"I can't see what your father wanted to do it for. He had no call to do it. It's a most extraordinary piece of perversity."
The speaker was Bundy, and the scene was his new house in Kensington. After his many wanderings and adventures, Bundy appeared to have found permanent anchorage at last. His final apotheosis had begun, and a prophetic eye perceived that it was likely to include all the elements of eminent British respectability. He had begun to collect pictures again, was planning a library, drove daily in the park, was already known as a generous patron of many well-intentioned charities, and had even lectured in a parish-room on the wonders of the Yukon. There was ground to believe that in course of time he might even become a churchwarden, and it was only a total fluidity of opinion on local politics which denied him a seat upon the Borough Council.
Even the boys had suffered a transformation into something rare and strange. They no longer lassoed dogs upon the plains of Texas in the back-garden, and their interest in Indians had declined. They wore white collars which were fresh every morning, practised a difficult propriety, and walked gravely to church on Sundays, top-hatted and circumspectly clothed. There could be no manner of doubt that the short-lived glory of irresponsible poverty was fast fading into the light of common day, and that shades of respectability were closing round these growing minds.
And as for Mrs. Bundy—dear, slovenly, warm-hearted Mrs. Bundy—the historian relates with sadness that even she was tamed. Her force of speech remained, her sincerity, her lovableness; to the end of her days she would remain the sort of woman who addresses angry umbrella-emphasised allocutions to drivers who flog their horses, who gives hospitality to stray dogs, and opens her impulsive heart to the sorry fabrications of every histrionic beggar. But she had returned to unoccupied woman's first love, which is dress. Exiled from her kitchen, she had plunged recklessly into the study of fashion-papers. To hear her disputing with dressmakers, upholsterers, and house-decorators, to follow her in her many animated controversies with servants and a long succession of nefarious butlers, gave assurance that the wonted fires still burned ardently in her veins. But she was tamed. Wealth had riveted upon her golden fetters. She submitted to them, not without reluctance. Perhaps, if the entire truth was told, she was much happier as the mistress of the kitchen in the old house in Lion Row than as the mistress of a mansion in Kensington.
It was in the library of this house at Kensington that Arthur sat discussing the situation with his old friends. It was a spacious room, furnished after a plan which a celebrated firm had described as mediæval. The mediævalness of the room appeared to consist mainly in an imitation stucco ceiling, and in modern oak-panelling which declared its newness by uncanny loud explosions, as the wood cracked under the influence of heat. Before the open hearth Bundy stood oracular, with his hands behind him spread out to the warmth; and Mrs. Bundy sat at the table, mending socks—an example of the survival of primeval instincts.
"No, I don't see it at all," said Bundy. "Your father's wasting himself. There are plenty of men who would have helped him to recover his position. I would have given him anything he liked to ask, and been glad of the chance."
"I know you would," said Arthur. "And he knows it too."
"Then, why won't he let me?"
"I suppose because, as you say, he's too proud. But there's something else too, something deeper, I think."
"And what's that, pray?"
"Well, I don't know how to describe it, but it's more than mere pride and perversity. I think it's a kind of return to type. He began life as a workman, and he's gone back to it. It's his way of showing the world he doesn't care what it does to him."
"And what's that but pride?"
"Perhaps so," said Arthur wearily. "I've long ago given up judging my father. I only know that I never thought so well of him as I do now."
"Well done!" cried Mrs. Bundy. "That's what I think too."
"Well, I can't see it," said Bundy. "Tell me again how he's living."
"He's taken a small house at Tottenham, almost a cottage. Grimes gives him two pounds a week. He works from six in the morning till six at night. Next week I'm going to live with him."
"Yes, that's the worst part of it!" cried Bundy. "Your life is to be sacrificed too. With your splendid education you ought to be making a figure in the world. At all events you ought to be back upon your ranch, if that's the kind of life you mean to live. You must know that."
"Yes, I know it. But I can't go back as long as father lives. I have to make amends to him for past unkindness. And, remember, he has no one left but me."
"What about Helen?" said Mrs. Bundy.
"That's one of the things I came over to tell you about. I have a letter from her. You had better read it."
The letter was dated from Paris, and read as follows:
"DEAR ARTHUR:
"I hear that you are back in London, so you know all about themessfather has made of his affairs. You were lucky to be out of it, for it was a dreadful disgrace. I thought I should havediedof shame. Just, too, when he was going to be knighted, for that's come out since, you know. He must have known all about it—I mean the disgrace—long before it came. And yet he never told me one word, but let me think things were all right, and was always talking to me about the house he meant to build, and the place in society I was to have. I can see now that it was all lies, and I will never forgive him. I suppose you will say I ought to sympathise with him, and all that kind ofrot: you always did pretend to be so mighty good. Well, I don't, and I won't forgive him. And I dare say you'll say I ought to have stayed with him, and all that kind of thing. A pretty idea! As if I could have put my head out of doors, with everybody talking about us, and father's name in all the papers. I did go out once, and the Collinson girls,proud, conceited things, cut me dead, though I went to school with them. I wasn't going to stand that, so, after mother's funeral, I went away to one of mytruefriends in Paris. I didn't tell her what had happened, you may be sure. And she doesn't read the English papers,thank God. Her name is Adèle Siedmyer. She went to school with me, and her father is rich. She gave me a good time, I can tell you, and not a word said. The Siedmyers live in a beautiful house, much better than thatoldEagle House, which I always detested. Well, now, I've something to tell you, which is quiteimportant. There was a nice old gentleman who used to come to dinner at the Siedmyers', and I soon saw that he was very fond of me. They told me he was seventy, but he doesn't look more thanfifty, for these Frenchmen know how to dress and keep young, which Englishmen never do. He told me all about his life—he'd been twice married, but his wives had treated himabominably—and I felt very sorry for him. I forgot to say he's something in the Stock Exchange—the Bourse, they call it here—and the Siedmyers thought no end of him. Well, I dare say you'll guess the rest. He asked me to marry him. I thought he put it socleverly; he said it was theentente cordiale. I laughed at first, and then I cried a good deal; for it seemed hard that I should have to marry an old man, even if he is only fifty and agood figure. But what was a poor girl to do? Adèle and the Siedmyers persuaded me, and really it did seem to me quiteprovidential, just in the midst of this disgrace; and it's not as though he didn't love me, for he's perfectlyinfatuatedover me. I know you'll sneer, you always were good at that. But I don't care. There's one thing Ialwaysmade my mind up to—it was that I wouldn't be poor. And, as I said, it did really seem quiteprovidential, just when I couldn't hope to marry well in England, because of father'swickedness, that M. Simon—that's his name—should fall in love with me. I was dreadfully afraid at first that he'd ask awkward questions about father, but he never did, though he must have knownsomething. Of course I didn't tell him—not likely. So the upshot of it is that we were married last week. So now you know. I thought I ought to tell you, and you can tell father, if you like. You needn't expect meeverto come to London again—horrid, hateful city! If you like to come over to Paris some time, of course I'll see you; but I won't see father! I draw the line at that. And I am sure he won't expect it after all thecruelwrong he's done me. I should think he would be tooashamed. If you can find any of my little knick-nacks in my drawers I wish you would pack them up and send them over. But I dare say they're gone—very likely the servants took them; and it doesn'treallymatter, for I've everything I need. Thank God, I shall not be poor now, in spite of father'swickedness.
"Your sister,"HELEN.
"P.S.—We are living at the Hotel Continental,for the present. If you were only sensible I would say come over, and meet Adèle Siedmyer. She will have lots of money when her father dies. But I suppose you preferdigginglike a labourer in thatnastyCanada. There's no accounting for tastes, is there?"
Arthur, who, of course, was familiar with the letter, turned his face away while Mrs. Bundy read it, for he was heartily ashamed of it. Its complete selfishness and shallowness, its spite, its rancour, its hard worldliness, above all, its nauseous pietism, had filled him with disgust. He was surprised therefore when Mrs. Bundy put it down, with the exclamation, "Poor child!"
"Why do you say that?" he cried. "A letter like that puts its writer beyond pity."
"Ah, Arthur! I see you've not yet got out of the bad habit of judging people harshly. My laddie, don't let your heart grow hard against your sister, even though she is to blame. I'm not saying that that isn't a bad letter, and it comes from a hard, cruel heart. But I mind Helen as a little girl, as sweet and bright a child as you might meet in a day's march. It wasn't her fault that she was shallow; that's the way she was made. Yes, she was shallow, and only meant to sail in shallow waters, and when the deep waters overtook her, she was frightened to death. That's the letter of a poor, terrified girl who doesn't know what she's saying."
"I didn't think of it like that."
"No; it wasn't to be supposed you could. It isn't a boy that understands the heart of a poor, terrified girl."
"But it's the meanness of it—no word about my father but cruel accusation."
"Yes, it's mean; fear makes weak people mean."
"That's right," interjected Bundy. "I've seen a man, when thoroughly frightened, pour out all the black things in his heart, without the least idea of what a cad he looked to other people."
"Ah! and that's not all," went on Mrs. Bundy. "You think she's beyond pity. Why, she never had a better right to pity than now. She's sold her youth to that old Frenchman—I never did believe in Frenchmen—and she's got to pay for her folly, and it'll be a hard, long price before she's through with it, be sure of that. December and May—I never did know any good come of that kind of marriage yet. No, no. Your father's to be pitied, but he's got his pride; and you are to be pitied, but you've got your youth and freedom; but, if you ask me who is to be pitied most, it's that poor motherless girl. She may have a hard heart, but it can bleed; yes, and life will make it bleed before long, I doubt."
And so from Mrs. Bundy Arthur once more learned that lesson in life which he had found so difficult to master, the lesson always difficult to youth, and perhaps the most difficult of all to those whose ideals are highest—the lesson of charity, of tolerance, of lenient judgment toward the faulty. Mrs. Bundy had once before shown him the better road, when she had made him acquainted with virtues in his father which he had ignored; he had learned something of what charity meant from Vyse upon theSaurian, and Horner in New York, each with his catholic axiom that Englishmen ought to stand by one another; he had remarked Vickars's altered attitude to life, his sense of life's complexity, and his allowance for faults in men, for which their own will was but partially responsible: four times the Angel of Charity had stood beside him, and each time he had turned his face away. He had not allowed Mrs. Bundy's plea; he had accepted Horner's kindness, but without any accurate conception of the rarity and real beauty of his character; he had heard Vickars's confession, and in his utmost heart had thought him an apostate prophet. And now the same test met him again in the case of his sister. He saw her hardness and shallowness with more than sufficient accuracy; what he had not seen was her weakness, her terror under sudden disaster, and the tragic folly to which she had been driven by her terror. It was left to Mrs. Bundy to show him that. Suddenly he saw it; and he saw much besides. He saw that there is a vision of the mind and a vision of the heart; that the one is judging vision, the other sympathetic vision; that the one sees the surface only, the other the depth; and that therefore the vision of the heart is the only true vision. Of the four persons who had instructed him, three were quite simple persons, without the least claim to intellectual superiority; the other a man of genius, who had become humble by contact with human sorrows. And there was a fifth—there was Bundy himself, an adventurer whom he had secretly despised and ridiculed, but from whose hand had come salvation in his own hour of direst need. And the bond between these persons was quite simple; they had warm, human hearts, and in the difficult hours of life they were governed by warm impulses. Ah! that had been his error; he had looked at life with the mind, rarely with the heart. He had set himself up to judge others, and now he was judged. He had not pitied his sister; it was left for a stranger to do that; and in that moment he saw, as clearly as though expressed in tongues of heavenly flame, the divine grace resting on the head of Mrs. Bundy, and himself standing in the dark shadows cast by his own proud egoism.
"O Mrs. Bundy!" he cried, "I have been wrong—quite wrong; you have made me see it!"
And, having no mother, he was not ashamed to turn to this motherly heart for comfort. He knelt before her, and laid his head upon her lap, as he had often done in childish troubles; and her kind hands were upon his head, and her kind voice soothed him.
"There, there, laddie, that's all right. You've been badly hurt yourself, and you've been very brave over it. It's not easy to keep sweet-tempered when you're hurt—you know that, don't you, Bundy? Many's the time and oft I've said hard things I didn't mean, because my heart was bleeding. We all do it sometimes. But I think God turns His head away and doesn't listen. Perhaps He couldn't go on loving us if He did. And you know what the prayer says: 'Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us.' I never understood anything about theologies, and that kind of thing; but I knowthat'strue. It's true because we can't go on living without it. So that's over, my dear, and don't you think any more about it."
And so she drew the bitterness out of his heart, and kissed him, and finally laughed at him through her tears, calling herself a foolish old woman to be supposing she could teach a big, clever fellow like him, until they were both laughing into one another's eyes like a pair of lovers.
"Well, now, we'll write Helen, and wish her joy. And, Bundy, you're going to Paris next week, aren't you? You will go to see her, of course. And we must send the poor child a present. It's a mercy, after all, she hasn't got into worse mischief than getting married to an old Frenchman. And perhaps he may make her a good husband, there's no telling—even though he is a Frenchman. And now I've a surprise for you. What do you think it is?"
"Something pleasant, no doubt."
"Well, it ought to be. Vickars and Elizabeth are coming to lunch. And you must stay, of course. And after lunch you can talk to Elizabeth, and we old folk will go away and talk about you, and see what can be done for you."
"Yes," said Bundy. "It's all very well for your father to work for Grimes; but you have to get to work too. Ah! there's the bell. That'll be Vickars, so we'll postpone that business."
It was a delightful lunch. For the first time since his return to England Arthur attained a real cheerfulness. In this atmosphere of warm affection it was impossible to think too urgently of past griefs. And it did seem as if the black shadow was at last rolling off, like a rain-cloud with trailing skirts edged with pure light.
Vickars, to his surprise, took quite a cheerful view of Helen's marriage.
"What Helen always needed wasduties," he remarked. "Duties give poise and ballast to life. I suppose, ever since she left school, she has had no real duties to fulfil, and nothing makes people so selfish as a total absence of some kind of daily duty. If marriage does nothing else, it does impose duties on men and women. It takes them out of themselves, makes them look outward instead of inward, which is always a great thing."
"Then you don't think she has made a mistake?" said Arthur.
"No one can know that. But there's a kind of instinct in people which often guides them to what is right for them, though to an outsider their actions may appear quite foolish and incomprehensible. They unconsciously know what's good for them, just as animals know the kind of food that suits them best. Not a very complimentary analogy, is it?" he added, with his whimsical smile.
"No; but I see what you mean, I think."
"It doesn't need much seeing, for it meets us everywhere. Have you ever watched a dog in a field? He knows exactly what grasses are good for him, and he finds them. We don't know in the least the principle of his discrimination. Well, it's like that with men and women. They make their own choice, and it often seems to us a matter of folly or caprice. But, in nine cases out of ten, if they are left to themselves, they do somehow manage to choose what's best for them."
"And you would apply the same principle to my father?"
"Precisely. He is probably doing the only thing that was left for him to do. He knows what is the best medicine for his wound, and no one else knows anything at all about it."
"Poor father! At this moment, while we are feasting, he is working in bitterness of heart."
"Well, you don't know that. Very likely he is forgetting his bitterness of heart in his work, and if he were here he would remember it."
"And what about yourself?" cried Arthur. "If men really guide themselves by instinct, and do it with efficiency, there's a poor occupation for the man who sets out to reform them."
"I know it, my boy. Didn't I tell you I've given up thinking that I am competent to guide the world? Don't remind me of an old vanity of which I am ashamed. I guide the world! Why, God Himself appears to do that with difficulty."
"Can one man do nothing then for another?"
"Of course he can. But he won't do it by shouting in the market-place. The only thing he can really do is to live in such a way that other people see that his way of living is better than their own. Let him live—not just talk about living."
"And what about reform, all that bright dream of a reconstruction of society which——?"
"Yes, I know what you are going to say. And my answer is, that reform comes by example, too. One man who shows others how to live by living accomplishes more than all the books that were ever written."
"You needn't think father means to stop writing, for he doesn't," said Elizabeth, with a smile.
"No, I shall write, because that's mymétier—the grass that suits me best. But there's this difference. I used to think, when I had written a book, that I had done all that was required of me. Now I see I must live my books. There's far too much writing in the world, and far too much preaching; there's never been enough living."
"I'm sure you've discussed that point long enough," said Mrs. Bundy. "Come and look at my new conservatory. Do you know I've turned orchid-grower? I really prefer roses; but Bundy wants orchids, just because they're expensive. It's a terrible thing to be rich, because you've got to have what other people want, instead of what you want."
They went into the conservatory, and presently, under the skilful management of Mrs. Bundy, Arthur found himself alone with Elizabeth. They sat there a long time, hand in hand, in sympathetic silence. For these two had reached that most perfect union of spirit, which is quite beyond the common mediations of language. Love for them had found its rarest form, a complete repose. From the first they had rested on each other, and, by a kind of spiritual clairvoyance, had read the deepest secrets of each other's thought. They had no need to reiterate the lover's hungry question, "Do you love me?" Such a question implies dubiety, and they had no doubts. Elizabeth's hand, laid in his, said everything; her lips, yielded willingly to his, would have been profaned by speech. And in those long sacramental silences there was something holy—an ardour of the spirit, for which language had no symbols.
They returned at last into the library, where they found Vickars and Bundy engaged in conversation.
"You have quite made your mind up to live with your father?" asked Bundy.
"Yes. I could not leave him alone."
"Very well, then. No doubt you're right. Well, listen. I once asked you to be secretary to the Dredging Company in New York, and you refused. I want you now to act as my private secretary for a few hours every day. In that way you will be earning something, and you can go on living with your father as long as you think fit."
"And I cheerfully accept," said Arthur.
"Then we'll take that as settled. And if you can persuade your father to come back to the life which I think he is better fitted for, why do. He may count on me."
"I don't think he will ever do that. But I am sure he will be glad to know you thought of it."
"Poor fellow," said Bundy, his eyes full of tears. "The world has used him hardly. It somehow doesn't seem fair that I should be here and he there." And then, with a trembling voice, came the old sentiment. "But it's great, all the same, the way he takes things. Your father's a great man."
"I think so too," said Arthur. "He's the greatest man I ever knew, and you are the best."
The summer passed in heavy, brooding heat; the autumn brought long days of diminished sunshine; and at last the winter came, with rain and fog. London looked its worst, dull, drab, dishevelled, and nowhere was its grim squalor more distressing than in Tottenham.
A district of mean streets, formless and chaotic, sprawling aimlessly in a sea of mud; houses gray and dingy, exuding dirt; other houses, new and cheaply built, already overtaken by decay, huddled in shivering wretchedness along roads deep in mire; churches with the paint peeling from their doors; paltry ill-stocked shops visibly struggling for existence; a few smoke-stained trees; a smoke-stained sky; and tribes of men and women moving to and fro dejectedly, with backs hunched against the driving rain, or faces showing pallid in the fog,—such is Tottenham. It is a district without grace, without charm, with no interruption in its uniformity of dullness. The disparities caused by social rank, which elsewhere give some semblance of external variety, are not found here. Poverty sees itself reduplicated at every turn; it looks into its own face, and sees no other. A district no man chooses; into which he may be thrust by dire misfortune, in which he may dwell with resentment, with a heart swollen with regret, with a mind embittered; but which excites in him no respect and no affection. London, with its glories and adventures, shines afar; it shines splendid and contemptuous. For here there are no adventures; memories, but no prospects; life without ardour; struggle without hope; toil without release.
It was in this district that Masterman had chosen to live. Its tragic dreariness presented a subtle correspondence with his own temper. Having sought wealth for so many years with a fierce intensity of passion, he now embraced poverty with an equal ardour. The world had humiliated him, and, as if to show how little he cared for the world's verdict, he added to his humiliation features which the world had not intended. He hungered for renunciation, not as saints have hungered, but with the bravado of a broken heart. He would show himself unsubduable; that was his main thought. And in what more striking way could he do this than by a complete indifference to the world's opinion, a voluntary descent into indignity? To toil in harsh labours, to eat poor food, to live in the meanest way, without complaint, without visible resentment,—this was his challenge to the world, by which he declared his complete contempt for the world's judgment and opinion.
This had been his sole motive for rejecting the proffered generosity of Bundy. And there were others beside Bundy, the friends and acquaintances of his prosperity, who would gladly have given him a helping hand. But, since he could not wholly recover his old position, he scorned a partial reclamation. To move before the eyes of these former friends shorn of his power, narrowed, limited, perhaps pitied, was a thing impossible. Better far to leave the arena for ever, and leave it with a proud disdain. Exile was less painful than toleration. The exile may at least keep his pride; but what pride is possible to the broken supernumerary who "lags superfluous on the stage"?
"No," he said, when Bundy pressed him to accept his help, "I can't do it. I know you mean it kindly; but I can't."
"But why not?"
"You wouldn't understand if I told you."
"I understand you're the most obstinate man I ever met," said Bundy, with a touch of indignant heat.
"Obstinate? Well, p'raps so. We'll let it go at that. Yes, I'm obstinate."
And his smile was so grim and tragic that Bundy said no more.
It was one of the curious features of his situation that the house he chose to live in at Tottenham was a triumph of architectural mendacity; the same kind of house, in fact, as those with which he himself had disfigured London, but some grades lower than his own flimsiest performances. The doors were badly hung and would not close; the wainscots, fashioned of green wood, were already shrunken; the window frames rattled and let in the cold air; the chimneys smoked; the ceiling plaster was already in process of disintegration; there was nothing in the house that was not eloquent of fraud. Perhaps he had been moved by the spirit of irony in the selection of such a house as his final habitation. He might have lived elsewhere; but nowhere else could he have gratified his perversity with such completeness. Grimes employed him; well, let him live in one of Grimes's houses too; in doing so he anticipated the world's laughter by laughing himself.
"He's a holy terror, is Grimes," he would remark. "I thought I knew how to build a thirty-pound house myself pretty well; but Grimes beats me hands down. He can give me points every time."
And then he would recapitulate with sardonic skill all the building tricks of which Grimes had been guilty, specifying each with bitter humour.
"I did sometimes use sand in my mortar; but Grimes uses mud—mere road mud at that. And I did put down drains of some sort; but Grimes beats me there—he don't appear to have heard of drains. And his party-walls, holy Moses! I believe if I spat at them they'd fall down."
When Arthur came home in the evening, he would meet him at the door with ironic warnings.
"Here, mind you shut that door quietly. If you bang it, it's my belief the whole gimcrack will be about your ears. And be careful you take your boots off before you go upstairs. Those stairs weren't meant for boots. And, whatever you do, don't you be leaning against the walls. They kind o' shake every time a fly walks over them. I guess it wouldn't need much of a Samson to pullthemdown. He wouldn't need to touch 'em; I reckon a sneeze would do the trick."
"Father, I can't bear to see you so bitter."
"Bitter? Oh no, I'm not bitter. I'm amused, that's all."
"I wish you wouldn't live here, father. There's no need. Let me find another house. Between us, we've money enough."
"Well, Arthur, you see I kind of like living here. It's exciting. You never know what's going to happen. And, besides, it's instructive. I'm studying the methods of my friend Grimes, in case I should want to start again presently as a contractor. I'm learning every day. There's more than meets the eye in this contracting business; and, since I've worked for Grimes, I begin to think I never knew a thing about it."
Remonstrance was so clearly useless that after a time Arthur ceased to attempt it. He accepted his father's bitter humour, thankful for the humour, if hurt by its bitterness. He even contrived to laugh at times when his father grew increasingly sarcastic over the iniquities of Grimes; but it was the kind of laughter that was more painful than tears.
More than once he tried to persuade his father to leave London altogether. He pictured to him the life at Kootenay, the quiet, the freedom, the exhilarating sense of triumph over crude nature, with all the skill and eloquence at his command. At times his father would listen with interest, asking many questions, but always at the end he would say, "No, no; it's too late for that. I'm a have-been. I can't begin again. And, besides, it would look like running away, and I won't do that. A man has to take his medicine, and I'm going to take mine."
At times a strange religious vein showed itself in his conversation. He never went to church now, and, indeed, entertained a strong rancour against what he called "church-folk." Scales had been an officer in the church, and was a rascal. The church-folk had all deserted him in his downfall. Clark, indeed, had called upon him, but had nothing to say. It was all a kind of play-acting, very pleasant if you'd nothing better to do, and that was all. "Churches are meant for comfortable people. All very well while you've money in your pocket, and a good coat upon your back, but they aren't for the like of me," was one of his sayings. "The Church don't know anything about real life," he would remark, "and it doesn't want to. If it once saw things as they are, it would be frightened out of its wits. So it draws the blind down, and won't look. It's like folk sitting round a good fire on a winter night, and when the rain's coming down and a gale's blowing. The more the gale blows, the more comfortable you are. What's the good of looking out of the window? Why, they might see some poor wretch like me, and that would make them unhappy. Better not look. Stir the fire up, and forget all about it."
"I don't believe the church-folk think like that, father."
"Oh yes, they do. I've done it myself, and I know."
And then, amid these bitter criticisms and confessions, that curious authentic religious vein would struggle into light. He would often sit up late reading those portions of the Scripture most characterised by melancholy wisdom.
"Listen to this," he said on one of those occasions: "'He that buildeth his house with other men's money is like one that gathereth himself stones for the tomb of his burial.... Weep for the dead, for he hath lost the light; and weep for the fool, for he wanteth understanding; make little weeping for the dead, for he is at rest; but the life of the fool is worse than death.'The man who wrote that knew something about life now, if you like. Couldn't pay his mortgage, as like as not; been a bankrupt, I guess. Just wanted to die, and be done with it all—like me. Yet God let him have a hand in writing the Bible—queer thing that, isn't it? And God must have known the kind of fool he was. That's what I like about the Bible; it don't shirk things—tells you the truth every time. It's a big thing is the Bible—big as a rock; and the Church is just a little limpet sticking on it. Don't see how big it is; probably can't see it." And then, with a sudden pale illumination on the strong worn face, "Well, I guess God's got to put up wi' me. He's big enough to understand the sort I am. And I'm not for apologising to Him. I reckon He don't want me to."
Gradually there seemed to settle on him a languor, which expressed itself in a kind of patience which Arthur found infinitely pathetic. He went to his work before daylight, came home weary, and often wet through, ate his coarsely cooked meal in silence, but made no complaint. He had ceased to take interest in the outer world. He received the news of Helen's marriage without remark, and displayed no curiosity. Once only he was roused to any interest in her. Bundy, in one of his numerous journeys to Paris, insisted on taking Arthur with him, and Arthur told his father that he would no doubt see Helen.
"Paris, did you say? Ah! I was there once. It was there they took me. So she's living in Paris, is she?"
He left the room and went upstairs. Arthur could hear him moving to and fro for a long time. When he came down, he held a little parcel in his hand.
"I suppose my creditors ought to have had this," he said. "Only they didn't get it."
"What is it, father?"
He slowly undid the parcel, and put upon the table a small gold watch.
"It didn't rightly belong to the creditors, either," he said in a low voice. "It was hers."
"Whose, father?"
"Your mother's. The first thing I gave her after we'd begun to get on a bit. I can mind how pleased she was. Lord! it seems like yesterday. And then her face kind of clouded over, and she said, 'But can you afford it?' That was just like your mother—always afraid I couldn't afford things."
He became silent, and stood with wide intent eyes, as if he saw that far distant past limned upon the air. He had never spoken of his dead wife before. The mention of her name invoked God knows what sweet and painful memories.
"Thought I couldn't afford it," he repeated softly. "Put it away in a drawer, didn't like to wear it, thought it too good for her. Some women are like that—not many, though. I guess Helen isn't like that...." And then, with a sudden lifting of the head, as though he emerged from a sea of dreams, "Well, I want you to give the watch to Helen. I haven't given her a wedding-present. That's about all I have to give. I hope she'll value it."
In due course Arthur gave the watch to Helen. She glanced at it with an air of insolent depreciation. "It isn't likely I'm going to wear an old thing like that!" was her sole remark. She also put it in a drawer, where it was forgotten. When she left the Hotel Continental, a year later, it was lost. She never missed it.
It was on his return from this journey to Paris that Arthur noticed for the first time a distinct physical change in his father. The big frame remained, but the flesh was shrunken.
"Aren't you well, father?" he asked.
"Oh yes, I'm well—a bit thinner, that's all. I'd begun to run to fat, you know, sitting about in offices. There's nothing like hard work to take your flesh down."
That night, as they sat beside the fire, he talked with an interest he had never shown before about Arthur's prospects in life. He drew from him a particular account of his work upon the ranch, the scenery, the business possibilities in fruit-growing, and so forth.
"I suppose now men get rich out there pretty quick, don't they?"
"A few."
"But there's gold and copper in those hills, isn't there?"
"So they say. There are old men who have been looking for it all their lives, though, and they haven't found it."
"But you might find it, eh? You've education, and that counts for a lot anywhere. And you've brains—you could organise things. I wouldn't wonder if you were rich some day."
"I don't want to be rich, father. The rich people appear to me the unhappiest people in the world."
"Ah, that's true, too! It's the same everywhere. You see, if a man'sbornrich, he grows up to it, and knows how to behave. But when hegetsrich, he generally makes a mess of things. Isn't used to it, and it goes to his head like wine." A long pause—and then, "What's the verse about choosing the better part? Well, I reckon you've chosen the better part. I didn't think so once, but I've begun to see a lot of new things of late, and that's one of them."
"Then you forgive me for going away, father?"
"Oh! I don't know about that. Isn't it enough if I say that I think you did the wise thing? It's pretty hard for me to say that, and you must be content with it."
He talked on for an hour or so, in a quiet, musing voice, recalling the histories of men he had known, most of them dead. He recalled their struggles, their ambitions, their infrequent victories, their frequent defeats, their occasional rise into social eminence, and the domestic infelicities that poisoned their success. It was a sorry record, a kind of epitome of modern covetousness, through which wailed the sombre note of the Hebrew moralist,Vanitas Vanitatum! Arthur could not but notice that he spoke no longer as a participant in the strife, but as a mere spectator. He saw the frantic whirl of men in pursuit of gold as something far off, unimportant, inherently mean and despicable. And he himself spoke as a man completely disillusioned, a derider and a mocker, whose dominant temper was ironic pity.
"Poor Sandy Macphail—I knew him when he earned a pound a week." And then would come a caustic sketch of Sandy, lying for his life in some crisis of his fortunes, "eating dirt," as he put it, to creep into a big man's favour, dragging with him into social light a wife who was the laughing-stock of unfamiliar drawing-rooms, and his cubs of boys, who took to drink or gambling—ending with the grim comment, "Spent his last years wheeled about in a chair, did Sandy—paralysed, you know."
Or it would be, "There's Steiner, South African millionaire, you know. I met him once in my great days. Poor wreck of a man, nerves all gone, took drugs, so they said. Committed suicide, did Steiner."
It was a long, almost involuntary unfolding of the filaments of memory. Man after man appeared in that phantasmagoric vision, foolish, pitiable, misguided, and sank out of sight pierced by the shaft of some ironic phrase.
"Well, I'm out of it all, and a good job, too," he concluded. "They'll be saying the same things about me when I'm dead. My! it's twelve o'clock! An old bankrupt fellow that works for Grimes ought to ha' been a-bed long ago. These are no hours for the British working man."
The next day was Sunday. To Arthur's surprise his father appeared after breakfast clothed in the fashion of his former life. The worn serge suit and low hat were laid aside; they were replaced by a black frock coat, a white waistcoat, and a top hat. He looked once more the city magnate—rather faded. And in some subtle way the better clothes had affected the physical aspect of the man. He no longer stooped; he stood erect, held himself well, had something of his former air of command.
"I've a fancy for a walk," he said. "Do you care to come?"
It was one of those mild and exquisite days which are the stars in the dreary firmament of winter. A soft wind blew out of the south-west, soft clouds moved across a blue-gray sky, and the air was pure and sparkling. Even Tottenham was touched with the spirit of a brief vivacity. The normal cloud of dinginess was miraculously dissolved, the sunlight glittered on the rain-pools, and a Sabbath calm lay upon the streets. It was the kind of day which the country-man calls "a weather-breeder"; which the less wise Londoner hails as the first pledge of returning summer.
They wandered forth, apparently without aim, but steadily moving westward. They reached Hyde Park, where they sat for some time watching the gaily dressed people who flowed past like a coloured river. Here and there Masterman discerned a known face, and made brief comments on it. From Hyde Park they turned toward the city. Through the mitigated clamour of the Strand, and the almost total silence of Cheapside, they passed, till they came to the network of lanes and alleys round the Mansion House. They were strangely hushed. Where, day by day, so many thousands passed, driven by eagerness and haste, in an unnoticeable throng, a single footfall now roused clamant echoes.
"It's a queer thing, but I've never been in the city on a Sunday before," Masterman remarked. "I couldn't have believed it was so silent. It's like going to sleep in a thunderstorm, and waking up in a vault, with the coffin-lid nailed over you."
He paused at last before the high narrow building where he had had his offices.
"Wonder whether the caretaker's here. Let us see."
A little dark man answered the door.
"Why, it's Mr. Masterman!" he cried in astonishment. "Come in, sir!"
"So you remember me, Perkins?"
"Of course, sir. And there's no one sorrier than me for what has happened."
"Who's got my offices now?"
"They're still to let, sir. P'raps you'd like to see them."
"Yes, I should."
They went up into the rooms. Masterman's name was still upon the glass door of the outer office. The desk that he had used was in its place beneath the window. But there was dust upon the furniture, dust upon the windows, and a kind of ghostly loneliness in the deserted rooms.
"I've a fancy for sitting at that desk again, Arthur."
He sat quite silent, his hat tilted back, his fingers drumming on the elbows of the chair.
"Let us go, father. It's too lonely."
"Yes—lonely," he said in a low voice. "The place that knew you knows you no more for ever. It's a queer sensation. No more—for ever!"
They left the room, went downstairs; and Arthur noticed with astonishment that Masterman gave the obsequious Perkins a sovereign.
"Oh! you needn't look like that," said Masterman. "I can afford it. And if I couldn't afford it I should do it. Perkins still has his illusions concerning me, and it isn't worth while destroying them. He very likely thinks I'm going to rent the offices again. Well, let him think it."
They left the city and turned northward. The evening had fallen when they reached Highbourne Gardens. The church shone with lighted windows, and on the misty air there floated out the sound of hymn-music. Eagle House reared a dim bulk through the mist. A white-painted board, just beside the gate, informed the public that the house was to be sold.
"Come away," said Arthur. "I can't bear it!"
For at last he saw that in this aimless wandering there had been an aim; his father was revisiting old scenes to take farewell of them.
"Hush!" said Masterman. "Listen!"
As they listened, the hymn-music became recognisable.
Swift to its close ebbs out life's little day;Earth's joys grow dim, its glories pass away;Change and decay in all around I see...