At breakfast upon the following day George set forth the result of his labours; with urgent eloquence extolled the virtues of this Miss Humfray.
Before Mr. Marrapit's plate lay an open envelope; upon the back George could read the inscription “Norfolk Street Agency for Distressed Gentlewomen.”
What had Miss Ram said of his Mary? The thought that she had written a reference which at the last moment would dash into dust this mighty scheme, was as a twisting knife in George's vitals. Every time that Mr. Marrapit stretched his hand for the letter the agitated young man upon a fresh impulse would dash into defiant eulogy of his darling; and so impetuous was the rush of his desperate words that at the beat of every new wave Mr. Marrapit would withdraw his startled hand from the letter; frown at George across the coffee-pot.
At last: “Sufficient,” he announced. “Curb zeal. Mount discretion. Satisfy the demands of appetite. You have not touched food. Tasks he before you. Do not starve the brain. I am tired of your eulogies of this person. For twenty-one minutes you have been hurling advertisements at me. I am a hoarding.”
The bill-sticker pushed a piece of bacon into a dry mouth; sat with goggling eyes.
The hoarding continued: “I have here this person's reference. It is good.”
“Down shot the piece of bacon; convulsively bolted like Miss Porter's sweet.
“Good!” cried George.
“I said good. For faulty articulation I apologise.”
“I know, I heard. I meant that I am pleased.”
“Strive to express the meaning. The person arrives for inspection at mid-day. For your assistance I tender thanks. The incident is now closed. Do you labour at hospital to-day?”
George had determined to be at the fount of news. In town, uncertain, he could have applied himself to nothing. He said:
“No, here; I work here to-day.”
“To your tasks,” commanded Mr. Marrapit.
George went to his room, but his tasks through that morning lay neglected.
Impossible to work. He was in a position at which at one time or another most of us are placed. He was upon one end of a balanced see-saw, and he was blindfolded so that it was impossible to see what might happen upon the other extremity. Suddenly he might be swung up to highest delight; suddenly he might be dashed earthwards to hit ground with a jarring thud. The one eventuality or the other was certain; but he must sit blindfold and helpless—unable to affect the balance by an ounce. Here is the position in which all of us are made cowards. Bring the soldier into action, and his blood will run hot enough to make him intoxicated and insensible to fear; hold him in reserve, and courage will begin to ooze. Give us daylight in which we may see aught that threatens us, and likely enough we shall have desperate courage sufficient to rush in and grapple; it is in the darkness that uncertainty sets teeth chattering. More prayers are said, and with more devotion, at night than in the morning. We creep and crawl and squirm to heaven when the uncertainty of the night has to be faced; but we can get along well enough, thank you, when we spring out of bed with the courage of morning.
George could not work until he knew whether he was to be swung high or thrown low. He paced his room; glimpsed his watch; tremendously smoked—and groaned aloud as, at every turn, he would receive the buffets of recollection of some important point upon which he had omitted to school his Mary.
In those desperate moments he decided finally that Margaret should not be told that Mary and he were so much more than strangers. Supposing all went well, and his Mary came to Herons' Holt, her safety and his would certainly be imperilled by giving the key of their secret to his cousin. It was a hard resolve. About the beautiful romance of the thing Margaret's nature would have crooned as a mother over her suckling. She would have mothered it, cherished it, given them a hundred opportunities of exchanging for clasps and whispers the chilly demeanour they must bear one to another. But the pleasure must be foregone. My George had the astonishing sense to know that the animal instinct in Margaret's nature would outride the romance. Twice the countless years that separate us from the gathering of our first instincts may pass, and this the strongest of them—the abhorrence of secrecy-will never be uprooted. When all life was a ferocious struggle for life, secrecy—and it would have been the secret of a store of food—was inimical to the existence of the pack: it was opposed to the first of the slowly forming laws of nature. There must be equality of opportunity that all might equally be tested. Thus it was that a secret hoard of food, when come upon, instantly was noised abroad by the discoverer, and its possessor torn to death; and thus it is to-day that a secret once beyond the persons immediately concerned is carried from mouth to mouth till the world has it, and its first possessors take the violence of discovery.
For a reason that was almost similar George negatived the impulse which bade him meet his Mary at the station, walk with her to the house, and leave her before the gates. For, supposing again that she were accepted and came to Herons' Holt, this suspicious meeting would come flying to Mr. Marrapit upon the breezes that whirl in and out of every cranny and nook in small communities. Towns are blind and deaf; villages have peeping eyes, straining ears, loose mouths, that pry and listen and whisper.
Almost upon the hour of twelve there came to the agitated young man's ears a ring that could be none other than hers.
He tip-toed to the banisters; peered below. His Mary was ushered in.
While she stood behind the maid who tapped on Mr. Marrapit's door, she glanced up. George had a glimpse of her face; waved encouragement from the stairhead.
The maid stood aside. His Mary passed in to the ogre's den.
Clad in a dressing-gown, Mr. Marrapit was standing against the fireplace. My trembling Mary settled just clear of the closing door; took his gaze. He put his eye upon her face; slowly travelled it down her person; rested it upon her little shoes; again brought it up; again carried it down; this time left it at her feet.
The gaze seemed to burn her stockings. She shuffled; little squirms of fright nudged her. She glanced at her feet, fearful of some hideous hole in her shoes.
“I am—” she jerked.
Then Mr. Marrapit spoke: “I see you are. Discontinue.”
The command was shot at her. Trembling against the shock she could only murmur: “Discontinue?”
“Assuredly. Discontinue. Refrain. Adjust.”
“Discontinue...?” With difficulty she articulated the word, then put after it on a little squeak: “... What?”
“It,” rapped Mr. Marrapit.
“I am afraid—”
“I quake in terror.”
“I don't understand.”
“Pah!” Mr. Marrapit exclaimed. “You said 'I am.' Were you not about to say 'I am standing on the polished boards'?”
“No.”
“I believed that was in your mind. Let it now enter your mind. You are on the polished boards. You have high heels. I quake in terror lest they have left scratch or blemish. Adjust your position.”
Mary stepped to the carpet. She was dumb before this man.
Mr. Marrapit bent above the polished flooring where she had stood. “There is no scratch,” he announced, “neither is there any blemish.” He resumed his post against the fireplace and again regarded her: “You are young.”
“I am older really.”
“Elucidate that.”
“I mean—I am not inexperienced.”
“Why say one thing and mean another? Beware the habit. It is perilous.”
“Indeed it is not my habit.”
“It is your recreation, then. Do not indulge it. Continue.”
“I am young, but I have had experience. I think if you were to engage me I would give you satisfaction.”
“Adduce grounds.”
“I would try in every way to do as you required. I understand I am to look after cats.”
“Where?”
“Here.”
“Abandon that impression. I have not said so.”
“No, I mean if you engage me.”
“Again you say one thing and mean another. I am suspicious. It is a habit.”
“Oh,indeedit is not.”
“Then if a recreation, a recreation to which you are devoted. You romp in it. Twice within a minute you have gambolled.”
My Mary blinked tears. Since rising that morning, her nerves had been upon the stretch against this interview. She had schooled herself against all possibilities so as to win into the house of her dear George, yet at every moment she seemed to fall further from success.
“You ca-catch me up so,” she trembled.
Mr. Marrapit expanded upwards. “Catch you up! A horrible accusation. The table is between us.”
“You mis-misunderstand me.” She silenced a little sniff with a dab of her handkerchief. She looked very pretty. Mr. Marrapit placed beside her the mental image of Mrs. Major; and at every point she had the prize. He liked the soft gold hair; he liked the forlorn little face it enframed; he liked the slim little form. His cats, he suspected, would appreciate those nice little hands; he judged her to have nice firm legs against which his cats could rub. Mrs. Major's, he apprehended, would have been bony; not legs, but shanks.
Mary made another dab at her now red little nose. The silence increased her silly fright. “You mis-misunderstand me,” she repeated.
With less asperity Mr. Marrapit told her: “I cannot accept the blame. You wrap your meanings. I plunge and grope after them. Eluding me, I am compelled to believe them wilfully thrown. Strive to let your yea be yea and your nay nay. With circumspection proceed.”
Mary gathered her emotion with a final little sniff. “I like ca-cats.”
“I implore you not to accuse me of misunderstanding you. A question is essential. You do not always pronounce 'cats' in two syllables?”
“Oh, no.”
“Satisfactory. You said 'ca-cats.' Doubtless under stress of emotion. Proceed.”
Mary sniffed; proceeded. “I like ca-cats—cats. If you were to engage me I am sure your cats would take to me.”
“I admit the possibility. I like your appearance. I like your voice. Had you knowledge of the acute supersensitiveness of my cats you would understand that they will appreciate those points. I do not require in you veterinary knowledge; I require sympathetic traits. I do not engage you to nurse my cats—though, should mischance befall, that would come within your duties,—but to be their companion, their friend. You are a lady; themselves ancestral they will appreciate that. I understand you are an orphan; there also a bond links you with them. All cats are orphans. It is the sole unfortunate trait of their characters that they are prone to forget their offspring. In so far as it is possible to correct this failing amongst my own cats, I have done my best. Amongst them the sanctity of the marriage tie is strictly observed. The word stud is peculiarly abhorrent to me. Polygamy is odious. There is a final point. Pray seat yourself.”
Mary took a chair. Mr. Marrapit, standing before her, gazed down upon her. From her left he gazed, then from her right. He returned to the fireplace.
“It is satisfactory,” he said. “You have a nice lap. That is of first importance. The question of wages has been settled. Arrive to-morrow. You are engaged.”
If we write that Mary's first month at Herons' Holt was uneventful, we use the term as a figure of speech that must be taken in its accepted sense; not read literally. For it is impossible that life, in whatever conditions, can be eventless. The dullest life is often with events the most crowded. In dulness we are thrown back upon our inner selves, and that inner self is of a construction so sensitive that each lightest thought is an event that leaves an impression.
In action, in gaiety, in intercourse we put out an unnatural self to brunt the beat of events. We are upon our guard. There are eyes watching us, and from their gaze we by instinct fend our inner self just as by instinct we fend our nakedness.
Overmuch crowded with such events, the inner self is prone to shrivel, to fade beneath lack of nutriment; and it may happen that in time the unnatural self will take its place, will become our very self.
That is gravely to our disadvantage. Overmuch in action, the man of affairs may win the admiration of a surface-seeing world; may capture the benefits of strong purpose, of wealth, and of position. But he is in danger of utterly losing the fruits that only by the inner, the original, and true self can be garnered.
Life presents for our pursuit two sets of treasures. The one may be had by the labours of the hands; the other by exercise of the intellect—the true self. And at once this may be said: that the treasures heaped by the hands soil the hands, and the stain sinks deep. The stain enters the blood and, thence oozing, pigments every part of the being—the face, the voice, the mind, the thoughts. For we cannot labour overlong in the fields without besweating the brow; and certainly we cannot ceaselessly toil after the material treasures of life without gathering the traces of that labour upon our souls. It stains, and the stain is ugly.
Coming to treasures stored by exercise of the intellect, the true self, these also put their mark upon the possessor; but the action is different and the results are different. Here the pigment that colours the life does not come from without but distils from within. Man does not stoop to rend these treasures from the earth; he rises to them. They do not bow; they uplift. They are not wrenched in trampling struggle from the sties where men battle for the troughs; they are absorbed from the truths of life that are as breezes upon the little hills. They are in the face of Nature and in Nature's heart; they are in the written thoughts of men whose thoughts rushed upward like flames, not dropped like plummet-stones—soared after truth and struck it to our understanding, not made soundings for earthy possessions showing how these might be gained.
Yet it is not to be urged that the quest of material treasures is to be despised, or that life properly lived is life solely dreaming among truths. The writer who made the story of the Israelites sickening of manna, wrapped in legend the precept that man to live must work for life. We are not living if we are not working. We cannot have strength but we win meat to make strength.
No; my protest is against the heaping of material treasure to the neglect of treasure stored by the true self. Material treasure is not ours. We but have the enjoyment of it while we can defend it from the forces that constantly threaten it. Misfortune, sorrow, sickness—these are ever in leash against us; may at any moment be slipped. Misfortune may whirl our material treasures from us; sorrow or sickness may canker them, turn them to ashes in the mouth. They are not ours; we hold them upon sufferance. But the treasures of the intellect, the gift of being upon nodding terms with truth, these are treasures that are our impregnable own. Nothing can filch them, nothing canker them: they are our own—imperishable, inexhaustible; never wanting when called upon; balm to heal the blows of adversity, specific against all things malign. Cultivate the perception of beauty, the knowledge of truth; learn to distinguish between the realities of life and the dross of life; and you have a great shield of fortitude of which certainly man cannot rob you, and against which sickness, sorrow, or misfortune may strike tremendous blows without so much as bruising the real you.
And it is in the life that is called uneventful that there is the most opportunity for storing these treasures of the intellect. Perhaps there is also the greater necessity. In the dull round of things we are thrown in upon ourselves, and by every lightest thought and deed either are strengthening that inner self or are sapping it. Either we are reading the thoughts of men whose thoughts heap a priceless store within us, or we are reading that which—though we are unaware—vitiates and puts further and further beyond our grasp the truths of life; either we are watching our lives and schooling them to feed upon thoughts and deeds that will uplift them, or we are neglecting them, and allowing them to browse where they will upon the rank weeds of petty spites, petty jealousies, petty gossipings and petty deeds. In action we may have no time to waste over this poisonous herbage; but in dulness most certainly we do have the temptation—and as we resist or succumb so shall we conduct ourselves when the larger events of life call us into the lists.
Mary's first month at Herons' Holt was uneventful: need not be recorded. We are following the passage of the love 'twixt her and George; and within the radius of Mr. Marrapit's eye love durst not creep. She saw little of her George. They were most carefully circumspect in their attitude one to another, and conscience made their circumspection trebly stiff. There are politenesses to be observed between the inmates of a house, but my Mary and my George, in terror lest even these should be misconstrued, studiously neglected them.
The aloofness troubled Margaret. This girl wrapped her sentiment about Mary; delighting in one who, so pretty, so young, so gentle-voiced, must face life in an alien home. The girls came naturally together, and it was not long before Margaret bubbled out her vocation.
The talk was upon books. Margaret turned away her head; said in the voice of one hurrying over a commonplace: “I write, you know.”
She tingled for the “Do you?” from her companion, but it did not come, and this was very disappointing.
She stole a glance at Mary, sitting with a far-away expression in her eyes (the ridiculous girl had heard an engine whistle; knew it to be the train that was taking her George to London). Margaret stole a glance at Mary; repeated louder: “I write, you know.”
It fetched the delicious response. Mary started: “Do you?”
Margaret said hurriedly: “Oh, nothing worth speaking of.”
Mary said: “Oh!”; gave her thoughts again to the train.
It was wretched of her. “Poems,” said Margaret, and stressed the word “Poems.”
Mary came flying back from the train. “Oh, how interesting that is!”
At once Margaret drew away. “Oh, it is nothing,” she said, “nothing.” She put her eyes upon the far clouds; breathed “Nothing” in a long sigh.
From this it was not a far step to reading, with terrible reluctance, her poems to Mary; nor from this again was it other than an obvious step to telling of Bill. Her pretty verses were so clearly written at some heart which throbbed responsive, that Mary must needs put the question. It came after a full hour's reading—the poet sitting upon her bed in a litter of manuscripts, Mary in a low chair before her.
In a tremulous voice the poet concluded the refrain of an exquisite verse:
“Beat for beat, your heart, my darling,Beats with mine.Skylarks carol, quick responsive,Love divine.”
The poet gave a little gulp; laid down her paper.
Mary also gulped. From both their pretty persons emotion welled in a great flood that filled the room.
“I'm sure that is writtentosomebody,” Mary breathed.
Margaret nodded. This girl was too ravished with the grip of the thing to be capable of words.
Mary implored: “Oh, do tell me!”
Then Margaret told the story of Bill—with intimate details and in the beautiful phrases of the poet mind she told it, and the flooding emotion piled upwards to the very roof.
Love has rightly been pictured as a naked babe. Men together will examine a baby—if they must—with a bashful diffidence that pulls down the clothes each time the infant kicks; women dote upon each inch of its chubby person. And so with love. Men will discuss their love—if they must—with the most prudish decorum; women undress it.
It becomes essential, therefore, that what Margaret said to Mary must not be discovered.
When she had ceased she put out a hand for the price of her confidence: “And have you—are you—I know practically nothing about you, Mary, dear.Dotell me, areyouin love?”
Bang went the gates of Mary's emotion. Here was awful danger. She laughed. “Oh, I've no time to fall in love, have I?”
Margaret sighed her sympathy; then gazed at Mary.
Mary read the gaze aright. These were women, and they read one another by knowledge of sex. Mary knew Margaret's gaze to be that of an archer sighting at his mark, estimating the chances of a hit. She saw the arrow that was to come speeding at her breast; gathered her emotions so that she should not flinch at the wound.
Margaret twanged the bow-string. “No time to fall in love?” she murmured. She fitted the shaft; let fly. “Do you like George, dear?”
Mary stooped to her shoe-laces. Despite her preparations the arrow had pierced, and she hid her face to hide the blood.
“George?” said she, head to floor.
“Yes, George. Do you like George?”
My Mary sat up, brazen. “George? Oh, you mean your cousin? I daresay he's very nice. Practically I've never even spoken to him since I've been here.”
“I know. Of course he's very busy just now. Do you think you would like him if you did know him?”
It was murderous work. Mary was beginning to quiver beneath the arrows; was in terror lest she should betray the secret. A desperate kick was necessary. She wildly searched for a foothold; found it; kicked:
“I'm sure I shouldn't like him.”
The poet softly protested: “Oh why, Mary?”
“He's clean-shaven.”
“And you don't like a—”
“I can't stand a—”
“But if he had a—”
“Oh, if he had a—Margaret, I hear Mr. Marrapit calling. I must fly.” She fled.
Upon a sad little sigh the poet moved to her table; drew heliotrope paper towards her; wrote:
“Why are your hearts asunder, ye so fair?”
A thought came to her then, and she put her pen in her mouth; pursued the idea. That evening she walked to the gate and met George upon his return. After a few paces, “George,” she asked, “do you like Mary?”
George was never taken aback. “Mary? Mary who?”
“Miss Humfray.”
“Oh, is her name Mary?”
“Of course it is.” Margaret slipped her arm through George's; gazed up at him. “Do you like her, George?”
“Like whom?”
“Why, Mary—Miss Humfray.”
“Oh, I think she's a little better than Mrs. Major—in some ways. If that's what you mean.”
Margaret sighed. Such mulish indifference was a dreadful thing to this girl. But she had set her heart on this romance.
“George, dear, I wish you would do something for me.”
“Anything.”
“How nice you are! Will you grow a moustache?”
She anxiously awaited the answer. George took his handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his eyes. He did not speak.
She asked him: “What is the matter?”
He said brokenly: “You know not what you ask. I cannot grow a moustache. It is my secret sorrow, my little cross. There is only one way. It is by pushing up the hairs from inside with the handle of a tooth-brush and tying a knot to prevent them slipping back. You have to do it every morning, and I somehow can never remember it.”
Margaret slipped her arm free; without a word walked to the house.
She was hurt. This girl had the artistic temperament, and the artistic temperament feels things most dreadfully. It even feels being kept waiting for its meals.
George followed the pained young woman into the house; set down in the hall the books he carried; left the house again; out through the gate, and so, whistling gaily along roads and lanes, came to the skirts of an outlying copse. By disused paths he twisted this way and that to approach, at length, a hut that once was cottage, whose dilapidated air advertised long neglect.
It was a week after Mary's arrival at Herons' Holt that, quite by chance, George had stumbled upon this hut. He had taken his books into the copse, had somehow lost his way in getting out, and through thick undergrowth had plumped suddenly upon the building. Curiosity had taken him within, shown him an outer and an inner room, and, in the second, a sight that had given him laughter; for he discovered there sundry empty bottles labelled “Old Tom,” a glass, an envelope addressed to Mrs. Major. It was clear that in this deserted place—somehow chanced upon—the masterly woman had been wont, safe from disturbance, to meet the rascal who, taken to Herons' Holt on that famous night, had so villainously laid her by the heels.
Nothing more George had thought of the place until the morning of this day when, leaving for hospital, his Mary had effected a brief whispered moment to tell him that Mr. Marrapit had thought her looking pale, had told her to take a long walk that afternoon. Immediately George gave her directions for the hut; there he would meet her at five o'clock; there not the most prying eye could reach them.
Now he approached noiselessly; saw his pretty Mary, back towards him, just within the threshold of the open door. It was their first secluded meeting since she had come to Herons' Holt.
Upon tip-toe George squirmed up to her; hissed “I have thee, girl”; sprang on his terrified Mary; hugged her to him.
“The first moment together in Paltley Hill!” he cried. “The first holy kiss!”
His Mary wriggled. “George! You frightened me nearly out of my life. It's not holy. You're hurting me awfully.”
“My child, it is holy. Trust in me.”
“George, youarehurting.”
“Scorn that. It is delicious!”
He let her from his arms; but he held her hands, and for a space, looking at one another, they did not speak. Despite he was in wild spirits, despite her roguishness, for a space they did not speak. His hands were below hers and about hers. The contact of their palms was the junction whence each literally could feel the other's spirit being received and pouring inwards. The metals were laid true, and without hitch or delay the delectable thrill came pouring; above, between their eyes, on wires invisible they signalled its safe arrival.
They broke upon a little laugh that was their utmost expression of the intoxication of this draught of love, just as a man parched with thirst will with a little sigh put down the glass that has touched him back to vigour. Dumb while they drank, their innate earthiness made them dumb before effort to express the spiritual heights to which they had been whirled. In that moment when, spirit mingling with spirit through the medium of what we call love, all our baseness is driven out of us, we are nearest heaven. But our vocabulary being only fitted for the needs about us, we have no words to express the elevation. Debase love and we can speak of it; let it rush upwards to its apotheosis and we must be dumb.
With a little laugh they broke.
“Going on all right, old girl?” George asked.
“Splendidly.”
“Happy?”
She laughed and said: “I will give the proper answer to that. How can I be other than happy, oh, my love, when daily I see your angel form?”
“I forgot that. Yes, you're a lucky girl in that way—very, very lucky. Beware lest you do not sufficiently prize your treasure. Cherish it, tend it, love it.”
“Oh, don't fool, George. Whenever we have two minutes together you waste them in playing the goat. Georgie, tell me—about your exam.”
“To-morrow.”
She was at once serious. “To-morrow?”
“To-morrow I thrust my angel form into the examination room. To-morrow my angel voice trills in the examiners' ears.”
“I thought you had a paper first, before the viva?”
“Do not snap me up, girl. I speak in metaphors. To-morrow my angel hand glides my pen over the paper. On Thursday my angel tongue gives forth my wisdom with the sound of a tinkling cymbal.”
“The paper to-morrow, the viva on Thursday?”
He bowed his angel head.
“George, don't,don'tfool. Are you nervous? Will you pass?”
“I shall rush, I shall bound. I shall hurtle through like a great boulder.”
“Georgie!Will you?”
He dropped his banter. “I believe I shall, old girl. I really think I shall. I've simply sweated my life out these weeks—all for you.”
She patted his hand. “Dear old George! How I shall think of you! And then?”
“Then—why, then, we'll marry! Mary, I shall hear the result immediately after the viva. Then I shall rush back here and tackle old Marrapit at once. If he won't give me the money I think perhaps he'll lend it, and then we'll shoot off to Runnygate and take up that practice and live happily ever after.”
With the brave ardour of youth they discussed the delectable picture; arranged the rooms they had never seen; planned the daily life of which they had not the smallest experience.
Twice in our lives we can play at Make-Believe—once when we are children, once when we are lovers. And these are the happiest times of our lives. We are not commoners then; we are emperors. We touch the sceptre and it is a magic wand. We rule the world, shaping it as we will, dropping from between our fingers all the stony obstacles that would interfere with its plasticity. Between childhood and love, and between love and death, the world rules us and bruises us. But in childhood, and again in love, we rule the world.
So they ruled their world.
That night Mary prayed her George might pass his examination—a prayer to make us wise folk laugh. The idea of our conception of the Divinity deliberately thrusting into George's mind knowledge that he otherwise had not, the idea of the Divinity deliberately prompting the examiners to questions that George could answer—these are ludicrous to us in our wisdom. We have the superiority of my simple Mary in point of intelligence; well, let us hug that treasure and make the most of it. Because we miss the sense of confidence with which Mary got from her knees; passed into her dreams. With our fine intellects we should lie awake fretting such troubles. These simple, stupid Marys just hand the tangle on and sleep comforted. They call it Faith.
Yes, but isn't it grand to be of that fine, brave, intellectual, hard-headed, business-like stamp that trusts nothing it cannot see and prove? Rather!
Up the drive George came bounding with huge strides. The fires of tremendous joy that roared within him impelled him to enormous energy.
Upon the journey from Waterloo to Paltley Hill he could with difficulty restrain himself from leaping upon the seat; bawling “I've passed! I've passed! I'm qualified!” He could not sit still. He fidgeted, wriggled; thrust his head first from one window, then from the other. Every foot of the line was well known to him. To each familiar landmark his spirit bellowed: “Greeting! When last you saw me I was coming up in a blue funk. Now! Oh, good God, now—” and he would draw in, stride the carriage, and thrust his head from the other window.
His four fellow-passengers regarded him with some apprehension. They detected signs of lunacy in the young man; kept a nervous eye cocked upon the alarm cord; at the first stopping place with one accord arose and fled. One, signing herself “Lady Shareholder,” had her alarming experience in her daily-paper upon the following morning.
At his station George leapt for the platform a full minute before the train had stopped. Up the lanes he sent his bursting spirits flying in shrill whistlings and gay hummings; slashed stones with his stick; struck across the fields and took gates and stiles in great spread-eagled vaults.
So up the drive, stones still flying, whistlings still piping.
Upon the lawn he espied Mr. Marrapit and his Mary. She, on a garden seat, was reading aloud from theTimes; Mr. Marrapit, on a deep chair stretched to make lap for the Rose of Sharon, sat a little in advance of her.
George approached from Mr. Marrapit's flank; soft turf muffled his strides. The warm glow of kindliness towards all the world, which his success had stoked burning within him, put a foreign word upon his tongue. He sped it on a boisterous note:
“Uncle!” he cried. “Uncle, I've passed!”
Mary crushed theTimesbetween her hands; bounded to her feet. “Oh!” she cried. “Hip! hur—!”
She bit the final exclamation; dropped to her seat. Mr. Marrapit had twisted his eye upon her.
“You are in pain?” he asked.
“No—oh, no.”
“You have a pang in the hip?”
“Oh no—no.”
“But you bounded. You cried 'hip'! Whose hip?”
“I was startled.”
“Unsatisfactory. The brain, not the hip, is the seat of the emotion. Elucidate.”
“I don't know why I said 'hip.' I was startled. Mr. George startled me.”
“Me also he startled. I did not shout hip, thigh, leg nor knee. Control the tongue.”
He turned to George. “Miss Humfray's extraordinary remark has projected this dilatory reception of your news. I beg you repeat it.”
Sprayed upon between mortification and laughter at the manner of his greeting, George's enthusiasm was a little damped. But its flame was too fierce to be hurt by a shower. Now it roared again. “I've passed!” he cried. “I'm qualified!”
“I tender my felicitations. Accept them. Leave us, Miss Humfray. This is a mighty hour. Take the Rose. Give her cream. Let her with us rejoice.”
Mary raised the cat. She faced about so that she directly shut Mr. Marrapit from his nephew; with her dancing eyes spoke her happiness to her George; passed down the lawn.
Mr. Marrapit drew in the lap he had been making. He sat upright. “Again, accept my felicitations,” he said. “They are yours. Take them.”
With fitting words George took them. Mr. Marrapit continued: “It is a mighty hour. Through adversity we have won to peace, through perils to port, through hurts to harbour.”
He paused.
“You mean—” George said, groping.
“Do not interpose. It is a mighty hour. Let this scene sink into our minds and march with us to the grave. Here upon the lawn we stand. Westward the setting sun. Creeping towards us the lengthening shadows. Between us the horrid discord which has so long reigned no longer stands. It is banished by a holy peace. The past is dead. My trust is ended. The vow which I swore unto your mother I have steadfastly kept. I would nourish you, I declared, until you were a qualified physician. You are a qualified physician. I have nourished you. Frequently in the future, upon a written invitation, I trust you will visit this home in which your youth has been spent. When do you leave?”
The query towards which Mr. Marrapit had been making through his psalm came to George with a startling abruptness that was disconcerting. He had not anticipated it. He jerked: “When do I—leave?”
“Certainly. The hour of your departure, unduly deferred by idleness and waywardness upon which we will not dwell, is now at hand. When does it fall? Not to-night, I trust? A last night you will, I hope, spend beneath my roof. To-morrow, perchance? What are your plans?”
George flamed. “You're in a mighty hurry to get rid of me.”
Mr. Marrapit cast upward his eyes. He groaned:
“Again I am misunderstood. All my life I have been misunderstood.” He became stern. “Ingrate! Is it not patent to you that my desire is not to stand in your way? You have earned manhood, freedom, a charter to wrest money from the world. I might stay you. I do not. I bid you Godspeed.”
George remembered his weighty purpose. Making for it, he became humble. “I am sorry,” he said. “I see what you mean. I appreciate your kindness. You ask what are my plans. I have come specially to lay them before you.”
Mr. Marrapit clutched the seat of his chair with the action of one waiting a dentist's torture. He had a premonition that support of some kind would be necessary. “Proceed,” he said.
George said: “My plans—” He swallowed. “My plans—” Again he swallowed. His plans were red-hot within him, but he sought despairingly for one that would not at the very outset turn Mr. Marrapit into screams. “My plans—” he stammered.
“My God!” Mr. Marrapit groaned. “My God! What is coming?”
George said on a rush: “These are my plans. I intend to marry—”
Mr. Marrapit gave a faint little bark.
“Then—then—” said George, floundering. “After that—then—I intend to marry—I—”
“Bigamy,” Mr. Marrapit murmured. “Bigamy.”
“Not twice. I am nervous. I intend to marry. I want to buy a little seaside practice that is for sale.”
Mr. Marrapit repeated the faint little bark. He was lying back, eyes half closed, face working upon some inward stress.
“Those are my plans,” George summarised: “to marry and buy this practice.”
A considerable pause followed. The workings of Mr. Marrapit's face ceased; he opened his eyes, sat up. “When?” he asked.
“At once.”
“This practice—”
“I have it in my eye.”
“Immaterial. Have you it in your pocket?”
“You mean the price?”
“I mean the money wherewith to finance these appalling schemes.”
“Not exactly. It is about that I wish to speak to you.”
“Tome?”
“Yes. I wanted to ask—”
“You intend to ask me for money?”
“I want to suggest—”
“How much?”
“Four—five hundred pounds.”
“Great heaven!” Mr. Marrapit wildly fingered the air. Margaret, at the end of the lawn, crossed his vision. He called huskily: “Margaret!”
She tripped to him. “Father! What is it?”
“Barley water!” Mr. Marrapit throated. “Barley water!”
While she was upon her errand no—words passed between the two. Mr. Marrapit took the glass from her in shaking hands. “Leave us,” he said. He drank of his barley water; placed the glass upon the bench beside him; gave George a wan smile. “I am stricken in years,” he said. “I have passed through a trance or conscious nightmare. You will have had experience of such affections of the brain. I thought”—the hideous memory shook him—“I thought you asked me for five hundred pounds.”
George said defiantly: “I did.”
Mr. Marrapit frantically reached for the barley water; feverishly gulped. “I shall have a stroke,” he cried. “My hour is at hand.”
My poor George flung himself on a note of appeal. “Oh, I say, uncle, don't go on like that! You don't know what this means to me.”
“I do not seek to know. I am too fully occupied with its consequences to myself; it means a stroke. I feel it coming. My tomb yawns.”
George gripped together his hands; paced a few strides; returned. “Oh, for heaven's sake, don't go on like that! Won't you listen to me? Is it impossible to speak with you as man to man? If you refuse what I ask, you have only to say no.”
“You promise that?”
“Of course; of course.”
“I say it now, then. No.”
“But you haven't heard me.”
“Unnecessary.”
The tortured young man raised his voice.
“It is necessary! You shall! You must!”
“Barley water!” Mr. Marrapit gasped. “Barley water! I am going to be murdered.”
“Oh, this is insupportable!” George cried.
“I endorse that. A double death threatens me. I shudder between a stroke and a blow. I shall be battered to death on my own lawn.”
“If you would only listen to me,” George implored. “Why can we never be natural when we meet?”
“Search your heart for the answer,” Mr. Marrapit told him. “It is because your demands are unnatural.”
“You haven't heard them. Listen. I am on the threshold of my career. I am sure you will not ruin it. The real price of this practice is 650 pounds—the value of a year and a half's income; that is the usual custom. I am offered it for four hundred. Then I want to marry and to have a little balance with which to start—say 100 pounds for that. That makes 500 pounds altogether. I implore you to lend—lend, not give—that sum. I will pay you back 50 pounds at the end of the first year and a hundred a year afterwards. Interest too. I don't know much about these things. Any interest you like. We would get a solicitor to draw up an agreement. Say you will lend the money. I feel sure you will.”
“You delude yourself by that assurance.”
“Oh, wait before you refuse. My prospects are so bright if only you will help me. I have no one else to whom I can turn. It is only a loan I ask.”
“It is refused.”
George stamped away, hands to head. The poor boy was in agony. Then returned:
“I won't believe you. You will not be so heartless. Think over what I have said. Tell me to-night—to-morrow.”
“My answer would be the same.”
“You absolutely refuse to lend me the money?”
“I refuse. It is against my principles.”
My frantic George clutched at a shimmering hope. “Against your principles to lend? Do you mean that you will give—give me 500 pounds?”
“Barley water!” Mr. Marrapit gasped. He drank; gasped: “Give 500 pounds! You are light-headed!”
“Then lend it!” George supplicated on a last appeal. “Make any conditions you please, and I will accept them. Uncle, think of when you were a young man. Remember the time when you were on the threshold of your career. Think of when you were engaged as I am now engaged. Imagine your feelings if you had been prevented marrying. You won't stand in my way? The happiest life is before me if you will only give your aid. Otherwise—otherwise—oh, I say, you won't refuse?”
“I implore you to close this distressing scene.”
“Will you lend me the money?”
“My principles prevent me.”
“Then damn your principles!” George shouted. “Damn your principles!”
While he had been battering his head against this brick wall he had been saved pain by the hope that a last chance would carry him through. Now that he realised the futility of the endeavour, the stability of the wall, he had time to feel the bruising he had suffered—the bitterness of failure and of all that failure meant. The hurts combined to make him roar with pain, and he shouted furiously again: “Damn your principles!”
“Barley water!” throated Mr. Marrapit on a note of terror. He reached for the glass. It was empty.
He struggled to his feet; got the chair between George and himself; cried across it: “Beware how you touch me.”
“Oh, I'm not going to touch you. You needn't be afraid.”
“I have every need. I am afraid. Keep your distance. You are not responsible for your actions.”
“You needn't be afraid, I tell you. It is too ridiculous.”
“I repeat I have need. Keep your distance. My limbs tremble as one in a palsy.” Mr. Marrapit gripped the chair-back; his shudders advertised his distress.
“I only want to say this,” George declaimed, “that if you refuse what I ask, you are refusing what is lawfully mine. My mother left you 4000 pounds for my education. At the outside you have spent three. The 500 pounds is mine. I have a right to it.”
“Keep your distance, sir.”
My furious George took three steps forward.
“Can you answer what I say?” he shouted.
Mr. Marrapit gave a thin cry: turned, and with surprising bounds made across the lawn. A slipper shot from his foot. He alighted upon a stone; bounded heavenwards with a shrill scream; and hopping, leaping, shuffling, made the corner of the house.
George swung on his heel. It occurred to him to visit Bill Wyvern.