Chapter Seventeen.For a few seconds Jill sat mute, too thoroughly taken by surprise even to move. No lurking suspicion had ever entered her pure, wholesome, unspoilt mind that any man could so insult a decent woman. Even then it struck her that in some way she must have unconsciously given him an opening. How else would he have dared to make love to her, and to seem so assured that his love would be returned?She drew herself away from him, not violently, but with a cold displeasure that carried more weight than any fierce resentment could have done, and in a voice that trembled slightly with repressed anger exclaimed as she rose and faced him,—“Mr Markham, you have insulted me past forgiveness. If any action or word of mine has led you to speak as you have done I deplore it with my whole heart—I couldn’t feel more humiliated even if such were the case; I feel so abjectly debased as it is. How dare you imply that I do not get on with my husband? I love him with the whole force of my being. I doubt if you could understand or appreciate such love as ours.”“I doubt it too,” he sneered. “My love is not of the kind that can so readily efface itself. You are rather unreasonable, I think; a man can’t help his feelings. Some women would take it as a compliment.”“I am sorry for the sort of women you seem acquainted with,” she answered rather sadly. “You have formed a very low opinion of the sex. It is not a compliment that you have paid me, and you know it. Don’t say anything more please; I decline to discuss that, or any other subject with you. I must request you to leave my rooms, and never to enter them again. You have made further intercourse an impossibility, and our past friendship something to be remembered only with regret.”“Don’t say that,” he began pleadingly; but Jill cut him short.“Please understand that I am quite in earnest,” she said. “When Jack comes home I shall explain to him what has happened; it is well that he should understand the true character of his friend. I can never thank heaven sufficiently that my husband is both a man of honour, and a gentleman.”“For that matter so should I have been if I had met you first,” he answered gloomily. “You are rather hard on me, Jill. Perhaps I have been too precipitate; but I love you so madly, and to-day you seemed so sad, and sweet, and lonely, that I wanted to comfort you.”“Enough!” exclaimed Jill excitedly. “If you don’t go I shall ask Mr Thompkins to come and protect me from further indignity. How contemptible you are!—how mean! Why don’t you insult me when my husband is at home? The sight of you is hateful to me. Why won’t you go?”“I will,” he answered quietly, “as you wish it. I do not want to frighten you; but remember—always remember that I love you with all my heart.”Jill stood quite still and watched him as he gravely quitted her presence, and then listened dully to his footsteps clattering down the stairs. When they died away along the narrow passage and she heard the street door bang behind him she put her hand to her forehead in a dazed kind of way, and glanced vaguely round the little room seeing nothing but Markham’s cynical face with the ugly expression in his eyes that was in the painted eyes of the canvas on the easel. Her glance travelled to the portrait, and rested there for a moment. The sight of it seemed to rouse her into action, and, with a catch in her voice that sounded like an angry sob, she took up a brush, and in a few vigorous strokes painted the whole thing out again as she would have liked to blot the incident from her memory.To Jill the fact that Markham loved her was anything but a congratulatory matter. The red blood surged to her temples in a flood of indignant colour at the mere thought of such an outrage to her wifehood. She was very angry; her calmness and self-possession had entirely deserted her leaving her excited and wholly unlike herself. She did not expect St. John home for some time; he had told her not to wait tea, he should be late; and so she seated herself in the big chair by the window to watch for his return, too upset to think of getting tea for herself, too miserable to feel the need of it. St. John was not very late however. He had promised Thompkins to be back by six, and at a few minutes to the hour he arrived. Jill saw him coming but she did not move. She remained where she was until she heard his footstep on the stairs, then she rose and walking quickly to the door threw it open. He was going into the bedroom to change his coat for the old one he did his work in. Jill called to him softly, but he went on as though he had not heard. She set her lips tightly and followed him, determined to clear up the misunderstanding that existed between them at any cost, and to tell him what had occurred during the afternoon.“Jack,” she said, “I want to talk to you.”“Sorry,” he answered, “but I haven’t time. I have a lot of work to do.”His manner was anything but encouraging. At another time she would have turned away and allowed the breach to widen, but to-day she was sick of quarrelling about nothing, and longed for a complete reconciliation, and so she persevered.“You are not very kind to me, dear,” she said. “I think the work can wait a few minutes longer, and what I have to say is most important. I have had a very unpleasant experience to-day, Jack, and feel quite worried and upset about it—if you only knew how worried I am sure you would give me your attention.”St. John turned towards her, an expression of surprise on his face. He was in his shirt sleeves, and looked handsome, bad-tempered and ill at ease, his afternoon with Evie had apparently not conduced to exhilaration of spirits.“What on earth can be worrying you?” he exclaimed. “Didn’t Markham turn up?”“Yes, he turned up,” answered Jill sharply. “That is the trouble. I had to send him away again. You, who knew him so intimately, had no right to leave me alone with such a man—no right to introduce me to him at all. He insulted me—he actually tried to makeloveto me.”She broke off abruptly. Her voice shook a little, and she put up a hand to her burning face. St. John swore. He dropped the jacket he was holding on to the floor, and began struggling fiercely into his outdoor coat again. Jill watched him anxiously. Then she laid a restraining hand upon his arm.“What are you going to do?” she asked.“Find him and—give him a lesson.”He looked so fierce and determined that Jill felt frightened. She was nervous and unstrung with the excitement of the afternoon, and she trembled slightly as she clung tenaciously to his arm.“Let him alone,” she cried quickly. “I will not have my name dragged into any dispute. We have done with him; that is enough. The matter must end there.”“That is all very well,” he retorted, “but do you suppose I am going to stand quietly by and allow any cad to make love to my wife?”“If you had not stood quietly by it might never have happened,” she answered. “I don’t quite know what it is we have been quarrelling about, but I do know that lately we have drifted apart, and he noticed it—he said so. He thought that I had found out that our marriage had been a mistake.”She looked up to meet St. John’s gaze riveted upon her face, with an expression in his eyes that puzzled her, it was so unlike anything she had seen in them before. He looked as a man might look when someone he has loved and trusted deals him a blow on the face, so stern and white and miserable, and so full of an unspeakable shame.“Jack,” she half-whispered, “what is it? What is the matter, dear?”“Forgive me,” he cried brokenly, “If I have misjudged you; but I thought—as Markham thinks. And, my God, I think so still.”Jill drew away from him, wounded into silence by what she heard. For a few moments she stood irresolute, struck motionless with an anguish too deep for words; then with a half articulate cry she tottered forward, and fell, a forlorn little bundle, at his feet St. John stooped swiftly, and gathering her up, laid her tenderly upon the bed, and, bending over her with a face even whiter than her own, stared down, awed and humbled, at the motionless, unconscious form.He was almost too stunned at first to realise that there was anything serious the matter; but it gradually dawned upon him that she ought not to be allowed to lie there as she was without calling in some assistance, and so, not pausing to put on his coat, he ran out of the bedroom on to the landing, and stood there in his shirt sleeves, in terrified and breathless anxiety.“Thompkins!” he cried excitedly. “Thompkins!”“Hallo!” answered a voice from the bottom of the stairs, a voice of calm and unruffled serenity.“For God’s sake run for the doctor,” St. John called back.There was silence for a few seconds; then the street door was opened and banged to again, and St. John returned to the room to watch by his wife and wait.
For a few seconds Jill sat mute, too thoroughly taken by surprise even to move. No lurking suspicion had ever entered her pure, wholesome, unspoilt mind that any man could so insult a decent woman. Even then it struck her that in some way she must have unconsciously given him an opening. How else would he have dared to make love to her, and to seem so assured that his love would be returned?
She drew herself away from him, not violently, but with a cold displeasure that carried more weight than any fierce resentment could have done, and in a voice that trembled slightly with repressed anger exclaimed as she rose and faced him,—
“Mr Markham, you have insulted me past forgiveness. If any action or word of mine has led you to speak as you have done I deplore it with my whole heart—I couldn’t feel more humiliated even if such were the case; I feel so abjectly debased as it is. How dare you imply that I do not get on with my husband? I love him with the whole force of my being. I doubt if you could understand or appreciate such love as ours.”
“I doubt it too,” he sneered. “My love is not of the kind that can so readily efface itself. You are rather unreasonable, I think; a man can’t help his feelings. Some women would take it as a compliment.”
“I am sorry for the sort of women you seem acquainted with,” she answered rather sadly. “You have formed a very low opinion of the sex. It is not a compliment that you have paid me, and you know it. Don’t say anything more please; I decline to discuss that, or any other subject with you. I must request you to leave my rooms, and never to enter them again. You have made further intercourse an impossibility, and our past friendship something to be remembered only with regret.”
“Don’t say that,” he began pleadingly; but Jill cut him short.
“Please understand that I am quite in earnest,” she said. “When Jack comes home I shall explain to him what has happened; it is well that he should understand the true character of his friend. I can never thank heaven sufficiently that my husband is both a man of honour, and a gentleman.”
“For that matter so should I have been if I had met you first,” he answered gloomily. “You are rather hard on me, Jill. Perhaps I have been too precipitate; but I love you so madly, and to-day you seemed so sad, and sweet, and lonely, that I wanted to comfort you.”
“Enough!” exclaimed Jill excitedly. “If you don’t go I shall ask Mr Thompkins to come and protect me from further indignity. How contemptible you are!—how mean! Why don’t you insult me when my husband is at home? The sight of you is hateful to me. Why won’t you go?”
“I will,” he answered quietly, “as you wish it. I do not want to frighten you; but remember—always remember that I love you with all my heart.”
Jill stood quite still and watched him as he gravely quitted her presence, and then listened dully to his footsteps clattering down the stairs. When they died away along the narrow passage and she heard the street door bang behind him she put her hand to her forehead in a dazed kind of way, and glanced vaguely round the little room seeing nothing but Markham’s cynical face with the ugly expression in his eyes that was in the painted eyes of the canvas on the easel. Her glance travelled to the portrait, and rested there for a moment. The sight of it seemed to rouse her into action, and, with a catch in her voice that sounded like an angry sob, she took up a brush, and in a few vigorous strokes painted the whole thing out again as she would have liked to blot the incident from her memory.
To Jill the fact that Markham loved her was anything but a congratulatory matter. The red blood surged to her temples in a flood of indignant colour at the mere thought of such an outrage to her wifehood. She was very angry; her calmness and self-possession had entirely deserted her leaving her excited and wholly unlike herself. She did not expect St. John home for some time; he had told her not to wait tea, he should be late; and so she seated herself in the big chair by the window to watch for his return, too upset to think of getting tea for herself, too miserable to feel the need of it. St. John was not very late however. He had promised Thompkins to be back by six, and at a few minutes to the hour he arrived. Jill saw him coming but she did not move. She remained where she was until she heard his footstep on the stairs, then she rose and walking quickly to the door threw it open. He was going into the bedroom to change his coat for the old one he did his work in. Jill called to him softly, but he went on as though he had not heard. She set her lips tightly and followed him, determined to clear up the misunderstanding that existed between them at any cost, and to tell him what had occurred during the afternoon.
“Jack,” she said, “I want to talk to you.”
“Sorry,” he answered, “but I haven’t time. I have a lot of work to do.”
His manner was anything but encouraging. At another time she would have turned away and allowed the breach to widen, but to-day she was sick of quarrelling about nothing, and longed for a complete reconciliation, and so she persevered.
“You are not very kind to me, dear,” she said. “I think the work can wait a few minutes longer, and what I have to say is most important. I have had a very unpleasant experience to-day, Jack, and feel quite worried and upset about it—if you only knew how worried I am sure you would give me your attention.”
St. John turned towards her, an expression of surprise on his face. He was in his shirt sleeves, and looked handsome, bad-tempered and ill at ease, his afternoon with Evie had apparently not conduced to exhilaration of spirits.
“What on earth can be worrying you?” he exclaimed. “Didn’t Markham turn up?”
“Yes, he turned up,” answered Jill sharply. “That is the trouble. I had to send him away again. You, who knew him so intimately, had no right to leave me alone with such a man—no right to introduce me to him at all. He insulted me—he actually tried to makeloveto me.”
She broke off abruptly. Her voice shook a little, and she put up a hand to her burning face. St. John swore. He dropped the jacket he was holding on to the floor, and began struggling fiercely into his outdoor coat again. Jill watched him anxiously. Then she laid a restraining hand upon his arm.
“What are you going to do?” she asked.
“Find him and—give him a lesson.”
He looked so fierce and determined that Jill felt frightened. She was nervous and unstrung with the excitement of the afternoon, and she trembled slightly as she clung tenaciously to his arm.
“Let him alone,” she cried quickly. “I will not have my name dragged into any dispute. We have done with him; that is enough. The matter must end there.”
“That is all very well,” he retorted, “but do you suppose I am going to stand quietly by and allow any cad to make love to my wife?”
“If you had not stood quietly by it might never have happened,” she answered. “I don’t quite know what it is we have been quarrelling about, but I do know that lately we have drifted apart, and he noticed it—he said so. He thought that I had found out that our marriage had been a mistake.”
She looked up to meet St. John’s gaze riveted upon her face, with an expression in his eyes that puzzled her, it was so unlike anything she had seen in them before. He looked as a man might look when someone he has loved and trusted deals him a blow on the face, so stern and white and miserable, and so full of an unspeakable shame.
“Jack,” she half-whispered, “what is it? What is the matter, dear?”
“Forgive me,” he cried brokenly, “If I have misjudged you; but I thought—as Markham thinks. And, my God, I think so still.”
Jill drew away from him, wounded into silence by what she heard. For a few moments she stood irresolute, struck motionless with an anguish too deep for words; then with a half articulate cry she tottered forward, and fell, a forlorn little bundle, at his feet St. John stooped swiftly, and gathering her up, laid her tenderly upon the bed, and, bending over her with a face even whiter than her own, stared down, awed and humbled, at the motionless, unconscious form.
He was almost too stunned at first to realise that there was anything serious the matter; but it gradually dawned upon him that she ought not to be allowed to lie there as she was without calling in some assistance, and so, not pausing to put on his coat, he ran out of the bedroom on to the landing, and stood there in his shirt sleeves, in terrified and breathless anxiety.
“Thompkins!” he cried excitedly. “Thompkins!”
“Hallo!” answered a voice from the bottom of the stairs, a voice of calm and unruffled serenity.
“For God’s sake run for the doctor,” St. John called back.
There was silence for a few seconds; then the street door was opened and banged to again, and St. John returned to the room to watch by his wife and wait.
Chapter Eighteen.It was not many weeks after her sudden and unusual attack of unconsciousness that Jill presented her husband with a little son. The small stranger appeared upon the scene rather too soon, and was delicate and puny in consequence, and a great source of anxiety to its parents. Jill, herself, was very ill for a long while after its birth, so that St. John had a trying and expensive time of it, the only beneficial result being that every minor worry was forgotten in the all absorbing one of his wife’s health.After the child’s birth he wrote a brief note to his father acquainting him with the news. He considered it his duty to do so, though he neither expected nor hoped for any reply to the letter; and he was not disappointed; Mr St. John, Senior, might never have received it for all the sign he made, and Jill, being ill and low-spirited at the time, cried with annoyance to think that her husband should have written to him at all.“He will only imagine that you want something out of him,” she exclaimed pettishly.“Never mind what he imagines,” answered St. John, bending over the speaker’s couch, and touching the baby’s smooth cheek with his finger. “It needn’t bother us so long as we are satisfied that we have done what is right. You wouldn’t like to think that one day this little man might fail in his duty tohisfather, would you?”Jill looked down at the wee, mottled face, and laughed softly, though the tears stood in her eyes still, and would not be blinked away.“How absurd it seems,” she said, “to think that this will one day be a man. It’s so small and frail that I’m half afraid of it, Jack. And it’s dreadfully ugly too, isn’t it, dear? Not even you could call it pretty.”“Never mind it’s looks,” St. John answered reassuringly. “They’re all putty-faced at first, you know. If he only grows up with but half his mother’s charm and goodness he’ll do all right.”Jill laughed again; the extravagance of the compliment amused her.“I hope he won’t grow up with his mother’s temper,” she said, adding with a mischievous look at St. John, “nor his father’s either for that matter; I’d like him to strike out an original line there, Jack.”“Too late, I’m afraid,” St. John answered ruefully as the baby screwed up its face preparatory to howling. “He always yells for nothing just when we’re having a quiet chat.”Jill sat up a little and rocked the child gently in her arms.“He is jealous,” she explained; “he takes after you in that.”“I think the lessyousay about it the better,” he retorted. “I remember some rather uncomfortable half hours spent on Evie’s account.”She smiled, her face close pressed to the baby’s, her lips caressing it’s hair.“How ridiculous it all seems now!” she exclaimed—“How small! What a pair of geese we were!”“Yes,” he said, and he straightened himself and walked away to the window to hide the mortification in his eyes. His jealousy had been of a far graver nature than hers, and he did not like to hear it referred to even. He was very much ashamed of himself, and rather embarrassed by a generosity that forgave so quickly and entirely as Jill had done.“Yes,” he repeated softly more to himself than her, “we were a pair of geese. How I wish we had found it out sooner than we did. What an infinitude of suffering it might have saved us both!”The next important event in their lives, which took place as soon as Jill was well enough to walk to Church, was the baby’s christening. He was called John after his father as the eldest sons of the St. John’s had been from time immemorial. It was Jill’s wish that this should be, St. John, himself, having no idea on the subject. It was also Jill’s wish that Mr Thompkins should stand Godfather, and, upon being asked, the senior partner gave a somewhat reluctant consent. He was a practical, hard-working old bachelor, and babies were not much in his line, but he had an unbounded admiration and respect for this baby’s mother, so when she informed him of her desire very much after the manner of one conferring an inestimable favour he had not the pluck nor the cruelty to say her nay. The honour cost him a guinea in the shape of a christening present, but the guinea weighed lightly in the balance compared with the interest that he was expected to take in his Godson. Jill had a way of putting it in his arms, and watching him nurse it which not only embarrassed but annoyed him greatly; and sometimes St. John would come in and look on with a grin, observing the while that he was quite a family man, or something equally idiotic.St. Johnwasidiotic in those days. He thought so much of his ugly offspring, as the infant’s Godfather mentally called it, and spoilt as many plates in attempting to photograph it as would have served for all the babies that came to the studio in a year. Mr Thompkins groaned, but Jill laughed happily; this tiny link between herself and Jack seemed the one thing necessary to make her life perfect. Its advent had closed a chapter in their history and commenced a new one altogether brighter and happier than the last. The last had known Evie Bolton, and Markham; but now the name of the one was seldom mentioned, the other never. Jill had not seen Markham from the hour she sent him from her presence—neither had St. John—but a few days after the affair she had received a letter from him, just a short note of apology which ran as follows:—“Dear Mrs St. John,—“I cannot, I fear, convey to you my heartfelt sorrow at the indiscretion I was guilty of last Tuesday. I have been reproaching myself for my folly ever since. The fault was mine, as is also the loss. I made a mistake. Try to forgive me and to forget. I go abroad next week indefinitely. Goodbye.”Jill offered it to her husband when she had finished reading, but St. John put her hand aside, and shook his head decisively.“You know that that isn’t necessary between you and me,” he said reproachfully.“I think he would like you to see it,” she answered.He took it then and read it through; when he had done so he handed it back again with a grave half-troubled smile.“Considering how I, myself, was mistaken,” he said, “I don’t think that I have the right to censure him at all.”Jill tore the note up slowly, watching the fragments intently as they fluttered from her fingers. The knowledge that her husband had misjudged her was the bitterest part of all. And yet in her heart she did not blame him; she even found excuses for him, but the pain was none the less acute because she refused to admit its reason, though no doubt it was easier borne, and would be more readily forgotten.“I am very much afraid,” she said gently, with a slight hesitation of tone and manner, “that I, also, must have been at fault to cause two men to make the same mistake. I don’t suppose that I have any right to blame him either. I think the wisest course would be to do as he suggests—forgive everything, and forget.”And as St. John was of the same opinion the matter ended there, and if not entirely forgotten was at least never referred to between them again.
It was not many weeks after her sudden and unusual attack of unconsciousness that Jill presented her husband with a little son. The small stranger appeared upon the scene rather too soon, and was delicate and puny in consequence, and a great source of anxiety to its parents. Jill, herself, was very ill for a long while after its birth, so that St. John had a trying and expensive time of it, the only beneficial result being that every minor worry was forgotten in the all absorbing one of his wife’s health.
After the child’s birth he wrote a brief note to his father acquainting him with the news. He considered it his duty to do so, though he neither expected nor hoped for any reply to the letter; and he was not disappointed; Mr St. John, Senior, might never have received it for all the sign he made, and Jill, being ill and low-spirited at the time, cried with annoyance to think that her husband should have written to him at all.
“He will only imagine that you want something out of him,” she exclaimed pettishly.
“Never mind what he imagines,” answered St. John, bending over the speaker’s couch, and touching the baby’s smooth cheek with his finger. “It needn’t bother us so long as we are satisfied that we have done what is right. You wouldn’t like to think that one day this little man might fail in his duty tohisfather, would you?”
Jill looked down at the wee, mottled face, and laughed softly, though the tears stood in her eyes still, and would not be blinked away.
“How absurd it seems,” she said, “to think that this will one day be a man. It’s so small and frail that I’m half afraid of it, Jack. And it’s dreadfully ugly too, isn’t it, dear? Not even you could call it pretty.”
“Never mind it’s looks,” St. John answered reassuringly. “They’re all putty-faced at first, you know. If he only grows up with but half his mother’s charm and goodness he’ll do all right.”
Jill laughed again; the extravagance of the compliment amused her.
“I hope he won’t grow up with his mother’s temper,” she said, adding with a mischievous look at St. John, “nor his father’s either for that matter; I’d like him to strike out an original line there, Jack.”
“Too late, I’m afraid,” St. John answered ruefully as the baby screwed up its face preparatory to howling. “He always yells for nothing just when we’re having a quiet chat.”
Jill sat up a little and rocked the child gently in her arms.
“He is jealous,” she explained; “he takes after you in that.”
“I think the lessyousay about it the better,” he retorted. “I remember some rather uncomfortable half hours spent on Evie’s account.”
She smiled, her face close pressed to the baby’s, her lips caressing it’s hair.
“How ridiculous it all seems now!” she exclaimed—“How small! What a pair of geese we were!”
“Yes,” he said, and he straightened himself and walked away to the window to hide the mortification in his eyes. His jealousy had been of a far graver nature than hers, and he did not like to hear it referred to even. He was very much ashamed of himself, and rather embarrassed by a generosity that forgave so quickly and entirely as Jill had done.
“Yes,” he repeated softly more to himself than her, “we were a pair of geese. How I wish we had found it out sooner than we did. What an infinitude of suffering it might have saved us both!”
The next important event in their lives, which took place as soon as Jill was well enough to walk to Church, was the baby’s christening. He was called John after his father as the eldest sons of the St. John’s had been from time immemorial. It was Jill’s wish that this should be, St. John, himself, having no idea on the subject. It was also Jill’s wish that Mr Thompkins should stand Godfather, and, upon being asked, the senior partner gave a somewhat reluctant consent. He was a practical, hard-working old bachelor, and babies were not much in his line, but he had an unbounded admiration and respect for this baby’s mother, so when she informed him of her desire very much after the manner of one conferring an inestimable favour he had not the pluck nor the cruelty to say her nay. The honour cost him a guinea in the shape of a christening present, but the guinea weighed lightly in the balance compared with the interest that he was expected to take in his Godson. Jill had a way of putting it in his arms, and watching him nurse it which not only embarrassed but annoyed him greatly; and sometimes St. John would come in and look on with a grin, observing the while that he was quite a family man, or something equally idiotic.
St. Johnwasidiotic in those days. He thought so much of his ugly offspring, as the infant’s Godfather mentally called it, and spoilt as many plates in attempting to photograph it as would have served for all the babies that came to the studio in a year. Mr Thompkins groaned, but Jill laughed happily; this tiny link between herself and Jack seemed the one thing necessary to make her life perfect. Its advent had closed a chapter in their history and commenced a new one altogether brighter and happier than the last. The last had known Evie Bolton, and Markham; but now the name of the one was seldom mentioned, the other never. Jill had not seen Markham from the hour she sent him from her presence—neither had St. John—but a few days after the affair she had received a letter from him, just a short note of apology which ran as follows:—
“Dear Mrs St. John,—
“I cannot, I fear, convey to you my heartfelt sorrow at the indiscretion I was guilty of last Tuesday. I have been reproaching myself for my folly ever since. The fault was mine, as is also the loss. I made a mistake. Try to forgive me and to forget. I go abroad next week indefinitely. Goodbye.”
Jill offered it to her husband when she had finished reading, but St. John put her hand aside, and shook his head decisively.
“You know that that isn’t necessary between you and me,” he said reproachfully.
“I think he would like you to see it,” she answered.
He took it then and read it through; when he had done so he handed it back again with a grave half-troubled smile.
“Considering how I, myself, was mistaken,” he said, “I don’t think that I have the right to censure him at all.”
Jill tore the note up slowly, watching the fragments intently as they fluttered from her fingers. The knowledge that her husband had misjudged her was the bitterest part of all. And yet in her heart she did not blame him; she even found excuses for him, but the pain was none the less acute because she refused to admit its reason, though no doubt it was easier borne, and would be more readily forgotten.
“I am very much afraid,” she said gently, with a slight hesitation of tone and manner, “that I, also, must have been at fault to cause two men to make the same mistake. I don’t suppose that I have any right to blame him either. I think the wisest course would be to do as he suggests—forgive everything, and forget.”
And as St. John was of the same opinion the matter ended there, and if not entirely forgotten was at least never referred to between them again.
Chapter Nineteen.It was just two years after Jill’s baby had been born that a very wonderful thing occurred; Mr St. John senior visited Thompkins and Co. for no less a purpose than calling upon his son’s wife. He did not come unexpectedly; he wrote a week beforehand apprising them of the fact, and duly on the appointed date he pushed open the outer door and entered the mean little shop, standing in it, as it were, protestingly, his hat off, his shoulders slightly bowed; tall, and cross, and dignified—frowning at his son. St. John came forward quickly. He was expecting his father but pride forbade his making any preparation. He had been in the studio during the early part of the afternoon and was still in his working clothes though Jill had suggested to him the propriety of changing, but he had chosen to ignore the suggestion, arguing that that which was good enough for his wife should be good enough for his father too; and so he came forward as he was and stood in front of the visitor just as he might have done had he been any ordinary customer. The old man’s glance travelled slowly from the strong face with its proud smile to the shabby suit of clothes, the stains upon them testifying to the nature of the wearer’s work, and his carelessness as an operator. As he looked he smiled also. It was not a pleasant smile, and the younger man silently resented it.“Photography does not appear a very lucrative employment,” he observed.“No,” answered St. John. “At least I do not find it so.”“Ah! Well, no doubt that assists you to realise the mistake you made.”“I made no mistake,” the other interrupted shortly. “If you refer to my marriage that is the one thing I have never—and shall never regret.”“Yet it has been the means of reducing you to your present strait.”“Pardon me,” retorted the younger man, “want of a profession, and not my marriage, has been the means of my poverty. If I failed in my duty to you as a son remember that you in the first place failed in your duty to me.”The grey brows drew together over the high-bridged nose, and the old eyes glared angrily into the young, indignant ones.“I brought you up to the profession of a gentleman,” Mr St. John remarked.“If by the ‘profession of a gentleman’ you mean a dependent beggar—a parasite—a less than menial,” rejoined the son, “you did. And until I met Jill I was not man enough to feel the degradation of it.”“Until you met Jill you were not a fool,” snapped his father.“We won’t discuss that point further,” St. John rejoined; “it is one on which we are never likely to agree. You wanted, your note said, to see Jill. I can’t imagine why, but if you still wish to see her we will go upstairs at once.”Mr St. John having intimated that a two minutes’ uncomfortable conversation with his son had not altered his intention in coming, the latter turned impatiently upon his heel and led the way to the sitting-room where Jill was waiting with her little boy, striving, in her efforts to amuse him, to stifle her own nervousness and vague misgivings.The child was simply and daintily dressed in white, and had grown from a puny infant into a sturdy, healthy little man, with more than an ordinary share of good looks and good spirits, and a very charming and lovable disposition. Jill idolised him, but she was wise in her love, and the spoiling—if spoiling it could be called—was of a very judicious kind, tending chiefly to bring out the best qualities in the impressionable baby-nature, so that surrounded, as this baby was, with love and care and tenderness, he bade fair to turn out a generous, affectionate, happy little fellow; and if he were not as well off as some babies, at least he had been born without the silver spoon, and so was not likely to feel the deprivation.Jill had been playing with him on the floor, doing her best to keep him good-tempered before his grandfather’s arrival; for with her mother-instinct she associated this visit with the child, and was naturally anxious that he should appear at his best. When she heard their steps upon the stairs she scrambled hastily to a more dignified position, and stood with bright eyes, and flushed cheeks waiting to receive her former enemy. She had not forgotten his first and only other visit to her; she was not likely to forget it, nor to forgive him the pain he made her suffer then, and the insult which he had offered her. But she was content to ignore the past for her husband’s sake more than her own, and equally ready to treat her father-in-law with a politeness and consideration that he had no right to expect at her hands. Doubtless he remembered the incident also; he certainly did not anticipate a welcome, for he returned her cool little bow with equal distance—indeed hardly appeared to notice her at all. It was evident that if she had not forgiven him neither had he forgiven her; to her he owed the upsetting of all his plans, and his present lonely, childless condition, and he was not the sort of man who easily forgot an injury, nor readily pardoned the offender. His supercilious gaze rested for an instant on the mother’s face, and then wandered away to the child’s, taking in every detail of the baby-features from the wide, curious eyes, so absurdly like Jill’s both in expression and colouring, to the pretty curved lips, and rounded chin which even then gave promise of being as square and obstinate as his father’s. What he saw apparently pleased him; his features relaxed a little, Jill even fancied that he smiled back when the child in his friendly, confiding fashion smiled up at him, though if such were the case, which was doubtful, he made no further advance. He had never cared for children, and he did not now pretend to feel any interest in this one more than another. He had not come to see his grandson, but merely to make a proposal concerning him, and this proposal he forthwith expounded to the baby’s parents to their no small astonishment and dismay. His offer—and it was a good one from a worldly point of view—was to adopt the child altogether; to take him at the age of seven from his present surroundings and bring him up as he had brought up the father, bequeathing, at his death, his entire fortune to him unconditionally. He made no stipulation against the child seeing his parents as often as the latter wished, but he was not to live with them, nor to stay beneath their roof for any length of time.When he had finished speaking he looked towards his son, but St. John shook his head decisively, and turned abruptly away; he could not answer such a question; he felt that he had not the right to do so.“Ask his mother,” was all he said.“Petticoat government, eh?” sneered the old man. “I appealed to you because I hoped that you would have profited by your own experience and been glad of the opportunity of giving your son a chance. With women it is different; they are so beastly selfish in their love; they always want the object of their affection near them.”“Ask his mother,” St. John repeated in a hard voice. “A mother has more right than anyone else to decide the future of her child.”Jill, who had remained till now impassive, listening open-eyed to all she heard, came forward as her husband finished speaking and stood between the old man and the baby on the floor as though she would protect the child from his grandfather’s designs. She was quite calm and collected; St. John wondered rather at her evident self-control.“It is very good of you, Mr St. John,” she said, “to make Baby such a handsome offer. But you are wrong in thinking that a mother’s love is selfish; it is not where it is real; and it is entirely in my baby’s interests that I am going to regard your proposal.”“Going to refuse it you mean,” he snapped.Jill smiled.“Going to refuse it if you like to put it that way,” she said. “Of course it would be splendid for Baby in one sense, but I don’t think it would be kind. I have never approved of bringing children up in a different position to their parents. My boy, no matter how good-hearted he turned out, would grow to look down upon his father, and the poor little shop with its poorer photographs, and upon the kind old man who stood Godfather to him, and drops his h’s, but loves the child almost as though he were his own. I have heard of such things before. Children who are exalted to very different positions to their parents learn to despise them, and feel ashamed of them, and then, of course, they despise themselves for doing so; and altogether it is very hopeless, and rather cruel, I think.“Don’t fancy me ungrateful; it is not that. It isn’t that I wouldn’t spare my boy if I considered it all for the best; but I don’t I think he will be a much happier, and a better little boy if he is brought up just as well as we can manage, with no more brilliant prospect than the knowledge that he has to make his own way in the world as his father did before him.”“So you are going to make an independent beggar of him as you did of his father, eh? Well, I would have made him an independent gentleman. But no matter. You possess the right unfortunately of ruining both their futures. Perhaps one day you will remember my offer with regret, but understand, please that I shall not renew it; neither will you or yours benefit from me in any way.”“I had never expected that we should,” Jill answered with proud simplicity. “I have not been accustomed to luxury and so don’t feel the need of it. It is harder for my husband than for me, harder for him than it will be for the boy; but I don’t fancy that Jack minds it much.”“Jack is a fool,” his father answered bitterly. “He could have been anything almost if he had followed out my wishes.”St. John smiled faintly. He did not resent the slighting epithet applied to himself; he understood in a way, the old man’s keen disappointment, and felt more sorry than chagrined at his unrelenting harshness.“Don’t think too much about it, sir,” he said; “I should have been bound to fail you somehow. I was never one of those brainy ambitious fellows, you know; it takes more than money to make a great career.”“It takes aman,” Mr St. John answered sententiously. He had not sat down throughout the brief interview, although his son had placed a chair for him, and now he turned to go with less ceremony than when he entered. He even omitted the courtesy of bowing to Jill; he simply walked out without looking at her. St. John followed him and opened the shop door for him to pass through.“Good-bye,” he said earnestly. “I regret the breach between us with all my heart—though that will hardly bridge it over, will it? If at any time you want me you have only to command.”“You have always obeyed my commands so readily, eh?” retorted his father. “I am not likely to trouble you again. By the way you need not consider it necessary in future to make a kind of family Bible of me for the chronicling of domestic events. Our intercourse is at an end from this date. I neither wish to hear of, nor to see you again.”
It was just two years after Jill’s baby had been born that a very wonderful thing occurred; Mr St. John senior visited Thompkins and Co. for no less a purpose than calling upon his son’s wife. He did not come unexpectedly; he wrote a week beforehand apprising them of the fact, and duly on the appointed date he pushed open the outer door and entered the mean little shop, standing in it, as it were, protestingly, his hat off, his shoulders slightly bowed; tall, and cross, and dignified—frowning at his son. St. John came forward quickly. He was expecting his father but pride forbade his making any preparation. He had been in the studio during the early part of the afternoon and was still in his working clothes though Jill had suggested to him the propriety of changing, but he had chosen to ignore the suggestion, arguing that that which was good enough for his wife should be good enough for his father too; and so he came forward as he was and stood in front of the visitor just as he might have done had he been any ordinary customer. The old man’s glance travelled slowly from the strong face with its proud smile to the shabby suit of clothes, the stains upon them testifying to the nature of the wearer’s work, and his carelessness as an operator. As he looked he smiled also. It was not a pleasant smile, and the younger man silently resented it.
“Photography does not appear a very lucrative employment,” he observed.
“No,” answered St. John. “At least I do not find it so.”
“Ah! Well, no doubt that assists you to realise the mistake you made.”
“I made no mistake,” the other interrupted shortly. “If you refer to my marriage that is the one thing I have never—and shall never regret.”
“Yet it has been the means of reducing you to your present strait.”
“Pardon me,” retorted the younger man, “want of a profession, and not my marriage, has been the means of my poverty. If I failed in my duty to you as a son remember that you in the first place failed in your duty to me.”
The grey brows drew together over the high-bridged nose, and the old eyes glared angrily into the young, indignant ones.
“I brought you up to the profession of a gentleman,” Mr St. John remarked.
“If by the ‘profession of a gentleman’ you mean a dependent beggar—a parasite—a less than menial,” rejoined the son, “you did. And until I met Jill I was not man enough to feel the degradation of it.”
“Until you met Jill you were not a fool,” snapped his father.
“We won’t discuss that point further,” St. John rejoined; “it is one on which we are never likely to agree. You wanted, your note said, to see Jill. I can’t imagine why, but if you still wish to see her we will go upstairs at once.”
Mr St. John having intimated that a two minutes’ uncomfortable conversation with his son had not altered his intention in coming, the latter turned impatiently upon his heel and led the way to the sitting-room where Jill was waiting with her little boy, striving, in her efforts to amuse him, to stifle her own nervousness and vague misgivings.
The child was simply and daintily dressed in white, and had grown from a puny infant into a sturdy, healthy little man, with more than an ordinary share of good looks and good spirits, and a very charming and lovable disposition. Jill idolised him, but she was wise in her love, and the spoiling—if spoiling it could be called—was of a very judicious kind, tending chiefly to bring out the best qualities in the impressionable baby-nature, so that surrounded, as this baby was, with love and care and tenderness, he bade fair to turn out a generous, affectionate, happy little fellow; and if he were not as well off as some babies, at least he had been born without the silver spoon, and so was not likely to feel the deprivation.
Jill had been playing with him on the floor, doing her best to keep him good-tempered before his grandfather’s arrival; for with her mother-instinct she associated this visit with the child, and was naturally anxious that he should appear at his best. When she heard their steps upon the stairs she scrambled hastily to a more dignified position, and stood with bright eyes, and flushed cheeks waiting to receive her former enemy. She had not forgotten his first and only other visit to her; she was not likely to forget it, nor to forgive him the pain he made her suffer then, and the insult which he had offered her. But she was content to ignore the past for her husband’s sake more than her own, and equally ready to treat her father-in-law with a politeness and consideration that he had no right to expect at her hands. Doubtless he remembered the incident also; he certainly did not anticipate a welcome, for he returned her cool little bow with equal distance—indeed hardly appeared to notice her at all. It was evident that if she had not forgiven him neither had he forgiven her; to her he owed the upsetting of all his plans, and his present lonely, childless condition, and he was not the sort of man who easily forgot an injury, nor readily pardoned the offender. His supercilious gaze rested for an instant on the mother’s face, and then wandered away to the child’s, taking in every detail of the baby-features from the wide, curious eyes, so absurdly like Jill’s both in expression and colouring, to the pretty curved lips, and rounded chin which even then gave promise of being as square and obstinate as his father’s. What he saw apparently pleased him; his features relaxed a little, Jill even fancied that he smiled back when the child in his friendly, confiding fashion smiled up at him, though if such were the case, which was doubtful, he made no further advance. He had never cared for children, and he did not now pretend to feel any interest in this one more than another. He had not come to see his grandson, but merely to make a proposal concerning him, and this proposal he forthwith expounded to the baby’s parents to their no small astonishment and dismay. His offer—and it was a good one from a worldly point of view—was to adopt the child altogether; to take him at the age of seven from his present surroundings and bring him up as he had brought up the father, bequeathing, at his death, his entire fortune to him unconditionally. He made no stipulation against the child seeing his parents as often as the latter wished, but he was not to live with them, nor to stay beneath their roof for any length of time.
When he had finished speaking he looked towards his son, but St. John shook his head decisively, and turned abruptly away; he could not answer such a question; he felt that he had not the right to do so.
“Ask his mother,” was all he said.
“Petticoat government, eh?” sneered the old man. “I appealed to you because I hoped that you would have profited by your own experience and been glad of the opportunity of giving your son a chance. With women it is different; they are so beastly selfish in their love; they always want the object of their affection near them.”
“Ask his mother,” St. John repeated in a hard voice. “A mother has more right than anyone else to decide the future of her child.”
Jill, who had remained till now impassive, listening open-eyed to all she heard, came forward as her husband finished speaking and stood between the old man and the baby on the floor as though she would protect the child from his grandfather’s designs. She was quite calm and collected; St. John wondered rather at her evident self-control.
“It is very good of you, Mr St. John,” she said, “to make Baby such a handsome offer. But you are wrong in thinking that a mother’s love is selfish; it is not where it is real; and it is entirely in my baby’s interests that I am going to regard your proposal.”
“Going to refuse it you mean,” he snapped.
Jill smiled.
“Going to refuse it if you like to put it that way,” she said. “Of course it would be splendid for Baby in one sense, but I don’t think it would be kind. I have never approved of bringing children up in a different position to their parents. My boy, no matter how good-hearted he turned out, would grow to look down upon his father, and the poor little shop with its poorer photographs, and upon the kind old man who stood Godfather to him, and drops his h’s, but loves the child almost as though he were his own. I have heard of such things before. Children who are exalted to very different positions to their parents learn to despise them, and feel ashamed of them, and then, of course, they despise themselves for doing so; and altogether it is very hopeless, and rather cruel, I think.
“Don’t fancy me ungrateful; it is not that. It isn’t that I wouldn’t spare my boy if I considered it all for the best; but I don’t I think he will be a much happier, and a better little boy if he is brought up just as well as we can manage, with no more brilliant prospect than the knowledge that he has to make his own way in the world as his father did before him.”
“So you are going to make an independent beggar of him as you did of his father, eh? Well, I would have made him an independent gentleman. But no matter. You possess the right unfortunately of ruining both their futures. Perhaps one day you will remember my offer with regret, but understand, please that I shall not renew it; neither will you or yours benefit from me in any way.”
“I had never expected that we should,” Jill answered with proud simplicity. “I have not been accustomed to luxury and so don’t feel the need of it. It is harder for my husband than for me, harder for him than it will be for the boy; but I don’t fancy that Jack minds it much.”
“Jack is a fool,” his father answered bitterly. “He could have been anything almost if he had followed out my wishes.”
St. John smiled faintly. He did not resent the slighting epithet applied to himself; he understood in a way, the old man’s keen disappointment, and felt more sorry than chagrined at his unrelenting harshness.
“Don’t think too much about it, sir,” he said; “I should have been bound to fail you somehow. I was never one of those brainy ambitious fellows, you know; it takes more than money to make a great career.”
“It takes aman,” Mr St. John answered sententiously. He had not sat down throughout the brief interview, although his son had placed a chair for him, and now he turned to go with less ceremony than when he entered. He even omitted the courtesy of bowing to Jill; he simply walked out without looking at her. St. John followed him and opened the shop door for him to pass through.
“Good-bye,” he said earnestly. “I regret the breach between us with all my heart—though that will hardly bridge it over, will it? If at any time you want me you have only to command.”
“You have always obeyed my commands so readily, eh?” retorted his father. “I am not likely to trouble you again. By the way you need not consider it necessary in future to make a kind of family Bible of me for the chronicling of domestic events. Our intercourse is at an end from this date. I neither wish to hear of, nor to see you again.”
Chapter Twenty.When St. John had closed the door after his father he walked into the studio and busied himself unnecessarily shifting back scenes and rearranging everything in order to work off the depression the recent interview had left behind. He thoroughly understood that this was the final break with his father, and the realisation cost him more than one pang of bitter regret. He felt that to a certain extent he had been wanting in duty, and yet he knew that he could not have acted otherwise; the whole thing was as deplorable as it was inevitable; and it might have been so different had it not been for the obstinate pride of one ambitious old man.In the midst of his sad reflections he forgot Jill altogether. Sorrow inclines one to be selfish, and St. John just then was dwelling so much upon his own wounded feelings that he had no room for any other thought. That Jill, too, might be hurt, and that very possibly she was worrying on his account did not occur to him or he would have gone to her at once, instead he seated himself on a little rustic bench that had so often served to pose a difficult subject, and leaned his head dejectedly upon his open palm. And thus Jill found him later when, having left her baby in his Godfather’s charge, she came in search of him wondering at his continued absence. The sight brought the tears to her eyes, and she drew back with the half-formed resolve of going away unseen, but changing her mind almost immediately she dropped the shabby curtain which formed the exit behind her, and running forward put both her arms about his neck.“Oh! my saint, my dear old saint, don’t take it to heart so,” she cried imploringly.And at the sound of her voice, the voice that was dearer to him than any other in all the world, he lifted his head and smiled up at her, a loving, reassuring smile.“I am not taking it to heart,” he said. “I was a little bit hipped, that’s all.”“You don’t think that I acted wrongly?” queried Jill diffidently. “You are not vexed that I declined his offer for baby?”“Good Lord, no!” he answered vehemently. “I could never have reconciled myself to giving the little beggar up. We managed very well without him before he came, Jill dear; but we couldn’t manage now after once having him, could we? You did what was right as I knew you would. In any serious matter I should invariably leave the decision to you.”“How good you are to me, Jack,” she whispered gratefully. “How unselfish! It doesn’t seem fair that you should have had to give up so much for me. And now comes this fresh trouble. We have had one or two worries, haven’t we dear?”“Yes,” he answered brightly, rising, and putting his arm protectingly around her waist, “we have, but fortunately we are both sufficiently self-respecting, and single-purposed to trust one another implicitly, and so the worries don’t affect us very much. Some people would have magnified them into tragedies, but we have managed to shake them off somehow, and come up smiling. So long as we have each other, and health—”“And Baby,” supplemented Jill. “And Baby, of course; there is nothing much we need worry about. The business manages to keep on its feet somehow; I think one day it may possibly even walk.”“You are brave and confident,” Jill whispered a little wistfully, “but you will never be well off now dear.”And St. John with his arm still round her, drew her nearer to him and kissed her upon the lips. The feeling of sadness had passed, a deep happiness and contentment had risen in its place.“Iamwell off,” he answered. “No man, whatever his social standing or the size of his banking account, could be better off. I wouldn’t swop you and the boy, Jill, for the untold wealth of the world.”The End.
When St. John had closed the door after his father he walked into the studio and busied himself unnecessarily shifting back scenes and rearranging everything in order to work off the depression the recent interview had left behind. He thoroughly understood that this was the final break with his father, and the realisation cost him more than one pang of bitter regret. He felt that to a certain extent he had been wanting in duty, and yet he knew that he could not have acted otherwise; the whole thing was as deplorable as it was inevitable; and it might have been so different had it not been for the obstinate pride of one ambitious old man.
In the midst of his sad reflections he forgot Jill altogether. Sorrow inclines one to be selfish, and St. John just then was dwelling so much upon his own wounded feelings that he had no room for any other thought. That Jill, too, might be hurt, and that very possibly she was worrying on his account did not occur to him or he would have gone to her at once, instead he seated himself on a little rustic bench that had so often served to pose a difficult subject, and leaned his head dejectedly upon his open palm. And thus Jill found him later when, having left her baby in his Godfather’s charge, she came in search of him wondering at his continued absence. The sight brought the tears to her eyes, and she drew back with the half-formed resolve of going away unseen, but changing her mind almost immediately she dropped the shabby curtain which formed the exit behind her, and running forward put both her arms about his neck.
“Oh! my saint, my dear old saint, don’t take it to heart so,” she cried imploringly.
And at the sound of her voice, the voice that was dearer to him than any other in all the world, he lifted his head and smiled up at her, a loving, reassuring smile.
“I am not taking it to heart,” he said. “I was a little bit hipped, that’s all.”
“You don’t think that I acted wrongly?” queried Jill diffidently. “You are not vexed that I declined his offer for baby?”
“Good Lord, no!” he answered vehemently. “I could never have reconciled myself to giving the little beggar up. We managed very well without him before he came, Jill dear; but we couldn’t manage now after once having him, could we? You did what was right as I knew you would. In any serious matter I should invariably leave the decision to you.”
“How good you are to me, Jack,” she whispered gratefully. “How unselfish! It doesn’t seem fair that you should have had to give up so much for me. And now comes this fresh trouble. We have had one or two worries, haven’t we dear?”
“Yes,” he answered brightly, rising, and putting his arm protectingly around her waist, “we have, but fortunately we are both sufficiently self-respecting, and single-purposed to trust one another implicitly, and so the worries don’t affect us very much. Some people would have magnified them into tragedies, but we have managed to shake them off somehow, and come up smiling. So long as we have each other, and health—”
“And Baby,” supplemented Jill. “And Baby, of course; there is nothing much we need worry about. The business manages to keep on its feet somehow; I think one day it may possibly even walk.”
“You are brave and confident,” Jill whispered a little wistfully, “but you will never be well off now dear.”
And St. John with his arm still round her, drew her nearer to him and kissed her upon the lips. The feeling of sadness had passed, a deep happiness and contentment had risen in its place.
“Iamwell off,” he answered. “No man, whatever his social standing or the size of his banking account, could be better off. I wouldn’t swop you and the boy, Jill, for the untold wealth of the world.”
The End.
|Chapter 1| |Chapter 2| |Chapter 3| |Chapter 4| |Chapter 5| |Chapter 6| |Chapter 7| |Chapter 8| |Chapter 9| |Chapter 10| |Chapter 11| |Chapter 12| |Chapter 13| |Chapter 14| |Chapter 15| |Chapter 16| |Chapter 17| |Chapter 18| |Chapter 19| |Chapter 20|