CHAPTER II
"I looked on you as a youngster up till now," Mr. Temple said. He did not explain what were the circumstances which had shocked him into a change of opinion; but went on, in the heavy paternal voice: "You've got to shove your way, my lad. You've been playing at life; university education, and books and travel and this and that ... I've spoilt you. No wonder your father's business wasn't good enough for you. Well—I'm not a tyrant; I raised no objections to your starting on the architect line instead. But that wasn't good enough either—though goodness knows you talked enough about the responsibility of turning cities into things of beauty and form...." He broke off: "And now here you are!"
"'Not architect, artist, nor man!'" Gareth misquoted from the immortal Pecksniff.
Mr. Temple could not repress a smile of recognition. Dickens was cultivated, read aloud, assiduously, in the large handsome parlour above the chemist's shop at Paddington. Chemist's establishment, or dispensary, Mr. Temple would have preferred it to be called. For he was a chemist of a most refined and superior order, and employed two assistants and a boy; nor was the shop on the street-level, but up a broad flight of stone steps, indicated by a single ruby lamp at their base; which caused Mr. Temple the occasional illusion that he was a surgeon. He might with equal reason have thought himself a signalman.
Nevertheless, if Gareth imagined that by so simple an expedient as the mention of his father's favourite author, he could divert the threatened lecture on his own misdoings, he was mistaken. On receipt of a letter from William Payne, President of the Society of Young Botanists, officially announcing that Gareth had abandoned his holiday with the S.Y.B., in order to spend a month in sole company of a young female, Mr. Temple had at first been inclined to secret pride at his only son's first sowing of this very gentlemanly wild oat. He had discussed the matter with his wife—with considerable delicacy, be sure; for he could never quite forget that she was a gentlewoman, and above him in station: Miss Lucy Jamieson, before he had married her; governess to a family of consequence in the sleepy little country town where he had first "practised" before coming to London. Her opinions, therefore, influenced him more than he was prepared to acknowledge. And his present reproaches were the direct outcome of his change of mental attitude: If my son is old enough to incur responsibilities, he is old enough to be in a material position to discharge them....
"You'll come into all the money later on. 'Tisn't that I grudge your allowance, either. But I want to see what stuff you're made of."
"I don't believe I'm made of any stuff," Gareth confessed desperately.
Mr. Temple planted his hands deep in his pockets, and surveyed his offspring with disapproval.
"There's no room in the world for shirkers. The world wants men. You've had things made too easy. The world wants you to stand on your own legs, not on your father's shoulders. It's the law of the world that the weakest go to the wall and the strongest come out on top."
Gareth began to hate the world, as represented by his father's weighty platitudes. Not for one instant did he attempt to storm the barricade of years, and force his own point of view upon the old gentleman's reluctant sight. The remainder of the lecture rendered the fact patent that it henceforth devolved upon him to renounce his dreaming peace, his glamorous aspirations, and to do battle with the universe.... How he wished he had been a girl, and thus absolved from such duty.
And yet he had met girls by the score who had wanted to be men. Men!—the thickness of their understanding; the dense fibres they put out, without one sensitive tingle.... "You've got to shove your way, my lad!"—there it was again, his father's pet catch-phrase. It was hideous and hot—to shove. Oh, the hush and coolness and harmony of the woman's part; she might enjoy colours, and soft materials, and dreams, tears even, without a reproach. And when love came along, the wonder of being besieged and of yielding.... Someone afterwards and always, to clear her way, give her leisure and firelight. And suddenly came a vision of Kathleen with a blade in her hand that flashed this way and that, while she cut a path through the world, for him to tread in her wake....
The vision passed. But so intent had he been on it, that he missed his father's final hint of what was expected of him with regard to his recent conduct, on which, since his return from Switzerland, a discreet silence had been preserved. "We'll talk of that later on, when you've found your feet a bit!"
Gareth carried his aggrievements and his visions in a confused heap to the parlour, where he knew his mother would at this time be sitting, with her knitting in the lap of her smoke-grey silk dress, while she waited for Jane to draw the blinds and trim the wicks. He had an affection for the Confidence Hour, when the lamplighter was on his magical round, and Mr. Temple still busy in the dispensary below; an affection that dated from the days of his early childhood; when she would tell long sweet stirring tales from the "Idylls of the King" to a little round-eyed boy as yet unprotected by the dawn of reason. His very name he owed to a gentle fervour on her part for all matters appertaining to the Poet Laureate, and to chivalry, and to the Knights of Arthur's Round Table. It had been her wont to name him, half playfully, half wistfully, her "youngest knight."... Glancing across at his absorbed face, she wondered now how many of her teachings could be relied on at this crisis to bear fruit.
"Gareth, when are you going to bring my new daughter home to me?"
He smiled, amused at the suddenness of her onslaught upon his reverie. "Mother dear, what on earth do you mean?"
"Don't you think it time, my boy, that you told me all about it?" She held out a tentative hand; a very white and delicate hand, half covered by the falling lace ruffles of her sleeve; on her bright brown hair she wore a lace cap to match the ruffles; and at her throat a round cameo brooch secured the fleecy white shawl. Mrs. Temple was very pleasant to look upon; and her soft voice fell soothingly upon Gareth's hearing, jarred by his father's ponderous repetitions. He crossed the room, and seated himself upon the arm of her chair; while he played with her ball of knitting-silk.
"Do you want me to tell you about ... Kathleen, mother?"
"Is she pretty?" cunningly drawing him out. "I once had a pupil called Kathleen; she was Irish, and had blue eyes and black hair. HasyourKathleen blue eyes?" Purposely she leant rich stress on the possessive pronoun; he must be made to feel from the start that she did not regard the girl from the traditional mother's standpoint of "designing female," but with the deeper tenderness that is bred of understanding. She could trust her boy to love wisely even when he had acted foolishly.
Gareth tried to visualize Kathleen on the occasion most vivid to his memory, when flushed and radiant she had sprung before him from the gloomy passage of the house in North Kensington.
"Her eyes are dark," he said at length, slowly. "Not hard darkness, you know, but the brown of water in heavy shadow; and the brows are very close above them. She walks as if her feet were bare. Her skin is lovely, rich dusky colours, olive and geranium red." This last, mindful of his mother's weak point: "A true lady, Gareth, is always particular about her complexion and hands."
Bit by bit, led by artfully inserted queries, he related the whole chain of events; throwing in also as much as he knew of Kathleen's birth, relations, and conditions of life generally. He did not mention his visit to North Kensington.
"Go on, dear."
"There's no more to say, mother."
"Yes, Gareth, there is something more." Suddenly her tones rang out clear and accusing: "I'm waiting to hear that you are prepared to make the poor girl your wife."
Gareth was stricken dumb at thus finding himself thrust into the rôle of villain and betrayer. Before he could sufficiently collect himself for speech, Mrs. Temple went on, her voice trembling a little in genuine emotion:
"Oh, my dear, my dear, I know how it is with you; you are growing into a man with a man's ideas. Your companions have been telling you that chivalry is 'played out,' food only for old women and romantic girls and molly-coddles. Believe me, dear, it isn't so. Chivalry and honour are not weaknesses to be ashamed of. They are what in the olden days made a knight strongest: strong in battle, strong in love. Oh, Gareth, there are so many in the world to help a woman's tears to flow; don't join their ranks. Don't take up with this modern poisonous notion of living only for the gratification of the ... senses——" The white unwrinkled cheeks of the speaker blushed a faint rose at this use of a word offensive to her. "Have you forgotten the tales I used to tell you? Of Arthur and his queen; of Pelleas and Ettarre; Galahad, the maiden knight, the quest of Percivale; Launcelot and Elaine. Little son, these legends and songs are valuable only for their symbolic meaning. A damsel on a charger, a knight supporting her with his arm, the spirit of the picture exists equally without the steed and armour. And when you are an old white-haired man, my darling, I want you to be able to say, 'God helping me, I have never wronged a woman that I did not strive to put it right.' How are you to speak those words when the poor frightened child who loved you only too well, is left to fight her battles alone? There is only one way of righting that wrong, Gareth; and the way lies through a golden wedding-ring."
Gareth could not suppress a faint stirring of amusement at the fancy portrait of Kathleen's timorous anguish. But at the same time, he was genuinely touched and stirred by his mother's generous pleadings, by the tears he saw dimming her usually placid eyes.
Slipping an affectionate arm around her shoulders: "Mother dear," he said; "look at me—straight up at me. That's right. I've wronged no one, do you understand? I'm not that sort of fellow, thanks to you. Ihaveasked Kathleen to be my wife. She refused."
"Refused?" incredulously.
"Yes."
"Impossible."
Mrs. Temple, outwardly so malleable, was a determined little woman, and once her brain struck out on a certain line it was a matter of some difficulty to divert it. Gareth made an effort.
"You see, mother, she's not at all the sort of silly helpless girl you imagine her. She knew what she was doing. She's free, and—and—I told you she walked as if her feet were bare; that's got to do with it, somehow. She doesn't want to marry."
But in his mother's scheme of things, girls did not refuse offers of marriage, especially under existing circumstances. Nor was it at that period, the close of the eighteen-nineties, as usual an occurrence as later.
For a moment she was silent, brain and knitting-needles bright and busy. Illumination came, and with it soft amusement at his denseness:
"O my youngest knight, you are younger even than I thought. Did you allow nothing for her pride, her delicacy? How clearly did you betray that it was a matter of duty that prompted your offer? Of course she drew back! What could you expect? She thinks she has cheapened herself in your sight; she thinks—you men, you are born blunderers, the best of you."
In an ecstasy of psychological comprehension she proceeded to reveal the intimate workings of Kathleen's mind, which led to refusal of Gareth's offer. Revealed them in fashion so plausible and withal so subtle that the analysis partook of the nature of a miracle.
It was only a pity that she happened to be even further adrift in her estimate of Kathleen as a clinging three-volume-novel heroine, than had been Nelly in her vision of Gareth as a gay deceiver.
But Gareth was impressed. He supposed it took a woman to understand a woman. Moreover, viewed in the natural light of things, the Kathleen he was striving to explain to his mother seemed improbable, not to say absurd. He withdrew to his own room to think things over.
After his departure Mrs. Temple let drop her knitting and sat a little while inactive and musing. It had cost something to be loyal to the ideals with which she had striven to inculcate her son, that he should not ever be responsible for suffering. For despite her brave words, she did not want Gareth to bring home a wife. What mother does?
Gareth lounged at his open window, and smoked a cigarette, and saw the moon washing Paddington in silver, and gave himself up to a course of clear hard logical thinking. His methods of thought left his brain very much in the state of a girl's bedroom when in a hurry she has dressed for the dance. That is to say, he pulled out a vast quantity of reflections from the drawers where they had lain hidden; tumbled them over the floor, and looked at them in some amaze at their multitude and variety.
His mother's explanations had smoothed for him the plumage of peace, sadly ruffled by Kathleen's startling mood of the day before. That her refusal to espouse him was due to pride—of the wounded-stag order—over-sensitiveness, shame even, was an attitude he could well understand, and combat with his shield and buckler. His shield and buckler, like Nelly's marguerites and Edward's horsewhip, were of little avail in forcing a way against what the last-named had termed "new-fangled notions."
But below in the stuffy little sitting-room, with its horsehair furniture, its framed and faded daguerreotypes of long-dead relatives, its wool antimacassars, and painted firescreens, and shelves of Dickens' works complete in seventeen volumes, the vision had come alive again; familiar truths respecting maiden's tears and knighthood's redress, slipped back into their old places.
"... She thinks she has cheapened herself in your eyes"—and chivalry tingled to clasp a lance.
"... Cheapened herself." Gravely, steadfastly, the lad vowed himself to the removal of that misconception. Marry her? Of course he would marry her ... and with that a creeping uneasy sensation of helplessness, of unseen pressure.
The objects scattering his brain in disorderly confusion grew blurred and indistinguishable.... He was drifting down stream, nearer and nearer to the grey borders of sleep.
"You've got to shove your own way, my lad——!"
Fear jogged his elbow, and awoke him to the window-sill; to Paddington, moonlit and unsubstantial; to the "Happy Warrior" framed above his bed; to the knowledge of his own utter inefficiency ever to pull desire to its successful fulfilment. A liquidity of purpose, as though the moral gelatine had been omitted from his composition. Hence his terror of realities, of "shove," of anything that might chance to drag to light his hidden weakness. Hence his longing for the vanished enchantment of Alpenruh, whither he had been borne as in some strange dream, without his own volition or denial. Hence his illusion that the perpetual presence of Kathleen would again and for ever restore to him the lost lotus-spell. Kathleen should marry him. In a spurt of resolution, he vowed in this one matter, if never again, he would beat down the questionings and hesitations of his soul, beat down opposition, beat down difficulty—even as she herself had taught him. Yes, that was the goad: her possession of just that gift he lacked, the power todo. Did he lack it, or only think he did? This accomplishment should be the test. Kathleenshouldmarry him! Gareth was exultant in his new strength, as a man who had drunk red wines. His determination survived sleep, survived the sobriety of morning, sent him with martial tread and squared jaw to the house in North Kensington.
Kathleen was out; would be out to lunch. A temporary check. "Tell Miss Morrison I shall call at six o'clock," in tones of such ringing valour that the maid regarded him in astonishment. How could she know he was out on the quest, his eyes on the hill-tops and his head among the stars, slaying monsters and enchanters as he went? How was she to recognize herself as a minor monster? Nevertheless, in unconscious spite of him, she forgot to deliver the message. Gareth, on his arrival at five minutes to six, impatience having outleapt exactitude, was shown into the dining-room, ruddily illuminated by its first fire of the season. Kathleen had improved the occasion by shampooing her hair, and was now squatting on her heels before the hearth, holding up the long wet strands to the blaze. Nelly sewing; and Muriel reading "Little Women"; the aged grandfather prone on the floor protesting feebly while Nicolas stamped on his chest: "Mustn't say nuffing, Granpa—you'redead!" "But I'mnotdead!" "You are, you are, you are!" "I'mnotdead," repeated Mr. Jeyne, who really might have been expected to know best—all this made a picture calculated to reduce the crusty bachelor of tradition to tears of loneliness and envy. Gareth's abrupt entrance caused some commotion, and there ensued a great deal of business with chairs and introductions. Nelly was not sure whether she ought to look as if she knew all about everything, or nothing about anything. She telegraphed for her cue to Kathleen, who scornfully withheld it. For her the situation throbbed with that sensitive and unnecessary agony peculiar only to a girl on witnessing the advent of her man into the family circle. She did not know of which to be most ashamed: Nelly in the eyes of Gareth, or Gareth in the eyes of Nelly. Kathleen hated that he should see her thus placed, and off her guard; hated the circulating undercurrents: "Who the dooce is it?" in Mr. Jeyne's astonished eyebrows, and: "Take off your pinafore, Nicky," signalled from Muriel; hated herself for minding that the room was untidy, and two of Nicolas's handkerchiefs upon the carpet; above all, hated Gareth, as the cause of her discomfort. Why had he come? And what had happened to him that he should persist in throwing her those glances of glad triumph? He was talking very fast and easily, and his general bearing exactly resembled the fascinating blackguard of Nelly's expectations. Unconsciously, he exuded a buoyant challenge to the world at large; the atmosphere about him quivered and vibrated with something that was not of North Kensington nor yet of any other neighbourhood farther from the clouds than Valhalla itself; for he knew even in his intoxication that if he once paused, the old paralysing distrust would creep on him again and render him powerless—if it were once given a chance in this breathless onrush of speech and movement.
For this was his day of days indeed; something had happened between his first and second visit here, to convince him that enchantment was on his side.... He would tell Kathleen presently—when these people should leave them alone!
Edward's latchkey was heard grating in the lock, and Nelly flew out to warn him of the visitor. "And Neddy, shall I ask him to supper?"
"Look here," Edward protested in loud and distinct whispers, "we can't sit down with a fellow who——"
"Oh, hush, Neddy!"
And Gareth's mouth twitched whimsically in the direction of Kathleen. More Indian than ever did she look, sullen, crouching, her face framed in the shining hanks of black hair lying straight over her shoulders and down to her waist. Very unlike his radiant comrade of Alpenruh. Perhaps she had been right when she spoke of the destroying effects of intimate surroundings.
"All right, I'll be reasonable," grumbled Edward, on the threshold.
Edward was a man of his word; and though an occasional hint of "my sister's honour" slipped into his manner, he hovered for the most part between dignified-host and benevolent-cleric.
Gareth thought the Morrison family rather nice, considering; and accepted the invitation to supper: "If you don't mind taking us as we are," said Nelly, and retired to supervise culinary operations. Presently her voice was heard summoning Muriel and Nicolas.
"Yes, but Mummie, why——?"
"Because I say so, darling."
"Yes, but it isn't nearly——"
"Never mind. Come along. Ask Aunty Katty if she will come to the nursery presently to tuck you up."
Now or never, thought Nelly, was Kathleen's chance to display the suspected Maternal Instinct to the best advantage. But Nicolas and Kathleen, joint rebels against Nelly's schemes, gazed sulkily at one another, and parted with a cold good night.
"Excuse me, will you?" said Edward, rising; "I'm badly in need of a wash. City dirt, you know." He also quitted the dining-room. He had received his instructions. Obviously Nelly cherished hopes that a disgraceful episode might yet be decently wound up.
One swift glance convinced Gareth that old Mr. Jeyne was fast asleep in his corner.
"Kathleen—I've had a most wonderful stroke of good luck. I've found a job. The kind of job that I've dreamt of all my life. The job that lay east of the sun and west of the moon; at the end of the rainbow; over the hills and far away. And only yesterday I was disinherited. Yes, really, my father cast me off ... said I should never be heir to those huge glass bottles, red and blue and yellow, that fill up his shop-window.... I did so want them for my own when I was a kid. Never mind, fortune helps those who don't help themselves ... and I put my faith in the fairy-tales. How would Whittington have fared without faith in his Cat? Tell me that. Or Jack without faith in his Beanstalk——?"
"Or Aladdin without faith in his uncle?" insinuated Kathleen unkindly.
"It was all through you, Kathleen. Just because you weren't at home this morning; and I was restless; and went for a drive on top of an omnibus; and my new job tumbled from the clouds, and I've brought it home in my pocket." He produced a catalogue of Messrs. Dale and Dawson's Autumn publications; educational, historical, and general; fiction, poetry, belles-lettres; Henrietta Street, Covent Garden; and 48 Frederick Street, Glasgow. This he handed to Kathleen as if it were a talisman of rarest powers. She examined it, bewildered; but rather loving him in his mood of boyish enthusiasm....
"They've offered me the post of reader," condescending to simple language for pity of her perplexity. Then he was off again, past recall, drunk with ether, spurring his winged-horse ever faster on its empyreal flights.
"Books. Just nothing but books. From dawn till dusk, books. Books all around me, lining my life. Books in the making. Books my trade. The beginning and end of things, books. Great walls of them, shutting out real things, concrete things, ugly things, noisy things; advertisements and fathers and botanists. Delving continually into a thousand imaginations, treasure-finding; genius-hunting; word-juggling. Can you draw pictures from words? I can. 'Glamour,' for instance. Glamour ... and something elfin, with misty wings, scattering gold-dust; and part of it clings to your eyelashes. That's glamour. And 'fantastic' has a leap about it, and the flutter of rags, and pipes—yes, a figure with a pointed cap, playing on a pipe. You've never seen me gloating over my collection of books ... and every time I add one to the number, counting over all the old ones again ... handling them—the dears! And now to be permitted to make a living out of books—yes, actually; to scoop silver from a moonbeam, spin an income from a cobweb, seek sovereigns in a sea-shell. And there's my own book, too—the one I mean to write; did I ever tell you about it? How I shall be able to write now! My book! Other people's books——!" He stopped for sheer want of breath.
"And—you picked up all this on an omnibus?" eagerly. It was impossible to persist in any sort of gloom in opposition to his charming nonsense.
"Bound for Banbury Cross," Gareth explained, very seriously. "And there came a big spider and sat down beside me ... no, that doesn't rhyme. And anyway it wasn't a spider, though he looked remarkably like one."
"Who did?"
"Old Mr. Dale; Mark Dale, my Uncle Wilfred's crony. The late uncle from whom I'm supposed to inherit my scholarly tastes. I told him my troubles, for all the world as if he were a golden carp or a blue frog or a singing-tree, or some such traditional confidant. We got to talking about books; he put a lot of questions; I acquitted myself fairly well;—and then he suddenly informed me that one of the regular readers for his firm had given notice that morning, and would I care to take his place?WouldI care.... And that things should happen like that for me! You should have heard my father yesterday.... And, Kathleen ... dear——" Both her hands in his now. No avail to struggle or sulk. Gareth was being masterful. Gareth was being manly. Gareth was carrying a woman by storm. And Gareth was enjoying it, intoxicated by this novel sense of power and success. He had borrowed her weapons of strength, and believed them to be his own.
"Kathleen, it has got to be. All you said the other night may be true enough for other people—it will be different for us. We're not going to lose now what we found in Alpenruh. And no one can give it to me but you; no one can give it to you but me. It was the ether of Paradise, of El Dorado we breathed—and by God! we'll breathe it now for the rest of our lives." He swept the hair from her face, that she might have no excuse for avoiding his triumphant gaze. "Our lives, Kathleen!"
She said: "I can't—no, I won't marry you, Gareth."
But he only laughed; for she had made no attempt to stir from his arms.