Deep down in their secret hearts all the Spuffler’s relations had felt that his permanent failure to get on in the world was a kind of disgrace to themselves. They resented it, but as a rule kept quiet about it “for the sake of poor Lavinia.” My aunt was always “poor Lavinia,” when mentioned by her family. Before strangers, needless to say, they helped him to keep up his pretense of importance and spoke of him with respect. But the thought that a man who had intermarried with them, should have lowered his wife to the keeping of a boarding-house rankled. Even as a child I was conscious that my close attachment to my uncle Obad was regarded with disapprobation. He was the Ishmael of our tribe.
At first none of his relatives would believe in his mushroom prosperity. Perhaps, they did not want to believe in it; it would entail the sacrifice of life-long prejudices. They pooh-poohed it as the most extravagant example of his fantastic spuffling. On my return home for the summer holidays I very soon became aware of an atmosphere of half-humorous contempt whenever his name was mentioned. Once when I took up the cudgels for him, declaring that he was really a great man, the Snow Lady patted my hand gently, calling me “a blessed young optimist.” My father, who rarely lost his temper, told me I was speaking on a subject concerning which I was profoundly ignorant.
On a visit to Charity Grove I was grieved to find that even Aunt Lavinia was skeptical. Despite the jingling of money in my uncle’s pockets, she insisted on living in the old proud hand-to-mouth fashion, making the spending capacity of each penny go its furthest. Her house was still understaffed in the matter of servants—servants who could be procured at the lowest wages. She still did her shopping in the lower-class districts, where men cried their wares on the pavement beneath flaring naphtha-lamps and slatternly women elbowed your ribs and mauled everything with dirty hands before they purchased. Here housekeeping could be contrived on the smallest outlay of capital.
Uncle Obad might go to fashionable tailors; she clothed herself in black, because it wore longest and could be turned. She listened to his latest optimisms a little wearily with a sadly smiling countenance, as a mother might listen to the plans for walking of a child hopelessly crippled. She had heard him speak bravely so many, many times, and had been disappointed, that she had permanently made up her mind that she would have to go on earning the living for both of them all her life.
Yet she loved him as well as a woman could a man for whom she was only sorry; she was constantly on the watch to defend him from the disapprobation of the world. But she refused ever again to be beguiled into believing that he would take his place with other men. So, when he told her that they didn’t need to keep on the boarding-house, she scarcely halted long enough in her work to listen to him. And when he said that he could now afford her a hundred pounds for dress, she bent her head lower to hide a smile, for she didn’t want to wound him. And when he brought her home a diamond bracelet, she tried to find out where it had been purchased in order that she might return it on the quiet.
Gradually, however, she began to be persuaded that this time it wasn’t all bluster. The gallantry of his attitude towards herself was the unaccountable element. Not so long ago it had been she who was the man about the house, and he had been a kind of grown-up boy. Once she had allowed him to kiss her; now he kissed her masterfully as by right of conquest. He had become a man at last, after halting at the hobbledehoy stage for fifty years. He treated her boldly as a lover, striving to draw out her womanhood. He was making up the long arrears of affection which, up to this time, he had not felt himself worthy to display.
One evening in the garden he tore the bandage of doubt from her eyes. I was there when it happened. We were down in the paddock, the home of the fowls, where so many of our dreams had taken place. The gaunt London houses to the right of us were doing their best to shut out the sunset. Aunt Lavinia began to wonder how much the little hay-crop would fetch this year. She was disappointed because it had grown so thin, and there seemed no promise of rain.
“It doesn’t matter, my dear,” said my uncle cheerfully.
“Obad, how can you say that!”
He pressed up to her flushing like a boy, placing his arms about her and lifting her face. “Lavinia, are you never going to trust me?”
The sudden tenderness and reproach in his voice stabbed her heart into wakefulness. When she spoke, her words came like a cry: “Oh, Obad, how I wish I could believe it true this time!”
“But it is true, my dearest.”
I stole away, and did not see them again till an hour later when they wandered by me arm-in-arm through the wistful twilight. Within a week I knew that she had accepted his prosperity as a fact, for he gave her a blue silk dress and she wore it. But he had harder work in getting her to give up the boarding-house. His great argument was that Rapson advised it—it would advance their social standing. She fenced and hesitated, but finally promised on the condition that he was still succeeding in November.
I think it must have been the news of her surrender that sapped the last foundation of my father’s skepticism. At any rate, shortly after this, when my uncle by special invitation came over to Pope Lane, he was given one of my father’s best cigars as befitted a rich relative. The best glass and silver were put out. We all had unsoiled serviettes and observed uncomfortable company manners. In the afternoon he was carried off to my father’s study and remained there till long past the tea-hour.
Later my father told me the subject of their discussion. By dint of hard saving he had put by two thousand pounds for planting me out in the world, part of which was to pay for my Oxford education. Having heard of that half-yearly twenty-per-cent dividend which theEthiopianshares had paid and that they were still being issued privately, at par value, he was inclined to entrust his money to my uncle, if he could prove the investment sound. If the mines were as good as they appeared to be, he would get four hundred pounds a year in interest—which would make all the difference to our ease of life. There was another consultation; the next thing I knew the important step had been taken.
All our power of dreaming now broke loose. It became our favorite pastime to sit together and plan how we would spend the four hundred pounds.
“Why, it’s an income in itself,” my father would exclaim; “I shall be freed forever from the drudgery of hack-work.”
And the Snow Lady would say, “Now you’ll be able to turn your mind to the really important things of life—the big books which you’ve always hoped to write.”
And Ruthita would sidle up to him in her half-shy way, and rub her cheek against his face, saying nothing.
A wonderful kindliness nowadays entered into all our domestic relations. My father’s weary industry, which had sent us all tiptoeing about the house, began to relax. Even for him work lost something of its sacredness now that money was in sight. He no longer frowned and refused to look up if anyone trespassed into his study. On the contrary, he seemed glad of the excuse for laying aside his pen and discussing what place in the whole wide world we should choose, when we were free to live where we liked.
It should be somewhere in Italy—Florence, perhaps. For years it had been his unattainable dream to live among olive-groves of the Arno valley. We read up guide-books and histories about it. Soon we were quite familiar with the Pitti Palace, the Ponte Vecchio, and the view from the Viale dei Colli at sundown. These and many places with beautiful and large-sounding names, became the stock-in-trade of our conversation. And the brave, looked-down-on Spuffler was the faery-godmother who had made these dreams realities.
A tangible proof of the promised change in our financial status was experienced by myself on my return to school in a more liberal allowance of pocket-money. As yet it was only a promised change, for the half-yearly dividend would not be declared until January, and would not be paid till a month later.
What one might call “a reflected proof” came when we went over to spend Christmas with Uncle Obad at Chelsea.
Yes, Aunt Lavinia had succumbed to her good fortune. The Christian Boarding House had been abandoned and a fine old house had been rented, standing nearly at the corner of Cheyne Row, looking out across the river to Battersea.
On Christmas Eve my uncle’s carriage came to fetch us. That was a surprise in itself. It was his present to Aunt Lavinia, all brand new—a roomy brougham, with two gray horses, and a coachman in livery. From this it will be seen that he had not kept his bargain with himself, made that day at Richmond, to live only on his salary.
A slight fall of snow was on the ground; across London we drove, the merriest little family in all that shopping crowd. We had scarcely pulled up against the pavement and had our first peep of the fine big house, when the front-door flew open, letting out a flood of light which rippled to the carriage like a golden carpet unrolled across white satin.
There stood Uncle Obad, frock-coated and glorious, with Aunt Lavinia beside him, dressed all in lavender—not at all the prim, businesslike little woman, half widow, half hospital nurse, of my earliest recollection. She was as beaming and excited as a young girl, and greeted the Snow Lady by throwing her arms about her and whispering, “Oh, doesn’t it seem all too good to be true?”
The Snow Lady kissed her gaily on both cheeks, saying, “True enough, my dear. At any rate, Obad’s carriage was very real.”
How changed we were from the solemn polite personages who had considered it a point in our favor that we knew how to bottle our emotions. We laughed and rollicked, and made quite poor jokes seem brilliant by the sparkle with which we told or received them. And all this was done by money; in our case, merely by the promise of money! When a boy remembered what we all had been, it was a transformation which called for reflection.
My uncle with his jolly rich-relative manner was the focus-point of our attentions. Aunt Lavinia and, in fact, we all felt flat whenever he went out of the room. She followed after him like a little dog, with dumb admiring eyes, waiting to be petted. She told the Snow Lady that she couldn’t blame herself enough and could never make it up to him, for having lived with him in the same house all those years without having discovered his goodness. Then, as ladies will, they kissed for the twentieth time and did a little glad crying together.
So the stern grayness, which comes of a too frequent pondering on a diminishing bank-account, had vanished from the faces of our elders. Ruthita and I looked on and wondered. A great house had something to do with it, and heavy carpets, and wide fire-places, and fine shiny furniture, but underlying it all was money.
Christmas Eve I was awakened by the playing of waits outside my window. I looked out at the broad black river, with the ropes of stars, which were the lights of bridges, flung across it. And I looked at the untrodden snow, stretching far down the Embankment, gleaming and shadowy, making London seem a far-away, forgotten country. Then fumbling in the darkness, I looked in my stocking and drew out a slip of paper. By the light of a match, I discovered it to be a check from my aunt and uncle for fifty pounds. Comparing notes in my night-gown with Ruthita next morning, I found that she had another for the same amount.
Ah, but that was something like a Christmas! Never a twenty-fifth of December comes round but I remember it. My father summed it all up when he said, “Well, Obad, now you’ve struck it lucky, you certainly know how to be generous.”
He certainly did, and proved amply that only poverty had prevented him in former days from being the best loved man in the family. Only one person roused more admiration than my uncle, and that was Mr. Rapson. My father had never met him, so he had been invited to the Christmas dinner. At the last moment he had excused himself, saying that he had an unavoidable engagement with a lady. However, he turned up late in the evening with Miss Kitty on his arm and a fur-coat on his back. Somehow they both seemed articles of clothing; he wore them with such perfect assurance, as though they were so much a part of himself. In the hall he took off his fur-coat, and then he had only Miss Kitty to wear.
It was awe-inspiring to see the deference that was paid him and the ease with which he accepted every attention. My father, with the sincerest simplicity, almost thanked him to his face for selling himThe Ethiopianshares.
Of course he had to tell his lion-stories and how he went hunting ivory in Africa. My uncle trotted him about as though he were a horse, reminding him of all his paces. Mr. Rapson washisdiscovery—hisproperty. We all sat round and hero-worshiped. Miss Kitty seemed overwhelmed by the greatness of the house and the general luxury.
She appeared particularly shy of the ladies. After she had gone they declared her to be a dumb, doll-like little creature, with her quiet eyes and honey-colored hair. I sniggered, and they said, “What’s the matter with the boy? Why are you gurgling, Dante?”
I was thinking of another occasion, when she was neither dumb nor doll-like.
Now, quite contrary to her behavior at Richmond, she remained almost motionless on the chair in which Mr. Rapson had placed her, looking like a beautiful obedient piece of jewelry, waiting till her owner got ready to claim her. Only at parting did she show me any sign of recollection and then, while all eyes were occupied with Mr. Rapson, she whispered, “You were good to me at Richmond. I don’t forget.”
We stayed with my uncle four days. To us children it was a kind of tragedy when we left. “We must do this every year,” my uncle said.
“If we ar’n’t in Florence,” my father replied gaily.
Going back to school this time was a sore trial—it meant moving out of the zone of excitement. It seemed that every day something new must happen; and then there was so much to talk about. However, I got my pleasure another way—by the things I let out at school, with a boy’s natural boastfulness, about my uncle. I found myself, what I had always desired to be, genuinely and extremely popular. Money again! I let them know that they would probably only have the privilege of my society for a little while as, in all likelihood, I should be living in Florence next year.
This term two events happened, intimately related to one another in their effect upon my career, though at the time no one could have suspected any connection between them.
Lady Zion, the Creature’s sister, had certainly got more crazy in the years that had elapsed since I first met her. The winter was a heavy one and the snow fell far into February; yet nothing could restrain her, short of an asylum, from wandering about in the bleakest weather all over the countryside. Sometimes she would stay out far into the night, and on several occasions the Creature and I had to go out and search for her. I have seen her pass me five miles from home, riding on her little ass, talking to herself, all unaware of anything around her.
She was a temptation to the village-boys, and they would frequently torment her. The antagonism between the Red House and the village ran high. In a sense she was school property; we would make a chance of rescuing her an excuse for a free-fight. This meant that when the enemy found her alone, they took the opportunity of displaying their spite.
On the fourteenth of February she had been out all day. No one had seen her; by nightfall she had not returned. The Creature got permission to have me go out with him to hunt for her. It was necessary that someone should go with him because he was short-sighted. We investigated all her favorite haunts, but found not a trace of her. We inquired of farmers and travelers on the road, but heard nothing satisfactory. If she had gone by field-routes this was not remarkable, for all the country was covered with snow. Her white draped figure against the white landscape made it easy for her to escape observation.
The poor old Creature was getting worried; we had been three hours searching and hadn’t got a clue. I did my best to cheer him, and at last proposed that we should return to his cottage as sometimes the donkey had brought her back of himself.
From the point where we then stood our shortest route lay cross-country through a wood, skirting a little dell. Under the trees it was very dark although the moon was shining, for the trees grew close together. We were passing by the dell when I happened to look aside. The moonlight, falling across it, showed me something standing there. I asked the Creature to wait while I went and examined it. As I got nearer, I saw it was alive; then I recognized Lady Zion’s donkey. It had halted over what appeared to be a drift of snow. On coming closer I saw that it was Lady Zion herself. Something warned me not to call her brother.
Bending down, I turned her over and drew the straggling hair from off her face. There was a red gash in her forehead and red upon the snow. By the fear that seized me when I touched her, I knew.
Coming back to the Creature I told him it was nothing—I had been mistaken. At the school-house I made an excuse to leave him while he went on to the cottage. When he was out of sight I ran panic-stricken to Sneard’s study and told him. The two of us, without giving the alarm, returned to the wood and brought her home. The Creature was just setting out again when we reached the cottage. By the limp way in which she hung across the donkey’s back, he realized at a glance what had happened. Catching her in his arms, he dragged her down on to the road and, kneeling over her, commenced to sob and sob like an animal, not using any words, in a low moaning monotone.
One by one windows in the village-street were thrown open; frowsy heads stuck out; lights began to grope across the panes; the sleeping houses woke and a promiscuous crowd of half-clad people gathered. Above the intermittent babel of questions and answers was the constant sound of the Creature’s sobbing.
Next morning the news of Lady Zion’s death was common property. Detectives came down from London and a thorough effort was made to trace the murderer. Near the spot in the dell where she had been discovered, half-a-dozen snowballs lay scattered. It was supposed that a village-boy had come across her there, and in one of the snowballs he had thrown, purposely or accidentally, had buried a stone; then, seeing her fall, had run away in terror.
At the school various rumors went the round. The one which found most favor, though we all knew it to be untrue, was that Sneard had done it. His supposed motive was his well-known annoyance at Lady Zion’s irritating obsession that he had once loved her.
In the midst of this excitement, while the London detectives were still hunting, I received a telegram from my father, unexplained and peremptory, “Return immediately. Bring all belongings.”
Of course the telegram was connected in some way with the payment of the first half-yearly dividend. Perhaps my father had decided on an instant removal to Italy. So my schoolmates thought as they stood enviously watching me pack.
Towards evening I stepped into the village’s one and only cab. I shook the dust of the Red House from my feet without regret. With the intense selfishness of youth, my own hope for the future made me almost forgetful of the Creature’s tragedy.
It was about eight o’clock when I reached Pope Lane. All the front of the house was in darkness. I tugged vigorously at the bell, feeling a little slighted that none of them had been on the look-out. Directly the door opened, I rushed in with a mouthful of excited questions. Hetty stared at me disapprovingly. “Don’t make so much noise, Master Dante,” she said; “your mother and Miss Ruthita ’ave ’ad a worryin’ day and ’ave gorn to bed. They didn’t know you was comin’.”
I noticed that the stairway was unlighted, that the gas in the hall was on the jet, and that Hetty herself was partly prepared for bed. I was beginning to explain to her about the telegram, speaking below my breath the way one does when death is in the house. Just then my father came out from his study. His pen was behind his ear and his shoulders looked stoopy. His face had the worn expression of the old days, which came from overwork.
“Father, why did you send for me?”
He led me into the study, closing the door behind him.
“You’ve got to be brave.”
At his words my heart sank. My eyes retreated from his face. I wanted to lengthen out the minutes until I should know the worst.
“My boy, your Uncle Obad’s gone to smash. We’ve lost everything.”
He seated himself at the table, his head supported on his hand. He had tried to speak in a matter-of-fact manner, as much as to say, “Of course this is just what we all expected.” But I could see that hope had gone out of him. I wanted to say something decent and comforting; but everything that came to me seemed too grandiloquent. There was nothing adequate that could be said. Florence, realization of dreams, respite from drudgery—all the happiness that money alone could purchase and that had seemed so accessible, was now placed apparently forever beyond reach of his hand.
He took his pen from behind his ear and commenced aimlessly stabbing the blotting-pad.
He spoke again, looking away from me. “That money was yours. I saved it for you. It was for giving you a chance in the world. I ought to have known that your uncle wasn’t to be trusted—he’s never been able to earn a living by honest work. But there, I don’t blame him as much as I blame myself. I must have been mad.”
“Shan’t we get anything back?”
He shook his head. “This fellow Rapson is a common swindler, from what I can make out. He simply used your uncle. He may never have had any diamond mines. If he had, they were worthless. He doesn’t appear to have had any capital except what he got by your uncle selling his shares. He paid his one dividend last summer in order to tempt investors, and now he’s decamped. We shan’t see a penny back.”
I tried to tell him that he needn’t worry for my sake—I could work.
“Yes, yes,” he said, “that’s why I sent for you. Of course your fees are all paid for this term; but if you’ve got to enter the commercial world, the sooner the better. You’ve come to an age when every day spent at school is a day wasted, unless you’re going to enter a profession. You can’t get a University education without money and, in any case, it’s worse than valueless unless you have the money to back it.”
“But I don’t mind working,” I assured him; “I shall be glad to work. P’raps by starting early I’ll be able to earn a lot of money and help you one day, Dad.”
He frowned at my cheerfulness; he had finished with optimism forever. “You don’t know what you’re saying. Money isn’t so easily earned. It took me fifteen years of pinching and scraping to save two thousand pounds.” Then, conscious of ungraciousness, he added, “But I like your spirit, Dante, and it was good of you to say that.”
His fear of heroics and sentiment made him rise quickly and turn out the lamp.
“Best go to bed.”
I groped my way upstairs through the darkened house. There was something unnatural about its darkness. Its silence was not the silence of a house in which people were sleeping, but one in which they lay without rest staring into the shadows. In my bedroom I felt it indecent to light the gas. I sat by the window, looking out across gardens to our neighbors’ illumined windows. Someone was playing a piano; it seemed disgustingly bad taste on their part to do that when we had lost two thousand pounds.
My thought veered round. What after all were two thousand pounds to be so miserable about! I began to feel annoyed with my father that he should have made such a fuss about it. I was sure that neither the Snow Lady nor Ruthita had wanted to go to bed so early. Probably he didn’t really want to himself. He just got the idea into his head, and had forced it on the family. In our house, until Mr. Rapson came along, it had always been like that: he punished us, instead of the people who had hurt him, by the moods that resulted from his disappointments. Why, if it was simply a matter of my going to work, I rather liked the prospect. Anyhow, it was for the most part my concern. And then I remembered how sad he had looked, and was sorry that such thoughts had come into my head.
A tap at my door made me jump up conscience-stricken. “It’s only Ruthita,” a low voice said.
She crept in noiselessly as a shadow. Her warm arms went about my neck, drawing my face down to hers. “Oh, Dannie, I’m so, so sorry,” she whispered.
“What about?”
“Because I’ve never missed welcoming you home ever since you went to school, and you needed me most of all this evening—and because you’ve got to go to work.”
“That doesn’t matter, Ruthie. If I go to work I’ll earn money, and then I’ll be able to do things for you.”
“For me! Oh, you darling!” Then she thought a minute and her face clouded. “But no, if you go to work you’ll marry. That’s what always happens.”
She stood gazing up at me, her face looking frailer and purer than ever in the darkness. She had slipped on a long blue dressing-gown to come and see me, and her long black hair hung loose about her. Just below the edge of her gown her small pale feet showed out. Then I realized for the first time that she had changed as I had changed; we were no longer children. Perhaps the same wistful imaginings, exquisite and alluring, had come to her. For her also the walls of childhood, which had shut out the far horizon, were crumbling. Then, with an overwhelming reverence, I became aware of the strange fascination of her appealing beauty.
She snuggled herself beside me in the window. We spoke beneath our breath in the hushed voices of conspirators, lest we should be heard by my father.
“I couldn’t sleep,” she said apologetically. “I was lonely, so I came to you. Everything and everybody seem so sad.”
“It was your thoughts that were sad, Ruthie. What were you thinking about?”
She rubbed her cheek against mine shyly and I felt her tremble. “I was thinking about you. We’re growing up, Dante. You may go away and forget—forget all about me and the Snow Lady.”
“I shan’t,” I denied stoutly.
To which she replied, “But people do.”
“Do what?”
“Forget. And then I’m not your sister really—only by pretense.”
“Look here,” I said, “you say that when boys earn money they marry. I don’t think I ever shall because—well, because of something that has happened. So why shouldn’t you and I agree to live always together, the same as we do now?”
She said that that would be grand; she would be a little mother to me. But she wanted to know what made me so sure that I would always be a bachelor. With the sincere absurdity of youth, the more absurd because of its sincerity, I confided my passion for Fiesole. “After what she has done,” I said, “I could never marry her; and yet I love her too well ever to marry anybody else. I can only love golden hair now, and the golden hair of another girl would always remind me of Fiesole.”
Ruthita was silent. Then I remembered that her hair was black and saw that I had been clumsy in my sentiment, so I added, “But, Ruthie, in a sister I think black hair is the prettiest color in the world.”
After she had tiptoed away to her room and I had crept into bed, I lay awake thinking over her words—that she was only my sister by pretense.
Next day my father called me to him. “You had fifty pounds given you last Christmas. I want you to let me have it.”
I supposed that he wanted me to lend it to him, so I gave him my book and we went together to the savings bank and drew it out. I noticed that he drew out Ruthita’s fifty pounds as well. We climbed on to the top of an omnibus; nothing was said about where we were going.
He had bought a paper and I read it across his arm as we journeyed. As he turned over from the first page my eye caught a column headed DISAPPEARANCE OF GEORGE RAPSON. Underneath was a complete account of the whole affair.
My uncle had been interviewed by a reporter and had given a generously indiscreet history of the catastrophe from beginning to end. He tried to defend Rapson, and by his own innocent disclosures pilloried himself as a sanguine, gullible old ass. He insisted on believing in Rapson’s integrity. Things looked queer of course, but sooner or later there would be an explanation, satisfactory to everybody. What the nature of that explanation was likely to be he could not tell, but he hoped for the best. He was reported as having said that Mr. Rapson had repeatedly referred to secret enemies in the financial world. This was the reason he had given to Mr. Spreckles for not disposing of his shares through the ordinary channels.
Mr. Spreckles stated in his interview that, on the evening of the third of January, Rapson had called at his house. He seemed excited and said that certain plots were culminating against his interests which made an instant and secret visit to South Africa essential. He had not hinted at anything definitely serious, but, on the contrary, had given orders for the declaration of the half-yearly dividend, payment of which would not fall due till February. That evening he had disappeared; since then nothing had been heard of him. When four weeks later Mr. Spreckles drew checks on Rapson’s bank-account for payment of the dividends, they were all returned to him dishonored. A month previously, on the morning of January the third, Rapson had withdrawn every penny.
All the names of the people who had lost money in the adventure were appended. For the most part they were wealthy widows and spinsters, heavy contributors to various philanthropies, just the kind of people who would lack the business judgment which would have prevented them from entering into such a gamble. My father’s name was the exception, and was given special attention, being headedA Hard Case. “Mr. Cardover, having endured in his early life the humiliations and struggles which not infrequently fall to the lot of an ambitious penniless young man, had determined that his son, Dante, should not suffer a like embittering experience. To this end he had saved two thousand pounds to start his son on a professional career. This boy was Mr. Spreckles’ favorite nephew. Mr. Spreckles quotes the fact that it was he who induced Mr. Cardover to invest this money inThe Ethiopian Diamond Minesas proof of his own honest belief in the value of the shares. The boy will probably now have to be withdrawn from the Red House, where he is being educated. Was it likely, Mr. Spreckles asked, that he would have been a party to the ruin of those whom he loved best, if he had for a moment suspected that the investment was not all that it was represented?”
I had proceeded so far with my reading, when my father crushed the paper viciously into a ball and tossed it over the side of the bus. For the first time within my remembrance I heard him swear. He was so overcome with irritation that he had to alight and walk it off. He kept throwing out jerky odds and ends of exclamations, speaking partly to me, partly to himself.
“The bungling ass!”
“Why did he need to drag our names into it?”
“A regular windbag!”
“First picks my pocket, then advertises my poverty. Thinks that he can prove himself honest by doing that!” I put in a feeble word for my uncle, hinting that he didn’t mean any harm and that it was easy to be wise after the event.
“That’s the worst of people like your Uncle Spreckles,” my father retorted hotly; “they never do mean any harm, and yet they’re always getting into interminable messes.” The storm worked itself out; we climbed on to another bus. At the end of an hour the streets became familiar, and I knew that we were nearing Chelsea.
We got down within a stone’s throw of my uncle’s house. There it stood overlooking the river, shut in with its wrought-iron palings, red and comfortable, and outwardly prosperous as when we had parted on its steps, promising to come again next Christmas if we weren’t in Florence. But when we attempted to enter, we had proof that its outward appearance was a sham. The glory had departed, and with it had gone the white-capped servants.
The door was opened to us on the chain. A slatternly kitchen-maid peered out through the crack. She commenced to address us at once in a voice of high-pitched, impudent defiance.
“Wot yer want? Mr. Spreckles ain’t ’ere, I tell yer. Yer the fortieth party this mornin’ that’s come nosin’ rawnd. D’ye think I’ve got nothin’ ter do ’cept run up and darn stairs h’answering bells? It’s a shime the waie yer all piles inter one man. I calls it disgustin’. A better master a girl never ’ad.”
I loved her for those words. They were the first that I had heard spoken in my uncle’s defense. She was uttering all the pent up anger and sense of injustice that I had been too cowardly to express. Even on my father her fierce working-class loyalty to the under-dog had its effect.
“My good girl,” he said, “you mustn’t talk to me like that. I’m Mr. Cardover, who was staying here last Christmas.”
Her manner changed audibly, literally audibly, at his tone of implied sympathy. She boo-hooed unrestrainedly as she slipped back the chain, permitting us to enter.
“I begs yer pardon, Mr. Cardover,” she sniveled, dusting her eyes with her dirty apron. “I’m kind o’ unnerved. My poor dear master’s got so many h’enemies nar; I didn’t rekernize yer as ’is friend. Yer see, the moment this ’ere ’appened all the other servants left like a pack o’ rats. They didn’t love ’im the waie I did; I come along wiv ’im from the boardin’ ’arse. This mornin’ ’e gives me notice, ’e did. ‘Car’line, I carn’t pay yer no more wyges,’ ’e says. ‘Gawd bless yer,’ says I, ‘an’ if yer carn’t, wot does that matter? I ain’t one of yer ’igh and mighty, lawdy-dah hussies that I should desert yer.’ Oh, Mr. Cardover, it’s a shime the loife they’re leadin’ the poor man. But there, if they sends ’im to prison, I’ll never agen put me nose h’insoide a church nor say no prayers. I’ll just believe there ain’t no Gawd in the world. The landlord, ’e’s in there h’at present wiv’im, a-naggin’ at ’im. I was listenin’ at the key’ole when yer rang the bell. But there, I’m keepin’ yer witin’! Won’t yer step into the drarin’ room till ’e’s by ’imself? H’excuse me dirty ’ands. I ’as to do h’everythin’ for ’im—there’s only me and the master; even the Missis ’as left.”
As she was closing the door behind her, my father called after her, “Mrs. Spreckles left! That’s astounding. Why has she done that?”
The tousled hair and red eyes re-appeared for a second. “Gorn back to start up the bo-ordin’ ’arse,” she stammered with a sob.
How different the room looked from when we were last in it! The cushions on the sofa were awry. The windows winked at you wickedly, one blind lowered and the other up. It had the bewildered, disheveled swaggerness of a last night’s reveler betrayed by the sunrise.
Since Caroline had spoken my mind out for me, I felt awkward alone with my father. I was afraid of what he might say presently.
I picked up a small, handsomely bound volume from the table while we were waiting. I began turning the pages, and found that it was a collected edition of tracts, written by my uncle and ostensibly addressed to young men. They had been a kind of stealthy advertisement of The Christian Boarding-House, calculated to make maiden aunts, into whose hands they fell, sit up and feel immediately that the author was the very person for influencing the morals of their giddy nephews. Through the persuasive saintliness expressed in these tracts Uncle Obad had procured many of his paying-guests. My eye was arrested by the title of one of them, THE DECEITFULNESS OF RICHES. I read, “One of our greatest poets has written of finding love in huts where poor men lie. Oh, that young men might be brought to ponder the truth contained in those words! What is more difficult to obtain than love in the whole world? Can riches buy love? Nay, but on the contrary love and wealth are rarely found together. Many a powerful financier and belted earl would give all that he has in exchange for love. Young men, when you come to die, which of all your possessions can you carry with you to an after-world? Then, at least, you will learn the deceitfulness of riches. You thought you had everything; too late you know that you had nothing. Even in this life some men live to learn that gold is but a phantom—a vampire phantom destroying friendship.”
I had got so far when footsteps and voices, loud in contention, sounded in the hall. “You’ve got to be out of here in a fortnight, d’yer understand? You’re letting down my property the longer you stay here. You’re giving my house a bad name. The address is in all the papers; people are already pointing it out. I won’t stand it. That’s my last word.”
The front door slammed. I heard the chain being put up. The handle of the drawing-room door turned hesitatingly and my uncle entered. He still wore the clothes of affluence, and yet the impression he made was one of shabbiness. He seemed to have shrunk. His jolly John Bull confidence had vanished and had been replaced by the hurried, appeasing manner of a solicitor of charity. He avoided our eyes and commenced talking at once, presumably to prevent my father from talking. He did not offer to shake hands. “Well, Cardover, this is good of you. I hardly expected it. And, ’pon my word, there’s Dante. I’ve been having a worried time of it. I’m a badly misunderstood man. But there, adversity has one advantage: it teaches us whoareour friends. When the little storm has blown over I shall know who to drop from my acquaintance. This sudden departure of Rapson has had a very unfortunate effect—most unfortunate. I expect a letter from him by every mail; then I’ll be able to explain matters. A good fellow, Rapson. A capital fellow. As straight as they make ’em. One of the best. Still, I wish he’d told me more of his movements; for the moment affairs are a trifle awkward, I must confess.”
He mopped his forehead with his handkerchief and sank down on the sofa with the air of one who, being among pleasant companions, brushes aside unpleasant topics. “Well, how’s Dante?” he asked, turning to me, “and how’s the Red House?”
I didn’t know how to answer. The question seemed so inappropriate and irrelevant. All the kindness which lay between us made such conversation a cruel farce. I wanted to tell him how sorry I was, and yet I daren’t in my father’s presence. I realized that such cheeriness on my uncle’s part was an insult, and yet I understood its motive.
My father’s face had hardened. He had expected some apology, some sign of humility, or at least some direct appeal to his sympathy. If any of these things had happened after what Caroline had said, I believe he would have responded. But this insincere praise of the archculprit and ostrich-like refusal to face facts simply angered him. He rose to his feet with the restrained impatience of a just man; the drawn sternness of his mouth was terrible. His voice had a steely coldness that pierced through all pretenses.
“Stop this nonsense, Obad,” he said sharply. “Don’t you realize that you’ve ruined me? Won’t you ever play the man? You know very well that Rapson will never come back, unless the police bring him. You’ve been the tool of a conspiracy to swindle the public; it was your religious standing that made the swindle possible. No one’s called you a thief as yet, but that’s what everyone’s thinking. I know you’re not a thief, but you’ve been guilty of the grossest negligence. Can’t you bring home to yourself the disgrace of that? You’ve always been a shirker of responsibility. For years you’ve let your wife do all the work. And now, when through your silly optimism you’ve brought dishonor on the family, you still persist in hiding behind shams. I tell you, Obad, you’re a coward; you’re trying to evade the moral consequences of your actions. If you can’t feel shame now, you must be utterly worthless. Your attitude is an offense against every right-thinking man. I didn’t set out this morning with the intention of speaking to you like this. But your present conduct and that idiotic interview in the newspapers have made me alter my mind about you. To many men they would prove you nearly as big a rascal as Rapson.”
My uncle had sat with his body crouched forward, his knees apart, his hands knitted together, and his eyes fixed on the carpet while my father had been talking. Now that there was silence he did not stir. I watched the bald spot on his head, how the yellow skin crinkled and went tight again as he bunched up and relaxed his brows. He looked so kindly and yet so ineffectual. My father had flayed him naked with his words. He had accused him of not being a man; but that was why I loved him. It was his unworldliness that had made it possible for him to penetrate so far into a child’s world. Caroline snuffled on the other side of the keyhole.
My uncle pulled apart his hands and raised his head. “You’ve said some harsh things, Cardover. You’ve reminded me about Lavinia; I didn’t need to be told that. I may be a fool, but I’m not a scoundrel. I can only say that I’m sorry for what’s happened. I was well-meaning; I did it for the best. Is there anything else you want to tell me?”
“There’s just this.” My father handed him an envelope. “It may help you to do the right thing in paying the investors a little of what’s left. Of course you’ll have to sell off everything and pay them as much as you can.
“But what is this you’ve given me?”
“The hundred pounds you gave to Dante and Ruthita at Christmas.”
He flushed crimson; then the blood drained away from his hands and face, leaving them ashy gray. His lip trembled, so that I feared terribly he was going to cry with the bitterness of his humiliation.
“But—but it was a gift to them. I didn’t expect this. Won’t you let them keep it? I should like them to keep it. It’ll make so little difference to the whole amount.”
“My dear Obad, when will you appreciate the fact that everything you have given away or have, is the result of another man’s theft?”
My uncle glanced round the room furtively, taking in the meaning of those words. It had been my father’s purpose to make him ashamed; that was amply accomplished now. He huddled back into the sofa, a broken man. He had been stabbed through his affections into a knowledge of reality.
My father beckoned to me and turned. I stretched out my hand and touched my uncle. He took no notice. The sunlight streamed in on the creased bald head, the dust, and the forfeited splendor. Reluctantly I tiptoed out and was met in the hall by the hot indignant eyes of Caroline, accusing me of treachery across the banisters.