light of a new day, the day in which he would have to make up his +mind, to take a line, to <i>act</i>. There was no way out—none. Once more he +was confronted with the inevitable, the pitiless future coming every +moment nearer, with all it held of suffering and shame, the +fruitlessness of all his efforts, all in vain, in vain!</p> + +<p>Then suddenly, as if some voice had spoken, came the question ‘Why?’ Why +need it be in vain? The solution, after all, lay ready to his hand. He +had only to hold his tongue. It was all so simple. ‘Their strength is to +sit still,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_312">{312}</a></span>’ he thought. Why, among all that had passed through his +wretched head, had this never struck him? He had wished for a child to +bar his brother and his brother’s sons from the succession. Well! here +was the child, his wife’s child, born in wedlock, legally, lawfully his. +Who could ever say it was not? No one but they two, and of their silence +he could be tolerably sure.</p> + +<p>At first he put the idea from him with horror. It was a cheat, a fraud. +He, with his fastidiously high standard of conduct, to cozen his brother +out of his inheritance by a shabby trick. Impossible! The thing was +impossible.</p> + +<p>He got up, and put back the curtain, and stood looking out into the +silence of the growing morning. Over opposite to him, the grey sky was +beginning to flush with palest rose, in which the last stars were +growing dim; but as yet the great quadrangle lay all in black shadow, +out of which the restored statues stood vaguely up like shapes of evil +menacing the eastern glory. No, no, no. Better the talk, the scandal, +the publicity of the divorce court, than to stand convicted before the +tribunal of his own conscience. Whatever else went down in the shipwreck +of his life, let him at least keep his self-respect. ‘What did it profit +a man to gain the world, and lose his own soul?’ Yet how often in the +old days, in his talk with Newby, had he inveighed against the +selfishness of the Puritan idea, which would make the saving of one’s +soul the object of conduct. Surely the only rational motive was the +consideration of how one’s acts affected others. In the present instance +who would be the worse for his silence? No one would be hurt or +disappointed. These people did not expect to succeed; they had given up +all hopes of it when he married. Had they not told him so themselves? On +the other hand, there was his mother, his mother who had done so much +for him. He remembered how he had found her, when she had first learned +the truth about Arthur, and terror mixed with his grief at the mere +conjecture of what she might say and do with the marriages of both her +sons thus ending in shame. Their talk that afternoon had shown him how<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_313">{313}</a></span> +much her hopes were centred in the birth of an heir to Belchamber. The +mere prospect had blotted out the very recollection of her quarrel with +Cissy, and Lady Charmington was not a forgiving woman. His fear of her +had always gone hand in hand with his love of her, and both made him +wince at the thought of her disappointment. Had he the right to bring +this fresh blow upon her, who had suffered so much, merely to salve his +own conscience? After all, had he any self-respect to sacrifice? Was it +possible for him to have a meaner opinion of himself than he had always +entertained?</p> + +<p>At that moment the sun topped the mass of the eastern wing, flooding +with light the broad spaces of grass and gravel at his feet, and casting +a long ray over the tall, stately <i>façade</i> of the beautiful house. And +at the thought of all that was symbolised by that pomp of hewn and +fretted stone, the aristocrat that lurked so deep within him, so +overlaid with fine theories of brotherhood and equality that he was +unconscious of his very existence, stirred and claimed his own. ‘For the +credit of my house,’ he murmured uneasily, as he turned away from the +window.</p> + +<p>He did not yield at once, or without a struggle, but he knew from the +first that it would come to that. From the moment the idea leaped +full-grown like Athene from his brain, it was fully armed to meet every +point that had distressed him. He feared scandal. There need be no +scandal. He shrank from the ignominy of a divorce case. There need be +none. Did the thought of unveiling to the public eye the bitter +humiliation of his married life revolt him? Here was a means not only of +secrecy, but actual disproof. Did it break his heart to think of +inflicting such a blow upon his mother? He had only to be silent to +crown her dearest wishes, and make her the happiest woman in England. +Had he married, enduring all that marriage had brought him, that he +might keep his sister-in-law and her children from the heritage of his +name and home? Here, too, was the one thing necessary for that end. And +to attain all these desired objects there was nothing to do, no word to +say, no lie to tell.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_314">{314}</a></span> He had only to let things take their course. It +was the line of least resistance, so easy, so fatally easy!</p> + +<p>To a man of his character and disposition, what a temptation, what a +terrible temptation! He was weakened by his long vigil, the little stock +of vitality that he could ever call to his assistance, worn almost to a +thread with watching and misery. He knew he should give in. To all the +arguments in favour of it, what had he to oppose but one poor little +scruple of personal honour?</p> + +<p>He wondered if his wife had known what he would do before he had thought +of it himself? Had she traded on her certainty of his cowardice? At such +a suspicion, he almost grew strong again; but no—she had seemed to +entertain no doubt that he would repudiate her. He fancied she had even +felt a certain relief at the prospect of being rid of the semblance of a +connection with himself, and the freedom to claim openly the protection +of the man whom, in her way, she loved. If so, here was another argument +in favour of silence. By it he could thwart and punish her.</p> + +<p>He wandered into his brother’s old room, next his own. Here the drawn +blinds made still a glimmering twilight, and lent an unreality to the +familiar objects. He went and looked at the old school photographs. +There was one of Arthur in a group of the cricket eleven, which had +always been his special favourite. The figure stood squarely on its +legs, the brawny arms bare to the elbow and crossed upon the chest, a +boyish grin lighting the handsome face, from which the cap was pushed +back by the strong upward spring of the hair above the brow. It was the +image of youth, and life, and happiness. Long he stood motionless before +it, and then he bent forward and pressed his poor pale lips to the cold +glass. ‘Arthur,’ he whispered. ‘My little Arthur, you are dead, and so +is your miserable brother who loved you so. You are no more that brutal, +querulous egoist that I saw the other day, than he is the wretch who can +stoop to crime to rob you.’</p> + +<p>Distant sounds showed him that the household was beginning<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_315">{315}</a></span> to be astir. +Before his man came to wake him he must have removed the signs of his +long vigil. He returned hurriedly to his own room, once more drew the +curtain across the window, extinguished the lights, and, hastily +undressing himself, crept into bed. Already the sense of having +something to hide stung him with a terrible self-contempt. He had caught +sight of his drawn, haggard face as he passed the mirror. It was the +face of a coward.</p> + +<p>He did not leave the pavilion all day. He sent word he was ill. That at +least was true enough, but late in the evening, as he was lying on the +sofa in his study, there came a knock at the door, and Cissy entered. +Though perhaps a shade paler than usual, nothing in her appearance +suggested a guilty wife come to hear her sentence.</p> + +<p>‘I have come to return your visit of last night,’ she said, as she stood +looking down on him.</p> + +<p>Sainty groaned and hid his face. At sight of her, the desire to brand +her as what she was almost conquered, where conscience and sense of +honour had failed—almost, but not quite.</p> + +<p>Cissy kept her indifferent pose, playing with the ornaments she wore.</p> + +<p>‘Well?’ she asked at last. ‘Have you made up your mind yet?’</p> + +<p>‘Yes.’ His voice came muffled and strange.</p> + +<p>Lady Belchamber started. ‘What are you going to do?’ she demanded, with +slightly quickened interest.</p> + +<p>‘Nothing.’</p> + +<p>There was a pause.</p> + +<p>‘Do you mean to say,’ she asked at last, ‘that you are going to +acknowledge the child?’</p> + +<p>‘Yes.’</p> + +<p>She turned away from him with a half-stifled exclamation. Was it relief +or disappointment? he could not tell. After a time she flung a word over +her shoulder: ‘Why?’</p> + +<p>‘Because it happens to suit me,’ he said doggedly.</p> + +<p>The silence was broken by the little laugh he hated.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_316">{316}</a></span></p> + +<p>‘I suppose I ought to be very grateful to you,’ she sneered.</p> + +<p>Sainty sprang from the couch. ‘I have ceased to expect gratitude or any +other kindly feeling from you,’ he blazed out at her; but his wrath fell +as quickly as it had flared.</p> + +<p>Her puny disdain was powerless to hurt him, merged in the measureless +ocean of his self-contempt. There would be lies enough, acted, looked, +and lived, if not spoken. At least to her there need be no pretence of +an attitude; if not with an accomplice, with whom may one permit himself +the luxury of being honest?</p> + +<p>‘After all, why should I scold at you?’ he said wearily. ‘You have +nothing to thank me for. Don’t suppose, if I stoop to this incomparable +baseness, that it is with any thought of pleasing <i>you</i>.’</p> + +<p>Cissy stared at him, cowed by the dim apprehension of a tragedy she was +incapable of understanding; and it was not without a certain +satisfaction that he saw in her eyes the vague terror of the +incomprehensible beginning to permeate her habitual scorn of him.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_317">{317}</a></span></p> + +<h2><a id="CHAPTER_XXIV">CHAPTER XXIV</a></h2> + +<p class="nind"><span class="smcap">Though</span> the birth of an heir to the house of Belchamber might naturally +be supposed a festive occasion, it brought little satisfaction to those +principally concerned. It is true that Lady Charmington talked broad +lowland for weeks; nor was Lady Eccleston, who kept a supply of +conventional sentiment always on tap, likely to be wanting at such a +time; but in spite of every grandmotherly effort to impart a correct +sense of rejoicing, a certain flatness attended what should have been +such an auspicious event. Cissy, entirely preoccupied by terror of +physical suffering, insisted that her confinement should take place in +London, where she would be within reach of the best professional aid, to +the extreme disgust of her mother-in-law, who had decided that +Belchamber was the appropriate scene on which the newcomer’s eyes should +first open. Sainty, being appealed to, expressed the most complete +indifference on the subject; he said he didn’t suppose it mattered to +the baby where it was born, or that it would be likely to retain the +smallest recollection of the event. ‘It will be a great disappointment +to everybody,’ Lady Charmington remarked. ‘Besides, it will mean your +not being here at Christmas. How do you expect your people to rejoice in +the birth of an heir, if you slink away and let it happen in London, +like anybody else’s child?’</p> + +<p>‘How do you know it will <i>be</i> an heir?’ Sainty said. ‘Why shouldn’t it +be a girl?’</p> + +<p>His mother disdained to notice such a preposterous suggestion.</p> + +<p>‘It ought to be here,’ she kept repeating.</p> + +<p>‘<i>I</i> wasn’t born here,’ Sainty said.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_318">{318}</a></span></p> + +<p>‘That was quite different; Belchamber wasn’t our home in those days. +Your father and I hardly ever came here in the old lord’s time; for that +matter, they weren’t here much themselves. Besides, I wanted to be with +my mother; there is nothing to prevent Cissy having <i>her</i> mother with +her here; things are very different for <i>her</i> from what <i>I</i> had to put +up with. I should like to have seen my mother-in-law allowing me to be +confined in her house! but your poor father felt it very much.’</p> + +<p>‘Well,’ Sainty said at last, ‘you can settle it with Cissy; if you can +persuade <i>her</i>, you’re welcome to; <i>I</i> never can, and in the present +case I don’t care to.’</p> + +<p>Every allusion to the coming event was the turning of a sword in his +heart. His mother’s restrained eagerness was not less terrible to him +than Lady Eccleston’s loud jubilation.</p> + +<p>He never knew if Lady Charmington availed herself of his suggestion that +she should appeal to Cissy. Certainly, if she did, it was with no +success, for long before there was any possibility of the child making +its appearance, Lady Belchamber removed to London, taking her parent +with her. Cissy, as usual, when frightened or needing help, turned to +her mother, for whom, as we know, she cherished no very profound respect +at other times; and Lady Eccleston was not even permitted to return to +her own house in Chester Square, but must take up her abode with her +daughter, who considered it a great concession if she allowed her to go +out for an hour’s shopping. It is not to be wondered at if mamma became +a little important under the circumstances, and gave herself airs in +writing to the other dowager, who must have hated having to stay and eat +her heart out at Belchamber, with no hand in what touched her so nearly.</p> + +<p>Poor Lady Charmington abounded in strange recondite lore, and gave much +advice which was a little out of date at the stage proceedings had +reached. ‘On no account let her mother coddle your wife,’ she wrote to +Sainty. ‘If she wants a son, make her take exercise and not be too +luxurious or over-eat herself.’</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_319">{319}</a></span></p> + +<p>Every day the letters came, advocating a Spartan <i>régime</i>; but the +messages never reached their destination. Sainty would have cut his +tongue out sooner than address a word to Cissy on the subject, who, none +the less, produced in due course an infant of the desired sex.</p> + +<p>Lady Charmington hurried up to Roehampton, and actually dragged poor old +Lady Firth into London to visit her great-grandson. The old lady, who +had become nearly blind, and now hardly ever left her own fireside, +peered curiously at the baby through two pairs of spectacles.</p> + +<p>‘I don’t know who he is like,’ she said. ‘You <i>have</i> a look of your +father, Sainty, but you are <i>more</i> like our family; this little lamb +isn’t like either. No, certainly not a bit like <i>you</i>, nor yet like your +wife, who is so fair. I don’t know, I’m sure, who he takes after.’</p> + +<p>‘Does it matter much, grandmamma,’ Sainty asked, ‘as long as he is +strong and healthy?’</p> + +<p>His mother turned on him promptly. ‘Oh! <i>you</i> never think anything +matters. Can’t you even take an interest in your own first-born son?’</p> + +<p>‘Come, mother, it doesn’t follow that I take no interest because I don’t +think it matters who he looks like,’ Sainty protested meekly.</p> + +<p>He had several occasions to curse the propensity common to the whole +female sex, when brought into the presence of a newborn babe, to hunt +down and fix a likeness for it to some one or other of its kinsfolk. It +seemed as though the one important thing to do for the little Lord +Charmington was to determine this vexed question of resemblance. The +child was of a marked type, too, with long-lashed dark eyes, and an +unusual quantity of very black hair, as far removed from Sainty’s sandy +insignificance as from the delicate fairness of his wife.</p> + +<p>At last the matter was set at rest quite unexpectedly, and Sainty +breathed more freely. The duchess, who had come to town for a little +Christmas shopping, called to inquire after Cissy, and requested to be +shown the baby.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_320">{320}</a></span></p> + +<p>‘<i>Eh bien! vous voilà père!</i>’ she remarked, looking rather quizzically +at her grandson, as he piloted her upstairs. ‘My compliments! And how is +Monsieur Bébé? Is he pretty, at least? brown or blond, a Chambers, a +Bigorr, or,’ with the faintest pause of indescribable insolence, ‘an +Eccleston?’</p> + +<p>Belchamber took dexterous advantage of opening doors, giving warning of +steps, and such small attentions, to avoid giving any direct answer, but +he might have saved himself the trouble. The eternal topic was at once +brought up by the monthly nurse, as she proudly displayed her charge.</p> + +<p>‘We can’t think who he is like, your grace,’ she said, folding the +flannel back from the tiny face. ‘Just look at his beautiful great eyes, +and did ever you see such a head of hair on a babe?’</p> + +<p>Sainty could have throttled her. ‘That’s the one thing every one seems +to think of,’ he said rather testily.</p> + +<p>‘Like?’ said the duchess. ‘There can be no question; he’s like <i>me</i>. You +know the miniature of me as a little girl—the child is the image of +it.’</p> + +<p>Sainty started; he had so entirely forgotten that her grace was ever +dark, that the resemblance had escaped him, but once pointed out it was +salient. He felt like a criminal who discovers that the detective he has +been dodging is on the track of some one else. After all, she was <i>his</i> +grandmother too!</p> + +<p>‘Of course!’ he cried, ‘how stupid every one has been not to think of +it.’ And the next time the unwelcome subject was mentioned in his +presence (by his mother, who had been showing the precious infant to +Alice de Lissac), he said quite naturally, ‘Oh, we’ve settled <i>that</i> +question. He’s just like the miniature at Sunborough House of the +duchess when she was a child.’</p> + +<p>Lady Charmington, who loved her mother-in-law no better than Cissy did +hers, was most unwilling to admit the likeness, but could not deny it; +and there being no doubt that baby derived his appearance from the +member of the family she<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_321">{321}</a></span> least wished him to resemble, was in future as +averse as her son could desire to all discussion of what had occupied +her so much.</p> + +<p>Lady Eccleston, on the contrary, who loved all great people, was +enchanted to point out the likeness to every member of her huge +acquaintance. ‘Isn’t he like the <i>dear</i> duchess?’ she would cry. ‘It is +<i>so</i> clever of him to have picked out the most beautiful of all his +relations to take after, bless him!’</p> + +<p>As time went on, the shortlived interest in the hope of the Chamberses +rapidly waned. The bonfires in his honour had hardly burnt themselves +out before this poor little scion of a noble house found himself in as +much danger of being altogether neglected as if he had been of quite +humble birth. Lady Charmington returned to the country, and Lady +Eccleston, having provided a grand nurse and nursery-maid with +unimpeachable testimonials out of one of the most aristocratic nurseries +in the land, gradually allowed herself to be reabsorbed by her numerous +avocations, social and philanthropic.</p> + +<p>Cissy has been most inadequately represented if it need be stated that +the very last person to trouble her head about the poor little thing was +its mother. She was entirely at one with the fashionable <i>accoucheur</i> +who attended her, in his opinion that to nurse the child would be far +too great a strain on her constitution. After the briefest period of +seclusion which the same authority could be got to say was sufficient +for her own restoration, and a flying visit to the seaside, she seemed +to have but one object in life, to make up by extra assiduity for the +weeks she had been compelled to sacrifice from the engrossing occupation +of amusing herself. If before she had been much out of her own house, +she was now hardly ever in it. The only limit to the number of her +engagements was the fear lest she should be betrayed into doing +something that was not ‘smart’; and even with this important +restriction, they were far too numerous to admit of her having any time +to bestow upon her son.</p> + +<p>As for Sainty, he hardly ever saw her. In so large a<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_322">{322}</a></span> house, with a +perfectly mutual desire to keep apart, it was not difficult to avoid +meeting. He had had one necessary interview with her after the birth of +the boy, in which he had told her some very plain truths.</p> + +<p>‘You may as well understand the situation quite clearly,’ he said. ‘In +return for the various things you enjoy as a result of being believed to +be my wife, I have hitherto asked nothing of you; after what has +happened, I would not take it if you offered it on your knees. I made +just one condition, which you have not thought fit to observe, that +there should be no scandal; to avoid it, I have sacrificed my last shred +of self-respect. Don’t, therefore, think that you can count on a like +cowardice on my part in the future. I pretend to no sort of control over +your actions. What you <i>do</i> is of no consequence to me; but on just this +one thing I <i>insist</i>: I must never hear you talked about, and, above +all, there must be no repetition of this—this occurrence.’</p> + +<p>‘I see,’ said Cissy. ‘Having by hook or by crook got the heir for which +you and your mother were so anxious, you have no further use for me, and +will seize the next opportunity to get rid of me.’</p> + +<p>Sainty looked at her a moment, so antagonistic, so hard, so insolent in +her youth and beauty, to which her late recovery lent a character almost +ethereal. Bitter as her taunt was, he could not deny its substantial +truth.</p> + +<p>‘Precisely,’ he said, and left her without another word.</p> + +<p>While Cissy immersed herself in social frivolities, Sainty was trying to +find in work forgetfulness of the child he was ashamed to remember. He +devoted long hours to humble toil and study, of which the only result +would be a paragraph in the report of some learned society, read by no +one but its own members. He attended the debates in the House of Lords +with unparalleled assiduity, and came to be a familiar figure in the +gallery on important nights in the other House. The scarcity of Radical +peers gave him an extrinsic value for the leaders of his party, while +his patience, powers of work, and known interest in all schemes of +beneficence,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_323">{323}</a></span> marked him as specially designed by Providence to serve on +Parliamentary Committees.</p> + +<p>There was one important point of difference between the couple. While +Cissy’s absorption in her favourite pursuits was quite natural and +genuine, and she found no difficulty whatever in forgetting her maternal +duties, it was only by consistent effort that Sainty succeeded in +shutting out the recollection of his shame. The image of the baby, with +its tell-tale dark eyes, was perpetually between him and the page he was +writing or the pamphlet on which he was trying to fix his attention.</p> + +<p>As we know, his rooms were on the ground-floor of the London house, +while the nurseries were up three flights of stairs; it seemed +impossible that any echo should penetrate from them to his study, yet he +was always fancying that he detected faint sounds of crying from the +upper regions of the house. Sometimes he would stop in his work and +listen, and then, convinced that his imagination had played him a trick, +turn again to his reading or writing, only to be haunted by this +illusive wailing as before.</p> + +<p>One day in the early spring, the child being then some three months old, +this impression was more than usually persistent. At last, exasperated +by his inability to fix his mind on what he was doing, Sainty pushed +away his papers and went out upon the back stairs to listen. This time +there was no question of imagination. Perhaps some door usually closed +had been left open, but whatever the explanation, there was no doubt +that a most real and material lamentation, such as the human infant +alone is capable of producing, was echoing through the house. He +returned to his table and sat down again. ‘I suppose babies of that age +always yell,’ he said to himself, and he recalled Arthur’s complaint of +that tendency in his own offspring. Why, of all people in the world, +need the baby’s crying make him think of his brother? The recollection +of that stucco rectory in the shires, where the birth of the little Lord +Charmington must have aroused anything but enthusiasm, made him start +and tremble like a felon.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_324">{324}</a></span></p> + +<p>For a moment he fancied the noise had ceased, but a second visit to the +landing convinced him such was not the case. He looked at the clock. It +was almost time for him to go down to Westminster; he would go out and +walk a little first—sometimes he thought he did not have enough fresh +air—it would do him good. He put away his papers, gathered together +some loose sheets of notes that he wanted, and left the room.</p> + +<p>What made him turn to the stairs instead of the front door he never +quite knew. Some occult power seemed to draw his feet. He couldn’t go +out to do battle for the children of the poor with that lamentable +wailing ringing in his ears, and make no inquiry into what ailed the +child under his own roof.</p> + +<p>He had not mounted to these upper floors since he had conducted the +duchess thither, but if he had been in any doubt about the room, the +cries, which seemed to redouble in force as he drew nearer, would have +been a quite sufficient guide. Through the wide open door Sainty could +see the interior of the nursery before he entered. Lady Eccleston had +given the rein to her grandmotherly fancy in the provision of all things +needful and luxurious for the young heir. He was at least sumptuously +lodged; the walls were gay with sanitary illustrations of juvenile +literature from Miss Greenaway’s charming designs; buttercups and +daisies sprinkled the window hangings; everything streamed with pale +blue satin ribbon, and the very powder-box, of choicest ivory, had the +mystic word ‘Baby’ slanting in turquoises across the lid. But nothing +was ranged, or ordered, or in its proper place. The costly little +garments so lavishly provided were tossed about with careless profusion, +damp cloths trailed over the floor, a common enamelled saucepan for +heating the child’s food had been set down on a lace robe, and +half-washed-out feeding-bottles mingled on the table with the materials +from which the nurse had evidently been manufacturing a new hat for +herself.</p> + +<p>The room was bare of human presence save for the emitter of the howls, +who was lying alone in his cot, roaring himself<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_325">{325}</a></span> purple in the face. He +had kicked himself free of his wrappings, and his poor little legs were +quite cold to the touch. Without attempting to cope with the +complication of integuments, Sainty loosely pulled the coverlet over the +child, and then looked with horror and anxiety at the convulsed face. +What was to be done? ‘Don’t!’ he said imploringly, in no particular +expectation of being understood, but from a general instinct to say +something. ‘<i>Please</i> don’t!’</p> + +<p>Whether the sense of a human presence was of some comfort to the baby, +or it was only startled by the sound of an unfamiliar voice, it is +certain that it intermitted its screaming, and slowly unpuckering its +face, allowed the hidden eyes to appear. They were all wet and shiny +with tears, their long lashes glued into points like a series of tiny +camel’s-hair paint brushes.</p> + +<p>Sainty wondered if he dared wipe them. ‘It can’t be comfortable to have +one’s face all slobbered over like that,’ he thought, and taking out his +handkerchief began, as lightly and tenderly as he could, to remove some +of the superfluous moisture that seemed to exude from every feature. The +baby, far from being sensible of this attention, showed unmistakable +signs of being about to resume its lament. Sainty swiftly desisted from +his endeavours, and once more implored its forbearance.</p> + +<p>The baby, with its face all made up for a fresh howl, paused suddenly +when, so to speak, half-way there, and once more opened its eyes. It +stared solemnly at Sainty and Sainty stared back at it. What dumb +interchange of intelligence passed between them it would be hard to say, +but presently a faint windy smile flickered across one side of the +baby’s face leaving the other immutably grave.</p> + +<p>Sainty was transported with gratitude; he nodded and smiled repeatedly +at the baby and tried to think of pleasant noises to make to it. One of +the little hands had broken loose from under the coverlet and was +beating the air—sparring at life with the aimless hostility of infancy. +Very gingerly Sainty laid his forefinger against the palm, and<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_326">{326}</a></span> +instantly the absurd fingers closed round it and held him prisoner.</p> + +<p>Long he stood beside the cradle gently swaying the hand that held his +own back and forth and contemplating the baby, which, soothed by the +rhythmic movement, seemed inclined to sleep. Since it ceased crying, its +face had become a touch pleasanter and more normal colour, and, as the +suffusing crimson died away, Sainty could notice how the poor chin was +chafed and red where it had rubbed on the wet unchanged bib; the tiny +nails, too, were edged with black, and surely, he thought, a carefully +tended baby ought not to smell as sour as this one did. It was being +borne in upon him that the child was neglected, a thought which made him +not less indignant that he could not feel wholly without blame in the +matter. True, the child was not his, but by acknowledging it he had +accepted responsibility; he knew far too well how little reason there +was to expect that its mother would occupy herself with such matters to +think of sheltering himself behind the plea that it was her business. It +was monstrous that the sins of its parents should be visited on this +helpless creature. The queer little claw still grasped his finger, and +he was still swinging it and crooning gently, when the nurse hurried +into the room and was visibly taken aback at sight of her master. At +once she was voluble in explanation and excuse.</p> + +<p>‘That was the worst of these girls, you never could trust ’em; her back +wasn’t a minute turned that that Emma wasn’t off to her own affairs. She +hadn’t but just stepped downstairs to give the orders herself about his +lordship’s milk, which, it was surprising, with all these lazy servants +in the house, never <i>could</i> be sent up at the right time, and had +particularly told the girl not to leave the room for a second till she +came back ...’ with much more to the same effect.</p> + +<p>Sainty grimly eyed the artificial roses she was whisking out of sight +with clumsy dexterity, in her attempt to bring order out of chaos, with +one hand, while with the other she made<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_327">{327}</a></span> playful passes at the baby, +crying ‘Did he?’ and ‘Was he, then?’ and ‘Nana’s here, precious.’</p> + +<p>Neither Sainty nor the baby was in the least taken in by this +transparent comedy.</p> + +<p>‘I think this child is not properly looked after,’ the former said +sternly.</p> + +<p>‘Not looked after!’ Nurse was outraged in her finest feelings. ‘Not +looked after! She didn’t know what his lordship meant. She was never +away for a minute all day and often up half the night with the little +darling; not that she grudged it, not she; she was well aware it was but +her duty and what she was paid for, but it <i>was</i> hard after all to be +told she didn’t look after the dear child, and she did think no one who +hadn’t done it had any idea what it was to be with a young infant at +night....’</p> + +<p>And just then the peccant underling returning from her own private +expedition in neglect of her duty, she made a diversion by falling on +her and smiting her figuratively hip and thigh in a frenzy of righteous +wrath.</p> + +<p>The baby’s official guardians having for the time being returned to +their posts, Sainty did not judge it necessary to remain and enter into +details in which he might easily betray his ignorance. Having made his +sweeping indictment and seen his heir restored to tranquillity by a +bottle, he returned to his own neglected duties, feeling a little as if +the Lord Chancellor might address to him some of the scathing reproaches +he had just heard flung at the head of Emma.</p> + +<p>He tried to immerse himself in his usual employments, but, do what he +would, he was haunted for the rest of the day and far into the night by +the vision of the piteous, dirty baby left to howl by itself in the +midst of its luxurious surroundings, and felt the cold clasp of the tiny +fingers growing gradually warm and moist upon his own.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_328">{328}</a></span></p> + +<h2><a id="CHAPTER_XXV">CHAPTER XXV</a></h2> + +<p class="nind"><span class="smcap">The</span> interview last recorded between Belchamber and his heir was to have +momentous consequences for both of them. The principal gain was at first +to the baby, as the immediate result was the dismissal of his neglectful +attendants. Cissy, for her part, first delicately expressed surprise at +Sainty’s interesting himself in the matter at all, and then adopted the +simple plan of refusing to believe a word against the nurse, whom she +eventually passed on to another young mother, with as strong a +recommendation as she had received of her, adding in explanation: ‘My +husband took a dislike to the woman, and so, of course, she had to go.’</p> + +<p>Lady Eccleston was full of concern and astonishment. ‘I <i>can’t</i> +understand it,’ she cried. ‘Lady Quivers gave her the very <i>highest</i> +character, and before that, she was four years in the nursery at +Branches, first as nursery-maid and then as under-nurse, and I went to +see dear Lady Olave myself, who couldn’t say enough about her. I <i>can’t</i> +think she would really neglect the darling.’</p> + +<p>Sainty repeated his experience, and ‘Go and see for yourself,’ he said. +‘The child is ill-cared for; he isn’t even kept clean.’</p> + +<p>Grandmamma went to inspect, and returned declaring the angel was as neat +as a new pin. ‘You can’t, no matter <i>how</i> careful you are, prevent their +dear little chinnywinnies from getting a wee bit chapped if they dribble +much,’ she said.</p> + +<p>‘No doubt he was clean enough after my unexpected visit,’ Sainty +answered; ‘but I assure you <i>I</i> didn’t find him so; his hands were dirty +and nothing about him was fresh. I don’t know much about babies, but I’m +sure they ought not to<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_329">{329}</a></span> smell so nasty. He was hungry and cold too, poor +little chap! and left all alone to yell himself into a fit.’</p> + +<p>‘Nurse declares she wasn’t gone five minutes; she was dreadfully +distressed that you should have found the child alone. I feel sure one +can trust that woman; I can always tell by people’s faces and the way +they look at one; and Lady Quivers said she was <i>so</i> devoted to her +last, and I know it was a very delicate little thing.’</p> + +<p>For once, however, her son-in-law was inexorable. ‘The woman may have +been all you say when she came,’ he said; ‘but it is not surprising if +the best of nurses grows neglectful when the mother sets her the +example.’</p> + +<p>This was taking the matter to very unsafe ground, where Lady Eccleston +felt that it behoved her to walk warily. ‘I <i>can</i> want nothing but the +darling baby’s good,’ she said hastily. ‘I hold no brief for nurse, and +if you are dissatisfied with her, dear Sainty, of course she had better +go, though I don’t see what precautions we can take more than we did in +getting this one.’</p> + +<p>It was Alice de Lissac who finally discovered a successor to Lady +Quivers’ treasure, and imported a pet lamb from her mother’s bible-class +at Great Charmington to act as nursery-maid.</p> + +<p>Once the treasure was gone, the other servants abounded in evidence, +which more than justified her removal, though they would apparently have +had no difficulty in reconciling their consciences to perpetual silence +had she remained. It transpired that it was her frequent habit to +administer narcotics to her unfortunate charge, in order that she might +fulfil evening engagements of her own, from which she had sometimes not +returned till the small hours of the morning; yet when Sainty felt it +his duty to impart this information to her new employer, he was very +civilly shown the door, with profuse thanks, but a polite intimation +that his interference was not required; from which he was forced to +conclude that Cissy was not as exceptional among fashionable mothers as +he, in his ignorance, had imagined.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_330">{330}</a></span></p> + +<p>He carried the child off to Belchamber, where he knew that Lady +Charmington would keep a lynx eye on the new nurse and her acolyte, and +where, indeed, it soon began to improve visibly in condition.</p> + +<p>Since its mother seemed to be without the common instincts of the animal +kingdom, he imposed it on himself as a duty to see that the poor little +creature was at least warmed and fed, and not poisoned with drugs. The +duty was at first rather a painful one, involving as it did a constant +recollection of what he would fain forget; but, as the months went by, +like other things originally taken up from the sternest sense of +responsibility, it came to have for him a decided interest.</p> + +<p>It has been somewhat cynically said that to be under an obligation to a +man is the beginning of dislike; be that as it may, there is no doubt +that any one to whom, in a world of frustrated effort, we have been able +to do a tangible service, establishes thereby a distinct claim on our +gratitude. ‘This,’ we say to ourselves with a pardonable glow, ‘is our +work; here is something accomplished, some one better or happier for our +existence,’ And it is impossible not to have a kindly feeling towards +the person who has procured us such a pleasing reflection.</p> + +<p>Sainty found his mind constantly running on his small charge; he dwelt +with pleasure on the prospect of seeing it; he even began to make +excuses for more frequent visits to Belchamber, where it was astonishing +how often his presence and personal supervision seemed to be required.</p> + +<p>In addition to the baby, there was now another person there, on whom he +had the pleasure of knowing he had conferred a benefit; he had rescued +his brother-in-law, Thomas Eccleston, from the hated thraldom of the +broker’s office, and placed him with his agent, Mr. Danford, who was +beginning to feel, as age stole upon him, the necessity for help in +managing the huge property.</p> + +<p>The good Tommy, his legs permanently gaitered, his honest pink face +burnt to a healthy brickdust colour, and his hands hardened by much +congenial outdoor labour, was as<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_331">{331}</a></span> happy as a rabbit in a vegetable +garden. To initiate this neophyte into his duties, and at the same time +keep things smooth between Danford and the pupil in whom his jealousy +could not but scent a possible successor, called for many visits from +the master. Sainty made time for them gladly, half ashamed to admit even +to himself how much the new tenant of his old nurseries had to do with +his alacrity. It surprised him to find how eagerly his eyes would scan +the walks and lawns for the distant gleam of white in the perambulator.</p> + +<p>Week by week, and month by month, the little life was expanding and +developing like an opening flower in the sunshine, and Sainty noted the +changes, watching with reverent awe the miracle of the dawning +intelligence. He brought wonderful toys, heads in fancy costume that +could by a turn of the wrist be made to gyrate on a handle to a feeble +lute-like accompaniment; wonderful parti-coloured acrobats in the +attitude of St. Andrew on his cross, who shook their extended limbs with +a great tinkling of bells; white furry animals that emitted strange +squeaks when pressed in the abdominal regions.</p> + +<p>It must be confessed that the toys left the baby rather cold; sometimes +he looked at them with solemn and contemptuous eyes, sometimes with an +indulgent smile; more often he swept them from him with a downward +sabre-cut action of the right arm. Whatever he did seemed to Sainty an +indication of unusual capacity. He thought with a pang of fierce +hatred—was it envy? was it contempt?—of the men who begot such +marvellous beings, and grudged an occasional moment from their low toils +or pleasures to glance impatiently at them and order them from the room. +Of a mother who could bring forth a child and leave it to take its +chance of life or death in the care of hirelings, he dared not trust +himself to think at all.</p> + +<p>A hunger of paternity possessed him. How he could have adored a child of +his own! His own! Was this child <i>not</i> his own? To whom did it rather +belong? the father who<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_332">{332}</a></span> disowned, the mother who neglected it, or to him +who had tended and cared for it, and was learning to love it? And the +crowning wonder of all was that the child was learning to love <i>him</i>. It +was not a merry baby—‘a solemn wise-like thing,’ the nurse called +it—looking out upon the world with grave mysterious eyes, and that +peculiarly detached, far-off expression that belongs only to babies and +cats; but at sight of Sainty the rare smile never failed to light up the +little white face, the legs would jump and kick against the nurse, the +arms be held out for his embrace.</p> + +<p>A baby’s partiality has as little cause or meaning as its aversions, and +it is as unreasonable to be flattered by the one as to be hurt by the +other; but a man must be of a sterner temper than our poor Sainty to +resist a certain mild elation when a little creature hurls itself into +his arms with such confident self-surrender. To him, moreover, the +novelty of the experience made it doubly dear. His mother had doubtless +loved him in her own grim way, because he was her son; others, as his +uncle, had pitied, or done their duty by him; others again might have +paid him attention for what they hoped to obtain from him; but never in +the course of his existence could he remember that any living thing had +been simply attracted to him by the magnetism of his own personality; +and no one can suspect a baby of any complexity of motive. So, when his +coming was greeted with jubilant laughter and dancings and outstretched +arms, a warmth crept about his heart, and he owned to himself with +humble gratitude that out of what had seemed his greatest affliction had +come the best happiness his life had ever known.</p> + +<p>Of course he did not arrive at this height of devotion all at once; it +was the growth of many months, and every time he came to Belchamber, the +little tendrils wound themselves more closely round his heart. At the +end of the session, he established himself there with a more joyful +sense of homecoming than he had known for years.</p> + +<p>To those who have experienced how rich in possibilities is the intimacy +of a baby of six months, it were unnecessary to<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_333">{333}</a></span> describe it; they who +have not would hardly credit it, however cunningly set forth. There is +something intangible about it that must necessarily evaporate in the +mere attempt to put it on paper. Sainty fell into the habit of having +the child almost constantly with him; often it slept on the sofa in his +study, or in its perambulator under the great cedars while he read or +wrote beside it, and the sense of its nearness at once soothed and +stimulated him; even if it woke, it was so gentle and quiet that it +hardly disturbed his work.</p> + +<p>He abandoned his little cart in favour of a larger open carriage in +which the nurse and baby could accompany him on his drives. Not +infrequently they would start by way of the dower-house, where Lady +Charmington would be a willing addition to the party. Sainty and his +mother were brought very close together by their common worship of the +child; at no previous time, and on no other subject, had her son been in +such constant need of the good lady’s advice. Exactly what the baby had +suffered at the hands of the ‘treasure’ remained in doubt, but certainly +its internal economy was none of the strongest, and many changes of diet +had to be tried, which its two guardians discussed by the hour. Then it +began to cut its teeth exceptionally early, with all the usual +accompaniments of heaviness, loss of appetite, and restless nights. +Without his mother’s rocklike commonsense to lean upon, Sainty would +have worked himself into a fever of anxiety; her experience of the +frailty of his own early days was of inestimable comfort to him.</p> + +<p>‘I tell you, this child is a tower of strength to what you were,’ Lady +Charmington would say. ‘I’ve been up night after night with you when you +were teething.’</p> + +<p>‘But was I as hot and restless as baby?’</p> + +<p>‘Hot and restless? I should think you were! twice as bad, and croupy +into the bargain, which this child, thank God! hasn’t a symptom of.’</p> + +<p>So Sainty took heart, and when, after a time, he was made to feel with +his finger two tiny white points in the red gum,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_334">{334}</a></span> this also seemed to +him an almost supernatural achievement on the part of one so young.</p> + +<p>He had come to regard the precious infant as so entirely his charge, +that he did not bestow much thought upon its recreant mother. Cissy had +started on a round of visits at the end of the Season, hardly going +through the form of inquiring if Sainty thought of accompanying her. It +was a shock to him to find how completely she had gone out of his +existence, when she presently announced that she was coming to +Belchamber; she had spent a day or two there, before going North, to get +some country clothes and give her maid a chance to repack, but had not +seen the baby more than two or three times, nor appeared to take any +particular interest in what was being done for it. It never occurred to +Sainty as likely that she would in any way occupy herself with the child +or its relation to him; it was therefore no small surprise to him to +discover, before she had been many days in the house, that it was a +distinct irritation to her to see them together.</p> + +<p>The first time she found it under the cedars with him, she inquired, +with a perceptible shade of annoyance in her voice, where the nurse was, +and why she hadn’t taken it out.</p> + +<p>‘Baby generally spends most of the morning with me here if it’s fine,’ +Sainty said. ‘The doctor likes him to be in the open air as much as +possible, and it gives nurse a chance to do various little things for +him.’</p> + +<p>‘Nonsense! it’s her place to be with him; she’ll get utterly spoilt if +you do her work for her; she has got a girl in the nursery. If she can’t +manage, she had better have another. There’s no earthly reason for you +to do nursery-maid.’</p> + +<p>‘I like having baby with me, and <i>this</i> woman doesn’t neglect her +duties; at least she doesn’t leave the child alone, when he’s <i>not</i> with +me, like the one your mother got for him.’</p> + +<p>‘You were always unjust about that poor woman. Ah! here you are, nurse. +You had better take baby and walk him about. You shouldn’t leave him +here to worry his lordship.’</p> + +<p>‘Begging your ladyship’s pardon, my lord partick’larly<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_335">{335}</a></span> <i>wished</i> for the +child to be left with him,’ retorted the nurse, as she wheeled the +perambulator viciously away, quivering with suppressed indignation.</p> + +<p>‘You see the results of your spoiling that woman,’ Cissy remarked. ‘If +she’s going to be insolent to me she’ll have to go.’</p> + +<p>‘No—by heaven! I’m hanged if she shall,’ Sainty burst out ‘She’s +devoted to the child, and takes very good care of him, and he isn’t very +strong. It would be monstrous, after never giving him a thought from the +time of his birth till now, if you undertook to sack the people who <i>do</i> +look after him, because you considered they didn’t sufficiently kowtow +to <i>you</i>.’</p> + +<p>‘It’s precisely what you did to her predecessor.’</p> + +<p>‘On the contrary, I sent her away because she neglected him, which was, +no doubt, what gave you a fellow-feeling for her.’</p> + +<p>‘Oh! well, don’t let me interfere between you and your <i>protégée</i>. I +don’t even pretend to inquire what terms you are on with her; but I must +confess I can’t see what particular pleasure you derive from the +constant presence of another man’s child.’</p> + +<p>‘Hush!’ Sainty said, casting a swift, frightened glance around to see if +any one was within earshot. ‘Be careful what you say. Remember the child +is <i>mine</i>. He has got to be mine. Your remark was in your usual +excellent taste, but on that particular subject you will have to forego +the pleasure of wounding me. If you are so fond of reminding me that I +am not his father, you will say something one of these days before +others that you will regret.’</p> + +<p>It gave him a horrible sense of complicity to be obliged to entreat her +discretion a feeling that, bound by their guilty secret, let them hate +each other as they would, they dare not quarrel. Probably Cissy was not +less aware of this necessity than her husband, for though her object +remained the same, she altered her tactics. She would try to keep the +child from him by little underhand manœuvres, sending it out when she<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_336">{336}</a></span> +thought him likely to want it, and even going so far as to take it with +her when she drove; but she did not risk another face attack.</p> + +<p>Sainty, on his side, did nothing to provoke an encounter. He saw the +child not less, but as it were by stealth, and this introduction of a +slightly clandestine element into their intercourse only heightened his +love for it. Not that it required any great exercise of tact or +ingenuity to evade Cissy’s notice. Lord Charmington would have fared ill +had he been dependent on the fitful attentions of his mamma for care and +comfort. Even the amiable desire to deprive her husband of his one +pleasure could not make a domestic character of Lady Belchamber. She was +much away, and when at home constantly surrounded by guests who absorbed +her attention. It was only at rare intervals that she found any leisure +to bestow on the separation of her husband and her child.</p> + +<p>She had a trick of arriving when least expected, swooping suddenly into +visible space like a comet, and, like a comet, followed by her train; +though to speak of her appearances as comet-like gives a false +impression of something periodical and calculably recurrent, whereas no +one could foretell when Cissy might take it into her head to entertain a +party, which seemed to be her only idea of the uses of a home.</p> + +<p>Once, when he thought she was safely launched on a round of +country-houses, Sainty had asked his old friend Gerald Newby, for whom +she entertained no great regard, to pay him a visit. They were at tea on +the lawn, when, preceded at a short interval by a heralding telegram, +her ladyship descended on them with a few friends, and the announcement +of a further contingent for the morrow.</p> + +<p>Lady Charmington had come over from the dower-house, and Tommy had +dropped in for tea and to play with his nephew, about whom he was almost +as weak as Sainty.</p> + +<p>No one looking at the group under the cedars would have guessed that he +was witness of anything but the most delightful scene of domestic +felicity. The stately ancestral home, the superb trees, the great +stretches of smoothly mown turf,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_337">{337}</a></span> the young married couple with their +baby between them, surrounded by all that wealth and great possession +could give, the adoring grandmother, the loving uncle, the admiring +friends, the glow of flowers, the cheerful, intimate little meal, all +combined to make the picture complete. It appealed strongly to Newby, +who beamed indulgently on the party.</p> + +<p>‘Our dear Sainty appears in a new and most amiable light,’ he said; ‘I +am not accustomed to see him as Kourotrophos. It is the epithet applied +to Hermes in his character of the child-tender,’ he added explanatorily +to Cissy, who looked rather blank.</p> + +<p>‘I can’t think why nurse doesn’t fetch baby,’ that lady remarked; ‘or, +for that matter, why she brought him down at all. I’ve always told her +not to when any one was here. Whatever one may think of one’s own +children, one has no right to bore other people with them.’</p> + +<p>‘<i>I</i> asked to see the child,’ said Lady Charmington, the light of battle +waking in her eye.</p> + +<p>‘Mother had settled to come over before I knew you were coming,’ Sainty +said quietly. ‘When I got your telegram it was too late to stop her, and +as she had come on purpose to see baby, I couldn’t refuse to send for +him. No one need bother about him; he will be quite good with me.’</p> + +<p>‘Dear little man!’ said one of the ladies who had come with the fond +mother. ‘I’m so glad you didn’t stop him, Lord Belchamber. I love +babies. I’ve been trying to think who he reminds me of. He’s not a bit +like you or Cissy.’</p> + +<p>‘We think him like my grandmother—’ Sainty began.</p> + +<p>‘I never could see that he was so like the duchess,’ Lady Charmington +cut in.</p> + +<p>‘To <i>me</i> he’s the image of Claude Morland,’ remarked the luckless Tommy.</p> + +<p>There was a sudden hush that may have lasted some five seconds ere it +was broken by Newby inquiring, ‘What has become of your charming cousin? +I liked him so much, and hoped I might meet him here.’</p> + +<p>‘We see very little of Claude now,’ Lady Charmington<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_338">{338}</a></span> responded. ‘He +never seems to come here. I suppose he finds other places more amusing. +He was glad enough to come in old days.’</p> + +<p>‘I fancy,’ said Sainty, ‘as the duke gets older that he is more +dependent on him. He very seldom gets away.’</p> + +<p>He had, in fact, for some time been conscious that Claude came much less +to the house than formerly, and was acutely aware of a like +consciousness in Cissy, though each was careful to say nothing about it +to the other.</p> + +<p>‘By the way, that reminds me,’ said Lady Charmington to Sainty. ‘I had +almost forgotten. Alice de Lissac writes she is coming to her father for +a little, and she is very anxious to see baby. May I bring her over some +day?’</p> + +<p>‘Why should Claude remind you of Mrs. de Lissac?’ Cissy asked, with a +little laugh, her desire to score off her mother-in-law getting the +better of her prudence. ‘I never knew they had much in common.’</p> + +<p>‘Only because Alice says in her letter they have seen a good deal of him +lately. He seems to have been several times to Roehampton; and mother +mentioned his coming in to see her one day with one of the girls.’</p> + +<p>‘Morland’s a deep ‘un,’ ejaculated Tommy. ‘Shouldn’t wonder if he was +after one of the heiresses. Those girls’ll have a devil of a lot of +money. The mater was always egging me on to be civil to ’em. Do you +remember the World’s Bazaar, Cissy? Oh my!’</p> + +<p>‘I wonder if he can be thinking of Gemma,’ said Lady Charmington +thoughtfully. ‘Alice doesn’t <i>say</i> so, but——’</p> + +<p>‘It’s not true,’ Cissy burst out; then, seeing awakened curiosity in +several surrounding pairs of eyes, she added more indifferently, ‘I know +Claude well enough to feel sure he would never be attracted by that +black Jewess.’</p> + +<p>‘He might be by her blond sovereigns,’ suggested Tommy.</p> + +<p>Cissy became suddenly solicitous for the comfort of her guests. ‘I am +sure you want to see your rooms,’ she said. ‘Wouldn’t you like a bath +after that dirty journey?’ and swept them into the house.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_339">{339}</a></span></p> + +<p>‘Cissy don’t seem to fancy the idea of Morland being sweet on the dark +lady,’ Tommy giggled. ‘She used to flirt with him herself once. I +remember mater——’</p> + +<p>‘Tommy,’ said Sainty, ‘do, like a good soul, ask nurse to fetch baby.’</p> + +<p>He felt sick and frightened. The contrast between the appearances of +life and the ghastly things that were so thinly overlaid by them +suddenly appalled his spirit. Almost unconsciously he picked up the +baby, and clasped it closely to him. It was on that same spot, and on +much such an afternoon, that he had first seen Cissy five years before. +With the clearness of a picture thrown on a screen, he saw her standing +as she had stood that day with Claude beside her, her girlish beauty +bathed in soft golden light, and recalled the prophetic pang with which +he had watched them turn away together under the baleful gaze of Aimée +Winston. As he sat holding their child to his heart, the permanent +dweller in his cupboard seemed to grin out at him with a more than +usually fiendish malignity.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_340">{340}</a></span></p> + +<h2><a id="CHAPTER_XXVI">CHAPTER XXVI</a></h2> + +<p class="nind"><span class="smcap">One</span> morning early in October, Thomas Eccleston appeared in his +brother-in-law’s study with a shade of distress deepening the habitual +ruddiness of his open countenance.</p> + +<p>It has already been intimated that Sainty cherished a very real +affection for this young man, holding a character so manly and direct to +be little short of miraculous in a child of Lady Eccleston.</p> + +<p>‘What’s the matter, Tommy?’ he asked. ‘You look perturbed. Have you and +Danford been coming to blows?’</p> + +<p>‘Oh no, Danny’s all right; it so happens I’m rather in his good books +just now. But the fact is, I’ve had rather a queer letter, and I didn’t +quite know what to do about it, so I thought the simplest thing was to +bring it to you, though it’s not by any means what he intended me to +do.’</p> + +<p>‘Who’s “he”? Danford?’</p> + +<p>‘No; I tell you it’s nothing to do with him,’</p> + +<p>‘To begin with, then, who’s your correspondent?’</p> + +<p>‘Well, if you want to know, it’s your brother.’</p> + +<p>Sainty started. ‘Arthur? What <i>can</i> he want of you?’</p> + +<p>‘I think the best way would be for you to read it,’ Tommy said, holding +out the letter.</p> + +<p>Sainty hesitated a moment, then took it and read:</p> + +<p>‘<span class="smcap">Dear Eccleston</span>—I expect you’ll be rather astonished at hearing from +me, and still more at what it’s about. The fact of the matter is, I want +you to do me a good turn. I was awfully glad to hear my brother had got +you at Belchamber, and it suddenly occurred to me you would be just the +chap to do what I want. To cut a long story short, I want to come to +Belchamber. I suppose it’s very undignified of me, but <span class="pagenum"><a id="page_341">{341}</a></span>I’m badly in +want of a little amusement, and I thought if they were going to have a +shoot, and it wasn’t a very big party, you might suggest to your sister +to pop me in as one of the guns. You may think it funny that I don’t +write straight to my brother, but I know he’d be infernally sniffy, and +say I had no proper pride; and Cissy always seemed a good sort, and so +did you, and I thought between you, you could work it for me. I know +they won’t ask Lady Arthur, and I don’t ask it of ’em. At first I was +afraid she mightn’t take it kindly, but she’s been all right about it; +she says she don’t want to go where she isn’t wanted, but don’t mind my +going without her. Do you think you can work it through your sister? Do, +if you can, and oblige yours ever.—<span class="smcap">A. W. Chambers.</span>’</p> + +<p>‘Oh! <i>how</i> like Arthur!’ Sainty murmured, as he refolded this +characteristic letter.</p> + +<p>‘I thought,’ said Tommy, who had been watching him uneasily as he read, +and fiddling with the things on the writing-table, ‘that it was better +to come straight to you than to go to Cissy about it.’</p> + +<p>‘So it is, and I’m very grateful to you, dear boy, for all your +loyalty’; and Sainty laid a thin claw in Thomas’s large red hand. The +sub-agent pressed it fervently.</p> + +<p>‘What had I better say?’ he asked. ‘It puts me in such a deucedly +awkward posish, don’t yer know.’</p> + +<p>‘Of course he had no business to write to any one but me,’ Sainty said. +‘Well—you needn’t answer; I’ll write to him myself.’</p> + +<p>Tommy looked much relieved. ‘Hope I didn’t do wrong,’ he said +doubtfully.</p> + +<p>‘On the contrary, you did more than right,’ Sainty said warmly.</p> + +<p>‘Shall you ask him?’ Tommy ventured, after a pause.</p> + +<p>‘I can’t say straight off; I must talk to Cissy about it, and’ (with an +ill-concealed tremor) ‘to my mother,’</p> + +<p>Cissy made no objections. Arthur was a pleasant, good-looking fellow, +and a man you could ask without his wife was as good as a bachelor. +Rather to Sainty’s surprise, Lady<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_342">{342}</a></span> Charmington was not less willing. She +hardly ever mentioned Arthur. Since the day when, livid and furious, she +had solemnly cursed her younger son, Sainty could almost count on the +fingers of one hand the times when she had spoken his name; but when, +with some trepidation and much uncertainty, he approached her on the +subject, he was met quite half-way.</p> + +<p>‘Unto seventy times seven,’ she remarked, ‘the Scripture tells us we +must forgive. That woman I will <i>never</i> receive, but as long as he is +willing to come without her, I see no reason you shouldn’t have him at +Belchamber; and—and—you may tell him I am willing to see him too, if +he likes.’ And Sainty read in the sudden suffusion of the hard eyes, the +tale of the poor woman’s long silent yearning for a sight of her +favourite son.</p> + +<p>So Arthur had his wish, and came once more to Belchamber. There was, no +doubt, a certain awkwardness in the situation, and Sainty was surprised +and touched to find that, though he certainly felt it much the most, +Arthur was not without a perception of it, too. He was decidedly subdued +during the first days of his visit, and Sainty’s ready sympathy went +out, as usual, to any one who was ill at ease. Had Arthur been in his +accustomed mood of complete self-satisfaction, he would have felt less +tenderly towards him, but seeing him so humbled and brought low, on the +footing, as it were, of a guest and poor relation in the home of their +common childhood, was almost more than he could bear.</p> + +<p>Perhaps Arthur intentionally rather accentuated this note, conscious of +the effect it would have on his brother. He would pointedly ask leave to +do the most obvious things. ‘There’s a spare gun in the gun-room,’ he +would say; ‘the keeper says he doesn’t know whose it is. Should you mind +if I took it, old chap? I’ve only one here, and it got so hot yesterday +I could hardly shoot with it.’ Or it would be, ‘Tommy and I are going to +practise a bit; may I use this old bat? I fancy it must once have been +mine, but I’m not sure.’ Or, ‘Would it be convenient for me to have a +horse<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_343">{343}</a></span> this morning? I was thinking of riding over to see the mater.’ +Formerly, whatever the house afforded was as freely his as Sainty’s. If +he was not the owner, he was something more than an ordinary heir, and +guns, bats, and horses were so emphatically his natural property, that +it was unthinkable his asking permission to use them.</p> + +<p>On the first morning of his visit, the brothers had wandered out +together, and Arthur had commented on the new arrangement of the +forecourt.</p> + +<p>‘You’ve fetched all the old statues out of the shrubbery, I see,’ he +said. ‘What did you do that for?’</p> + +<p>Sainty explained, almost apologetically, that it was an attempt to +return to Perrault’s original plan.</p> + +<p>‘Is it so long since you were here?’ he said. ‘I had forgotten——’ +Then, as the other remained silent, gloomily sucking at his pipe, ‘I’m +afraid you don’t like it,’ he suggested meekly.</p> + +<p>‘Oh! well, of course, it’s none of <i>my</i> business. I must say I think +they looked better where they were, but I’m not much of a judge. +Naturally, don’tcherknow, I liked ’em where I’ve always seen ’em. I +can’t bear changes in the place.’</p> + +<p>‘I’m sometimes half sorry I did it, myself,’ Sainty admitted. As he +spoke he was aware that the moment had come which he had been dreading +ever since his brother’s arrival, the first appearance on the scene of +the baby, who was being taken out for his morning’s airing.</p> + +<p>‘And so this is the son and heir, is it?’ said Arthur. ‘Hulloa! little +‘un, how do you do? I’m your uncle. You look very solemn, but it would +be more natural if I did. You don’t know the difference your small +existence makes to me and mine.’</p> + +<p>The baby, as usual, at sight of Sainty, began making demonstrations of +welcome, doubling himself forward over his restraining strap, and giving +vent to a note like that of the nightingale, which is conventionally +represented in print as ‘Jug-jug-jug,’ and a cry of ‘A-da, A-da-da, +A-da,’ which<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_344">{344}</a></span> was a sort of sound of all work with him for the +expression of his varying emotions.</p> + +<p>‘He wants his dada,’ said the nurse, eager to display her charge’s +precocity, and, at the same time, gratify her master. ‘He says “Dada” +quite plain, my lord, and it’s the first word he’s said.’</p> + +<p>‘It’s a wise child that knows his own father,’ said Arthur jocosely.</p> + +<p>Sainty could not restrain a hasty glance at him, but he was evidently +innocent of any special or personal application of the often-quoted +adage.</p> + +<p>They walked on for a little beside the child, Sainty resting one hand +lovingly on the edge of the little carriage, the baby squirming round +and looking up into his face, wrinkling its nose and gurgling to attract +his attention. When their ways divided, the parting was not effected +without a burst of protest from the infant, which Sainty soothed and +diverted as skilfully as the professional attendant.</p> + +<p>‘The little beggar seems to like you,’ Arthur remarked. ‘I don’t +remember either of mine ever yelling for <i>me</i>.’</p> + +<p>‘You have probably never taken as much notice of them as I do of baby.’</p> + +<p>‘You were always a kind of old granny; you’ll probably spoil that brat. +Have you done anything to the stables since I was here?’</p> + +<p>Once received, the prodigal brother came several times to Belchamber in +the course of the winter. He liked the luxury, the magnificence, the +good food, the gentlemanly licence of the conversation, the fine horses +to ride (he soon ceased to ask if he might take one), better than the +shabby gentility of the stucco rectory, the half-trained grooms, the +half-lame hunters, the half-refined wife of his own home. It sometimes +seemed to Sainty that he almost forgot he was a husband and father at +all, and there were not wanting among the ladies of Cissy’s surrounding +some who were quite willing to help him to this pleasing oblivion.</p> + +<p>‘I like Lady Deans,’ he would say confidentially; ‘sh<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_345">{345}</a></span>e’s rare sport, +and there’s no nonsense about her; she don’t care what she says, and you +haven’t got to think twice about what you say to <i>her</i>. Now if I were to +say half the things to Topsy I do to her, she’d bridle and shy and look +as sour as if she’d been brought up by a bishop. And when you think—oh +my!’ and the sentence would end in a long puff of cigar smoke, or the +burial of the speaker’s nose in a tall whisky and soda.</p> + +<p>Arthur was a decided success with the members of the softer sex. The +story of his romance cast quite a halo about him, and the very few +mothers of grown-up girls who were tolerated in that gay company felt +almost tenderly towards a detrimental who had put it out of his own +power to marry their daughters.</p> + +<p>As for Cissy, she and her brother-in-law got on capitally. She pressed +him to come whenever he liked, partly, no doubt, because she divined +that his presence was a constant unhappiness to her husband. The sight +of him in juxtaposition with the baby kept a keen edge on all Sainty’s +feelings of remorse; nor was Arthur likely to be restrained by a +fastidious delicacy from all allusion to the change which the birth of +an heir had made in his own position. His remarks on the subject were +not always in the best possible taste; he affected jokes about the Babes +in the Wood, referred to himself as the ‘wicked uncle,’ and ‘wondered +Sainty was willing to trust him in the house with the precious infant.’ +Such pleasantries, of a slightly sub-acid jocularity, went through and +through Sainty in a way that the speaker could neither have guessed nor +intended; he probably thought, on the contrary, that he was taking his +blighted prospects with an easy amiability which did him infinite +credit. He was not indeed without certain touches of kindliness towards +his nephew. ‘When he gets a big boy, you must let his poor old uncle +teach him to ride and shoot,’ he would say. ‘We must make a good +sportsman of him, and you know <i>you</i> won’t do much in that line for him, +old man.’ Sainty wondered if he wanted the boy to be a sports<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_346">{346}</a></span>man. His +personal hatred of taking life extended itself to this nurseling of his +affections. Must those tiny fingers be taught to curl round a trigger, +that innocent heart learn to find its pleasure in slaughter and +destruction? Yet he desired all forms of perfection for his darling; he +hated to think of him at the same disadvantage among those with whom he +would have to live as he himself had always been. He would have him +strong and brave and daring, trained in all arts and exercises that +became a gentleman; for instance, there could be no doubt that a certain +proficiency in horsemanship was desirable for the ideal youth, but he +recalled with horror his own early efforts to attain it, and shuddered +to think how he should tremble, when, in course of time, the child came +to an age to face these dangers.</p> + +<p>He began to see how ill-fitted he was to be the trainer of a young man. +Hitherto he had imagined himself only as a nurse of callow infancy, +shielding the little one with his greater insight and sympathy from the +misunderstandings that had made his own childhood unhappy. Somehow he +had fancied the child would be like him, timid and shrinking, needing +protection; but now it struck him that there was no reason why it should +resemble him at all, and he recoiled with sudden terror from the thought +of what unlovely qualities the offspring of two such parents might have +inherited. How would he be able to bear seeing the treachery of the one, +or the hard egotism of the other, reproducing itself in the being he +loved best in the world? Had he the firmness needed for correcting such +tendencies? Could he ever steel himself to the necessity of punishment?</p> + +<p>On the other hand, it was hardly to be desired that the little boy +should grow up on his pattern. He was not so conspicuous a success in +his position that it was an object to educate a successor on the same +lines. He began to understand the kind of problems his own bringing up +had presented for solution to his mother and uncle; he remembered how +futile had been the efforts of these two strong natures, with all the +advantages of example, to instil<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_347">{347}</a></span> into his feeble soul a more virile +attitude towards life, and the sum in proportion of what difficulties he +would have to encounter in a like endeavour was not a hard one to work +out. If Lady Charmington, absolutely sure of what she wanted, and with +her bull-dog tenacity of purpose, had failed so lamentably of her +object, what kind of a creature would he turn out, assailed by a hundred +doubts, fears, and indecisions, and desiring simultaneously quite +irreconcilable ideals?</p> + +<p>He recognised that the child had become the chief preoccupation of his +life, its health, its food, its education—for he already tormented +himself with questions that, by their very nature, could not have to be +faced for years to come; and the more he troubled himself about the +little thing, the more he loved it, the greater his love grew, the +greater grew the desire to do his duty by his charge, the greater the +anxiety as to what that duty might be.</p> + +<p>So far, however, his troubles were only those common to all parents and +guardians who took their responsibilities somewhat morbidly; his special +self-torture began where theirs left off. When all was said and done, +the thousand dangers that dog the steps of youth safely passed, the +pitfalls on either hand successfully avoided, the boy trained to all +perfection of manly virtue and delight—what then? To what purpose, and +for what end, should he have fashioned this splendid creature? To be the +means by which he was to rob his nearest kinsfolk of their birthright! +If his remorse was constantly awakened by Arthur’s presence, and the +things that he said, it yet addressed itself less to Arthur than to the +child. It was not so much the injury to his brother and his brother’s +children that was becoming an hourly torment to his conscience, as the +injury to this innocent accomplice in making him the instrument of +wrong. Was that, then, the best that he could do for the son of his +heart, the being who was daily becoming more and more the centre of his +existence, dearer than are the children of their loins to ordinary +fathers, to use him as the unconscious<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_348">{348}</a></span> weapon of his own fraud? There +was no way out, no turning back; he could not now disavow him if he +would. The crime was committed, irremediable, to go on breeding +injustice, perpetuating wrong to the last chapters of the history of his +race.</p> + +<p>He saw in imagination the little boy passing from childhood to youth, +from youth to manhood, growing tall and strong and beautiful, in his +turn marrying, and begetting children to become links in the long chain +of falsehood and carry on the consequences of his lie. And he would have +to live and watch this happening, always alone, always in silence, with +no one to whom he could unburthen his heart. There would only be two who +shared his knowledge, and to neither of them could he say a word on the +subject, though hideously, eternally aware that they knew, and were +watching with himself. And then a new terror assailed him. When a secret +was already the property of three people, could he be certain that no +breath of it would ever reach the person principally concerned? He had +plenty of experience of how recklessly Cissy could talk on occasion, +what rash and terrible things the desire to wound could make her say, +and he trembled lest in some fit of sudden anger with her son, some +momentary loss of self-control, she might turn and crush him with the +story of his birth. The word once spoken could never be recalled; he saw +the poor boy coming, white and stern, to ask him if this thing were +true, and felt by anticipation the agony of his own inability to deny +it. A dozen times a day he lived through the misery of that confession, +and watched the love and respect die out of those dear eyes, as his +unwilling hand dealt the final blow. Perhaps it would be some fair +growth of young romance, the prospect of an innocent, happy marriage +with a good girl, that he would have to blast with that terrible avowal. +He heard himself condemning the boy to sterile loneliness or the devious +byways of illicit love, to make a tardy reparation, and restore the +stolen heritage to its rightful owners.</p> + +<p>These thoughts were with him day and night; they went<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_349">{349}</a></span> to bed with him, +and got up with him; they followed him about the place; they sat with +him beside the sleeping baby, and looked at him out of its great solemn +eyes when it woke. Truly ‘the Lord his God was a jealous God,’ that +fastidiously high standard of conduct and personal honour, his one sin +against which was to be ‘visited upon the children, unto the third and +fourth generation.’</p> + +<p>And then on a sudden the end came, and he learned the futility of his +crime and his remorse alike. The poor little life that had been to him a +source of such happiness and such self-torture came to an end as +independently of any act of his as it had come to its beginning. It may +have contained from the first the germs of some mortal disease, or +perhaps the practices of its former nurse had left behind more fatal +results than any one suspected. It is probable that too rapid teething +had something to do with it. A baby’s life is at best but such a newly +kindled flame, feeble and unsteady, that a puff of wind will make it +flicker and go out. The whole thing did not take a week. The child was +flushed, heavy, restless, as it had so often been before. ‘He is cutting +another big tooth,’ the nurse said. ‘It’s no wonder he’s a little +fractious, poor lamb! It’s the third in a fortnight.’ Lady Charmington +was appealed to, and repeated, for the twentieth time, her comfortable +assertions of how much more Sainty himself had suffered during the same +anxious period; by constantly reassuring her son with them, she had +finally almost persuaded herself that the baby was as strong as she +wished it. She declared it was ridiculous to send for the doctor. ‘Have +him, if you like,’ she said; ‘but I know just what he’ll say. Baby has +been exactly like this so often, and each time you always think it is +something dreadful. Nurse knows exactly what to do for him, don’t you, +nurse?’</p> + +<p>On the third day Sainty grew restive, and sent for him all the same. The +doctor, if not as well satisfied as Lady Charmington, yet seemed to +think there was no particular cause for anxiety. He detected a little +sound in the<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_350">{350}</a></span> bronchial pipes, and asked if the child could have got a +chill in any way. ‘It might all very well come from the teeth,’ he said. +‘The little fellow is feverish; you had better keep him in for a day or +two.’</p> + +<p>He came once or twice more, a little uncertain, very non-committal; and +then, one day, there was a swift unexplained rise of temperature, a +convulsion or two, and, before even Sainty, with his genius for +prophesying disaster, had fully realised the danger, all was over in +this world as far as the baby was concerned.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_351">{351}</a></span></p> + +<h2><a id="CHAPTER_XXVII">CHAPTER XXVII</a></h2> + +<p>‘My little boy, my poor little boy! You were conceived in sin, and your +birth was a lie. Your father never owned you, your mother never loved +you. It was left to me, who should have hated you, to tend and cherish +you. It was little enough that I could do for <i>you</i>, but God only knows +what you have been to <i>me</i>. It was no fault of yours, my baby, but my +misdoing, that would have made your innocent existence an injury to +others. I might have known that you could do no harm, that you would go +away before your life could wrong them.’</p> + +<p>Sainty was murmuring broken phrases, his face bowed upon the face of the +dead child. The tiny coffin, almost like a toy, was supported on two +chairs facing each other, and on a third chair beside it he had sat +almost continuously since the room had been put in order and the people +turned out of it. His mother had said it was bad for him, but, with that +single exception, there was luckily no one who cared enough to try and +take him away, and so he had remained, hour after hour, steeped in the +great quiet that surrounded that little figure.</p> + +<p>The pale diffused daylight came sifted through the lowered blinds, +giving an unreal look to common objects, turned suddenly useless, and +ranged against the walls. Sainty himself had helped to order the room, +and to deck it with flowers. He would allow no heavy fragrance of white +funereal blossoms, but all the greenhouses of Belchamber had been +ransacked for the unseasonable roses of winter, and to this day the +smell of roses brings back to him the little white waxen face, barred +with its black-fringed lids, at which he<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_352">{352}</a></span> gazed so long in those sacred +hours of communing with the dead.</p> + +<p>It was his first experience of death. His father had died when he was a +mere baby, and both his grandfathers in his early childhood; since he +had been able to reflect or remember, he had never lost a friend. It +struck him as strange that he, who had tasted so many sorrows, should +have had no experience of this the supremest and commonest that man is +called upon to bear. It was different from any other trouble he had ever +known, deeper, more awful, more hopeless, yet somehow for that very +reason more bearable too. There was no element of meanness in it, +nothing petty or small. Such grief was large, calm, august, and above +all very still; in presence of this perfect peace he could not strive +nor cry. Shelley’s words about the Niobe came back to him as he sat +there, and he kept repeating them to himself, ‘Her tender and serene +despair.’ Despair, then, was ‘tender and serene’; how true it was! He +was not even very unhappy. The consciousness of the aching void in his +life would come later; but, for the moment, the bitterness of parting +was lost in the relief of seeing his darling free from the suffering it +had been torture to watch and know himself powerless to allay. He +understood why David had arisen and washed his face and taken food, when +they told him that his child was dead.</p> + +<p>The baby hands were folded, and held a bunch of violets; and as he bent +over them, laying his parched lips upon their marble coldness, the +comforting promise seemed to steal down to the sources of his being, +that at last, far off, after all the fever and the pain, this rest on +which he looked was waiting for him, as for every one.</p> + +<p class="astt">. . . . . . .</p> + +<p>A discreet tap on the door jarred the silence like a drumbeat, and +Sainty went across and opened it. A servant stood there wearing the +decorous expression of those officially connected with mourning which is +not a personal grief to them.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_353">{353}</a></span></p> + +<p>‘Her ladyship has been inquiring for you, m’lord,’ the man said, ‘and +the post has come. I have put your lordship’s letters on your +writing-table.’</p> + +<p>Sainty came out into the passage, and locked the door behind him, +slipping the key into his pocket. ‘You can tell her ladyship she will +find me in my study,’ he said; ‘or if she prefers, and will let me know, +I will come to her.’</p> + +<p>He wondered what Cissy could have to say to him; he felt a sure +foreboding that it would be nothing he should care to hear. What more +was there for her to say to him henceforth, for ever?</p> + +<p>He went to his study in the old western pavilion and sat down at his +writing-table; it was heaped with a great pile of letters; the morning’s +mail had been added to those which, yesterday, he had had no heart to +open. They would have to be gone through some time, he supposed; it was +a task he could not well leave to his secretary. Why not attack them at +once while he was feeling calmed and strengthened? He drew a few towards +him and nerved himself for the ordeal of reading them. He thought he +knew so well what they would contain, yet in the very first that he took +up he found matter quite unexpected, which even at that moment arrested +his attention.</p> + +<p>‘<span class="smcap">Dear old Sainty</span>,’ he read: ‘I don’t at all like the idea of intruding +my happiness on your grief; but I equally don’t want you to hear of it +from any one but me, which you would be sure to do if I didn’t write at +once. And first let me just stop and tell you how awfully sorry I am for +you and Cissy losing your little boy. I can’t bear to think of you with +your sensitive nature. The only thing to be said is that it was better +than if he had been older, when you would have missed him so much more; +you can’t personally have seen very much of him at that age. But to come +back to myself. I hope I am the first to tell you (as you are almost the +first that I have told) of my engagement to Gemma de Lissac. You who +know my Gemma, and the admirable woman to whom she owes so much, will +realise without any words of<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_354">{354}</a></span> mine what a lucky fellow I am. I need not +say I am tremendously in love, and absurdly happy. Mr. de Lissac has +been most awfully good about it, and very generous. Of course, a +wretched pauper like me could never have married a girl who hadn’t got +something. For myself, as you know, my wants are few, but I couldn’t +have asked Gemma, who has always had every luxury since she was a baby, +to give up all she has been accustomed to, especially her thousand and +one good deeds. Mr. de Lissac wants me to chuck my P. S.-ship and go in +for parliament, and the duke has been very kind in promising his help. +Forgive such a long letter about myself when you are in trouble, but +happiness is always egotistical, and I can’t help hoping that mine won’t +be indifferent to you. As I have written you such a yarn, and have so +many letters to write, will you please tell Cissy, with my love, and ask +her to forgive my not writing to her separately. I haven’t written to +Aunt Sarah either, as I think Mrs. de Lissac is writing to her. Wish me +joy, old man. There is no one whose good wishes I shall value more. Your +affectionate cousin, <span class="smcap">Claude Morland</span>.</p> + +<p>‘<i>P.S.</i>—I don’t offer to come to the funeral. I know you’ll feel just +as I should about it, and want to keep it all as quiet as possible.’</p> + +<p>Sainty read the letter through twice. He had hardly finished his second +perusal of it, when the door opened, and Cissy stood before him. She was +dressed in hastily improvised mourning of incongruous showiness. The +black clothes enhanced her fairness, and accentuated the slim +girlishness of her figure, but her face had no youth in it, and her eyes +glittered with an unnatural brightness.</p> + +<p>‘You wanted to see me?’ Sainty asked.</p> + +<p>‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I have got something to say to you, and I may as well +say it first as last.’ Then, as he stood waiting in silence to hear her, +‘You and I have got to have an explanation,’ she added.</p> + +<p>‘Is it the moment, with the child lying dead in the house?’ Sainty +asked, with a gesture of protest.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page_355">{355}</a></span></p> + +<p>‘Yes,’ she said eagerly, ‘it is just that I wanted to speak about. As +long as he lived, I have stayed for my child’s sake.’</p> + +<p>Sainty gave a convulsive laugh. ‘You have done a great deal for the +child’s sake!’ he said.</p> + +<p>‘Now,’ she went on, ‘I have no reason for remaining. I have come to tell +you that after the funeral I am going away. I can’t keep it up any +longer. We hate each other, you know we do. Life together has become +intolerable.’</p> + +<p>‘Life together!’ Sainty repeated. ‘Do you call it life together? To me +it seems that we could hardly be more apart. In Kamchatka I should not +be further from you.’ And indeed she seemed so far away, that he felt as +if his voice could hardly reach her; he wondered how she could ever have +affected him for pain or pleasure. He looked at her across a chasm in +which lay the dead child.</p> + +<p>‘And where do you propose to go?’ he asked indifferently.</p> + +<p>‘I shall go to the only man I have ever really loved,’ Cissy said +dramatically.</p> + +<p>‘I thought we were coming to that.’ It all seemed no business of his, +not to affect him in any way; he even felt a little sorry for her under +the blow he was going to deal her. He found himself casting about in his +mind for the best way of telling her. How strange that that letter +should just have come (or was it, perhaps, not wholly a coincidence?), +that he should have selected that hour for opening it, that it should +have been the first one that he had read! He still held it in his hand, +and without saying anything he moved it so that the writing might +attract her attention.</p> + +<p>‘What have you got there?’ she cried, turning suddenly very white. ‘Let +me see it. Is it from Claude?’ She sprang upon it, and snatched it from +him before he could give it to her, and he heard the two sheets rattle +against each other with the shaking of her hands.</p> + +<p>‘There is a message for you in it,’ he said, as he turned away. He did +not want to pry into her misery. He felt no<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_356">{356}</a></span> exultation, only a sick +contemptuous pity, pity in which there was no love.</p> + +<p>Presently, hearing her give a sort of hoarse cry, he looked round. She +had sunk into a chair, with one arm laid along the table, her other +hand, clenched, rested on her knee. The letter had fallen on the floor. +She sat looking straight in front of her, and her mouth moved as if she +were speaking, but no sound came. She had evidently forgotten his +presence altogether. She was frightening like this, her lips drawn back +a little from her teeth, her face set in a grimace that made her almost +monkey-like, ugly as strong emotion always is. After a time she began to +beat on the edge of the table with her hand. ‘Blackguard! Blackguard!’ +she kept repeating under her breath.</p> + +<p>Sainty was longing for her to go and leave him alone with his grief. The +presence of this other misery which, by the nature of the case, he could +do nothing to soothe only aggravated his own; it seemed to bring him +down to earth, to drag him back to the sordid and base, from the regions +to which he had risen in the chamber of death. What had he to do with +this woman’s fierce resentment, balked of her earthly passion, he who +had been so near the borders of eternal peace?</p> + +<p>He went over to her and spoke very gently. ‘I think we should be better +apart,’ he said, ‘each with his own sorrow. We can do nothing to help +each other.’</p> + +<p>She seemed hardly to understand what he said, but she nodded dully and +rose, and he held the door open for her to pass.</p> + +<p>It was nothing to him, he reflected, whether she went or stayed, whether +she played out the dreary farce of their married life to the end, or +broke away to follow her own devices. The shame, which had seemed so +unendurable that he had bartered his personal honour to avoid it, +appeared to him now as a thing of no importance. He wondered how he had +ever cared about it. Let her go, in heaven’s name, if she had a mind to! +He almost wished that she would, but he<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_357">{357}</a></span> knew in his heart that Claude’s +letter had done its work; there would be no more talk of her going. He +stooped and picked up the crumpled papers, smoothing them out and +looking at the beautiful neat little handwriting, not an erasure, not a +correction. Whatever the writer might say of haste and want of time and +pressure of correspondence, that letter had not been written in a hurry.</p> + +<p>‘It’s so complete,’ he said to himself; ‘the last touch. Nothing was +wanting but this.’ He found himself almost admiring the absolute quality +of his cousin’s villainy, so rounded and finished, with no loose ends.</p> + +<p>In a few seconds his mind flew back over all the stages of his +connection with Claude, the first coming to Belchamber of the large pale +boy, with his dreamy eyes and curious fascination, the old Eton days, +his baleful influence on Arthur, the story of his connection with Aimée +Winston, the double treachery of his behaviour about Cynthia.... But +when he came to the part Morland had played in his own married life, his +imagination shuddered and winced, he could not, dare not, think of it. +‘And now, to crown all, this——’ And his hand struck the pages with +their rippling conventional expressions of happiness and affection, +their bland pretence of sympathy offered and demanded. For a moment the +room swam round him, and he had to clutch the table for support. Could +he let this thing be? Ought he to allow this girl to be sacrificed, and +not make an effort to save her? But almost simultaneously he recognised +the futility of any such attempt. He thought of Gemma, conceited, +headstrong, self-confident, and at the same time superlatively +sentimental, and imagined the reception he should meet with if he were +to tell her the man into whose hands she had just surrendered her +existence, was—what? The lover of his wife, the father of his child. +How could he tell this thing, and that he had known it and accepted it +in silence? No wonder Claude had dared to write as he did; he knew well +enough that from Sainty at least he was safe from all attack.</p> + +<p>Should he have to answer, to thank, to congratulate, to<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_358">{358}</a></span> ‘hope they +would be happy,’ to send gifts? At least he would not have to go to the +wedding; his mourning would save him from that—his mourning for the +child of the bridegroom! He felt a wild longing to get back to that +upper chamber where all these mad thoughts were stilled. What had he to +do? The letters. Why should these people steal the little time he had +left to be with his lost darling? With a sigh of ineffable weariness he +sat down once more, and hastily tore open two or three. The same little +phrases recurred in all. ‘Sincere condolences,’ ‘heartfelt sympathy,’ +‘God’s will,’ ‘Consolation where alone it may be found.’ He remembered +employing some of them himself on like occasions. Why make these +attempts to plumb the unfathomable? As well smear ointment on a door +behind which a man lay wounded.</p> + +<p>As he turned over the heaps of still unbroken covers in search of a +handwriting that promised at least the relief of tears, his eye was +caught by one unfamiliar, yet not unknown. He took the letter from the +rest and held it poised upon his palm, trying to fix the memory it +recalled. The anonymous denunciations of his wife? Ah! no, that was +impossible. Yet as he broke the seal he realised why his only other +sight of this writing was associated with that time. It was from his +sister-in-law.</p> + +<p>‘<span class="smcap">Dear Lord Belchamber</span>,—I know you have never liked me, and did not +approve of your brother marrying me; but though it is little kindness or +notice I’ve ever received from you or yours, I am a mother myself, and I +know what it would be to me to lose either of my little darlings; and so +I feel I must write a few lines of condolence with you and Lady +Belchamber in your great sorrow, for I really do sympathise with you in +the death of your dear little boy. I know you think me a common, +grasping woman, but I don’t give a thought to any difference it may make +to us, and, as Arthur says, what is to prevent your having others? I +have a <i>heart</i> (indeed it was me made Arthur write and offer to come to +Belchamber without me, and he’ll come to the<span class="pagenum"><a id="page_359">{359}</a></span> funeral too). I’m not +really a bad sort, and can feel for your loss. With sincere condolences +to you and Lady Belchamber, I should like to sign, Your affectionate +sister-in-law,</p> + +<p class="r"> +<span class="smcap">Cynthia Chambers</span>.<br> +</p> + +<p>‘<i>P.S.</i>—I have ventured to order a wreath sent, which please accept.’</p> + +<p class="fint"> +THE END<br> +<br> +Printed by T. and <span class="smcap">A. Constable</span>, Printers to His Majesty<br> +at the Edinburgh University Press<br> +</p> + +<hr class="full"> +<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77826 ***</div> +</body> +</html> diff --git a/77826-h/images/cover.jpg b/77826-h/images/cover.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..1f6921d --- /dev/null +++ b/77826-h/images/cover.jpg diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6c72794 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This book, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. 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