During the next two weeks he was full of curiosity about returning to the country of his birth. He had not given England half a dozen thoughts during the past years. But now he was full of stories to tell Raoul. He remembered gauzy English sunshine, the long slow days, the quiet winters, the homely fires, the English voices, customs, kings and villages. He remembered the old stories of British might and conquest, indomitable courage and dogged relentlessness. He remembered the stories of Nelson and Wellington he had heard from his father, and old grandfather, who wore knee-breeches and lace at his cuffs to the day he died, and kept snuff in a tiny silver box with the lion and the unicorn embossed on the cover. Strange, he had not thought of the old man once since he had left England! But all at once Ernest was before the fire on a howling wet night, a lad of seven or eight, and his grandfather was sitting in the chimney corner, rigidly dressed in his old-fashioned knee-breeches, his hands and chin on his cane, and he was telling Ernest about his service at Waterloo, and old Boney, and Wellington with his nose and his mighty voice. He had a ball in his leg, and limped. He was almost illiterate, and a prevaricator into the bargain, but his speech had vividness, and he conjured up before the young Ernest’s eyes the mud and terror and thunder of Waterloo, the white plumes of the cavalry in the rain, the drums, the blazing trumpets, the guttural screams of the Germans, whom he hated for all their aid to England, and the Union Jack that fell, was torn from dying hands and lifted aloft again, only to fall once more, to rise, to fall and rise, until the terrible day was over and victory gained. The young Ernest had thrilled and trembled, had panted, had glowed and hardly breathed. Ernest had forgotten all this, but as the ship turned eastward steadily, he said to himself one morning: “I am an Englishman!” and was wryly astonished at his saying this and the lift in his pulses as he said it. He was excessively amused when he found himself humming “God Save the Queen!” but he kept on humming, half derisively.
Raoul was diverted at this belated patriotism. He could hardly be expected to share Ernest’s shamefaced love for England, and said: “Your Queen Victoria is a fat little pig with a German swine for a husband.”
But Ernest was bemused in memories of Sandy Lane, and three children trooping behind a young Hilda with a baby in her arms down to the meadows where the tiny spring daisies made a white carpet on the dark wet earth, and where the cattle, released, lowed contentedly under a sun caught in a tangle of golden mist. He had visited his father’s great-aunt not more than a dozen times, but he remembered with sudden vividness the thralled silence of her old sunken gardens, and the smell of her lilacs in the rain. The call of the cuckoo, the smell of hawthorn, the low green hills with the sheep grazing upon them and sending out plaintive calls under the evening skies, the still, small blue ponds and lazy streams, the thatched roofs and white walls of farmhouses, the gray little Norman church sunken in its ivy, the rutted country roads and the oaks on their knolls: all these came back to him poignantly, and he was homesick. He felt that he had left behind him noise and confusion, heat and vivid light, comings and goings that were like drum-beats on his weary consciousness. He promised himself that he would take time to go to Reddish, and walk down Sandy Lane once more, and see if his father’s great-aunt still lived in her enchanted house and garden.
But he never went there, for he had no time. Strong and Robsons received him with British reserve, modifying it, to be sure, when he informed them that he was an Englishman, but still reserved. They were suspicious and skeptical about the patents, argued endlessly, promised nothing, grumbled, delayed, hummed, murmured, consulted, objected to being rushed, assumed heavy dignity in the face of Ernest’s urgent argument. Having become accustomed to the staccato of American business and American lack of deviousness and weightiness, he was mad with impatience. From saying “they” when referring to Americans, he began to say “we.” In the end, after nearly three months of battering at these suspicious and stolid British minds, an agreement was reached, whereby Raoul was to supervise manufacturing in accordance with Barbour & Bouchard patents. “Of course,” said Mr. Edwin Robsons, “this war will not last very long. But one can never tell about future wars, and it is best to be prepared.”
“No,” agreed Raoul artlessly, “one can never tell—with the British.”
The British gentlemen were none too trustful of Raoul, the Frenchman. Of course, one had no quarrel with France, these days! But one was well aware of the French character: treacherous, slippery, smiling, grasping, unsentimental and cruel. Mr. Strong hinted as much to Ernest, who enjoyed retailing it to Raoul. “I think,” said Raoul, thus astonishing Ernest, who had not suspected quite so much insight, “that it is the unsentimental part that they cannot forgive. For the British are everything else of which they accuse us: treacherous, slippery, grasping and cruel. And worse than all else, they are sentimental. One cannot,” he added, shaking his head sadly, “forgive that. Perfidious Albion!”
“I would hardly call them perfidious,” said Ernest, somewhat annoyed. Then he smiled. “Rather call them astute. The English just jump the way the cat jumps, and that is why they are invincible. They shout that they defend the underdog, but to unprejudiced eyes it seems that they make a mistake and champion the top dog.”
He had never been to London before, and it seemed grimy and ponderous, slow and soot-fogged, still and gloomy, as it sprawled along the yellow Thames, its ancient towers drifting like darker shadows in lighter mist, and its old clock booming hollowly over wet roofs under lurid red sunsets, its drab inhabitants creeping along under masses of umbrellas, its dispirited horses and trundling drays and wagons and shabby carriages. It was a depressing place, for all its hugeness, in comparison with the blazing springtime of New York and Philadelphia and Chicago. Ernest shivered in the damp dripping early fall weather, crouched over niggardly fires in unspeakably grimy hotels, ate dank lax kippers for breakfast, and drank abominable coffee, shrank from contact with moist linen in tomblike bedrooms.
Yet, as the weeks went on he discerned something here, something impregnable and secure, unshakable and indomitable, rooted and strong. Where had he heard:
“For London is a man:
There’s power in the air?”
Yes, there was power here, ponderous exigency, force, glacial determination that crept, never hurried, but always arrived eventually with annihilating weight. He felt, all at once one gloomy morning, that he was blood and sinew of this spirit that pervaded London. And he knew it was this transplanted spirit that had so enchanted him about the Sessions house, the same quality of fastness, of fortress-like impregnability, of rooted might, of security unmenaced by changing years.
He walked through the streets that Dickens knew, and bought curios for May—an India shawl of bewildering design, a necklace of turquoises in old silver, yards of India muslin and a dozen pair of silk stockings. He watched a detachment of cavalry parading before it left for the Crimea, and the brilliant red coats, the strong lithe bodies, the tossing white plumes, the lances, tipped with flags, held at rest the coal-black horses, all stopped his breath, and the shattering white blaze of the trumpets shook him to the bones. “I am sentimental, as Raoul says,” he thought, sheepishly, and was a little surprised to discover that this made him more than a trifle proud that he shared this sentimentality with the thronging thousands who shared his blood. He was part of a crowd that watched Queen Victoria pass in her carriage, a little dumpy woman with an arrogant face and hard, obstinate chin, and he found himself cheering with the rest.
Old Mr. Robsons liked Ernest cautiously. “There’s stuff there,” he said to his associates. He invited Ernest to his hideous tall old house with the snarling and lurking little fires at the end of dark and musty rooms, and introduced him to three tall and lanky daughters with head-colds. He was visibly depressed when Ernest mentioned having a wife. However, he recovered, and gave Ernest a very important hint.
It was because of this hint that Ernest found himself crossing the channel one raw September morni
ng, in a gray wet dawn that was only a few degrees drier than the choppy water on which the little vessel rolled. By the time he reached Paris, after a torturous trip on an old train, he had a severe cold. This did not prevent him from going to see Schultz-Poiret within an hour of arriving in Paris. They occupied an incredibly dirty suite of offices on an incredibly dirty street which was veiled in sheets of rain. Ernest presented a sealed envelope from Strong and Robsons, and was immediately made welcome. For four hours he talked, steadily becoming hoarser and more feverish, and at the end of those four hours an agreement beyond his hopes had been reached. Mr. Schultz, who spoke the better English of the partners, had even allowed himself to be enthusiastic over the patents and the powder. “Some day,” he said, “we shall have trouble with our neighbor over there,” and he nodded his head eastward. Ernest looked suspiciously at the Teutonic cast of his face, but said nothing.
Schultz-Poiret were delighted when Ernest informed them that Raoul Bouchard, “our French member of the firm,” would supervise the manufacture of munitions in France as well as England (Ernest made a wry grimace as he hoped Raoul would be adequate). His trip back to England was a fog of fever, sneezes, aches and coughs and exultation. He went directly to bed with a poultice on his chest, a pile of handkerchiefs on his pillow and a hot brick at his feet, and put Raoul through his paces again, for the hundredth time. Ernest looked at that face, so merry even when it tried to be serious, and uttered a despairing prayer to his private gods. Then relaxed to indulge a fine case of influenza.
One morning, two weeks later, when he was able to sit up, a pile of mail arrived for him from America. There was a letter from Gregory, informing him that May had presented him with a splendid son on August 3rd, as yet unchristened, and that May was doing exceptionally well. There was a short note from Eugene, asking him to tell Raoul that their mother had died on August 12th of a stroke. “I cannot,” wrote Eugene simply, on paper suspiciously blotted, “tell him myself.”
And there was an inky, badly written and incoherent letter from Hilda, informing him that she had taken Joseph to New York to consult a famous physician, who had issued a sentence of death. Joseph had cancer of the stomach, and could not possibly live to Christmas.
CHAPTER XXXV
Had Ernest been morbid or mystically inclined, he would have felt some grim significance at Gregory Sessions’ greeting when he arrived home on October 4th.
On the way across the ocean, still weak from his recent illness, he had struggled under a weight of depression and sadness and anxiety such as he had never experienced before. This seesawed between exultation in his accomplishments in England and France, which had been beyond his hopes, and a passionate and excited desire to see his wife and son. His physical strength, which heretofore had kept emotions and thoughts in check, was depleted, and therefore could only partially control them now, and his mind was assaulted by a thousand sensations and morbidities and febrile excitations and melancholies that it had never known before. He loathed this being victimized by himself, and his efforts to regain stability exhausted him mentally and physically. He tried to focus nearly all his attention on his books and papers, spent hours struggling to put them in order, worried determinedly about Raoul’s lapses in knowledge. But each time, his father’s face sprang out on his inner vision, and his stomach turned over in a roll of bitter nausea. The last years dissolved from his memory, and the young Joseph came out, strong and wiry and vital, irritable and humorous, affectionate and proud. Then his pain would be so great that the pen would snap in his tensing fingers, and cold drops would come out on his forehead. If possible, his longing to see his father was stronger than his longing to see May and the boy.
During the slow railroad ride from New York to Windsor, he forgot everything but his personal affairs. He had neglected, in his haste, to send a telegram announcing his arrival, and therefore there was no one at the station to meet him. He hired a cab and rattled home through the quiet evening streets. Windsor seemed to have stopped in time, to have lain under enchantment until his coming. The air was chill, the trees almost leafless, and it was hard to tell whether it was spring or fall. When he was driven up the drive of the Sessions house, and saw the dim bulk of it nebulous against the dim sky, with the yellow lamplight superimposed on that unreal mass like rectangles of brilliance, he could hardly realize he had been away. But something lifted in him, was comforted. Here was security, changelessness, monotony that was like cool steady water on a fevered surface. He sprang almost lightly, and with eagerness, from the cab. The butler had heard the approaching wheels, and came running out to seize Ernest’s bags; and Gregory, reading his newspapers alone in the library, heard the commotion, and came into the hall as Ernest entered the house.
And then occurred an incident of grim significance which Ernest would have detected had he been superstitious or mystically inclined. For Gregory said no word of greeting, but came forward, alert and excited, tense and sharp. He took Ernest’s hand, looked at him in the warm lamplight that shone from the lamp on the newel post, and said quietly, swiftly: “Success?”
There was a pause. Then Ernest answered: “Success.”
It was like a passport, the password to a challenge. The passport and the password to his life, in which, in spite of himself, everything else was relatively unimportant. He saw it all very clearly, and sickened momentarily in the seeing. Only twice more in his life was he to have that clarity of vision, during which he stood off at a distance and watched himself as though propelled and driven by some external force over which he had no control. Why, he thought suddenly, I am not free at all. I’m the most bound of slaves. Then he said: “I want to see May. And my son.”
“Of course! Of course!” Gregory was jubilant and expansive. “My dear boy, how thin you are! You never let us know anything. You never tell us anything! Come in! No, you must first rest. Goodwin, coffee and a light supper for Mr. Barbour. Now, sit down, boy, sit down! Five months! A lifetime! Your supper will be served right here in the library, where we have a good fire tonight.”
Ernest was surprised to discover how exhausted he was. He let Gregory lead him, talk to him, arrange him. It was good to be home! “Where’s May?” he asked.
“Upstairs, nursing your son and heir. Goodwin will tell her. Ah, here she comes, now!”
There was a light rush of feet on the stairway, a cry, a rustle of skirts, a gasp, a sob, and May had flung herself upon his knees, had clutched his head to her breast, was dropping tears all over his face, kissing him, sobbing, laughing, scolding, smoothing his hair with her soft and trembling hands. “Oh, why didn’t you send us a telegram! Ernest, my love, how ill you look! You have been ill! And you never told us!”
“Softly, pet,” he answered, laughing. “Let me see you! Prettier than ever, but aren’t you a little plump?”
May was indeed much plumper, and something in her figure reminded him of Queen Victoria. The thought of this warmed him, renewed in him the sense of agelessness and security of home. May’s ringlets had been gathered into a shining bun on the top of her head, and two smooth red curls lay on her white shoulders. There was about her a comfortable humor in place of the old gaiety, a staidness that captivated him. Goodwin brought in his supper, and May, alternately scolding and caressing, laughing and weeping, arranged the familiar dishes on a little table, opened his napkin, and would have cut up his breast of chicken had he not rebelled. She poured rich and steaming coffee from the old chased silver pot, lifted the silver covers of the dishes and looked at the contents severely, coaxed him to eat, and stood over him like a mother over a delicate child. To his protests that he would not eat until he saw his son, she replied that he would not see him until he had eaten, so laughing, and to please her, he ate. Never had he felt so secure, so loved and wanted, so safe. He felt that he had left the storm outside, and though it waited for him, and he must fight it again, he had gained a shelter.
After that first question, Gregory asked him no more about his busines
s in England and France. It was enough for him that Ernest had been successful. Details would come later. Now he could relax, be friendly and welcoming, pleasing and laughing, watching May’s clucking and pretty ministrations. He felt no animosity toward Ernest tonight, only a kinsman’s affectionate and approving regard.
No one had mentioned Joseph. Ernest had not wanted to ask, as yet. What he was bound to hear, he knew, would blast the happiness of his homecoming. And yet, when he shrewdly noticed how May and Gregory skated skillfully away from any mention of Ernest’s family, except for a loving remark on Martin’s and Amy’s contentment, his heart began to beat heavily. He saw them exchange swift glances. And a sort of sick terror tore through his chest again, and he could not ask. Time enough for that; in the meantime, he must see his son.
He went upstairs with May. Her step was a little slower and heavier, and she had lost the little bouncing spring that had been so amusing. She panted a trifle as she climbed the stairs, holding up her hooped and tilting skirt with one hand, and the warm pink blood rose up through her plump white throat and breast, and ran into her cheeks. In a few years, thought Ernest fondly, she will be quite fat, and he reached up and pinched her creamy little forearm as she climbed ahead of him. The old gay May with her bounce and gaiety had amused and intrigued him, and he had been grateful for the laughter she gave him. But in some way this plump young matron with her merry eyes, sedate ways, competent little airs, pleased him much more. She had always used perfume of a somewhat exotic blend, which Ernest had not liked, remembering the scented and furbelowed ladies on the furtive streets. He was pleased to discover that May no longer used this perfume, but exhaled, instead, a clean sweet odor of orris root.
The largest guest chamber had been converted into a nursery, and a fat cheerful young nursemaid had been engaged. A warm rosy fire burned on the tiled hearth; flounced and draped white curtains shut out the cool night; the baby’s crib was all flounced and draped in voluminous white lace, the rug a soft blue, the furniture simple and painted in an ivory tint. The room smelled of soap, of freshness and sweetness. The little nursemaid, in blue and white, a German immigrant girl, curtsied in an old-fashioned way when Ernest entered, and retired to a little distance, all blushings and flutterings. May, with a finger on her lips, led Ernest to the crib, and tenderly lifted up the veil of lace. He looked down at his son, now two months old, and saw what seemed to him a pink and shapeless little bundle of round face and minute doubled fists. What he had expected he did not know. He had seen very few babies, and not with a conscious eye. But he had had some vague idea of a largish, boisterous child, with a grin and possibly a shout. In short, a child of about eighteen months.