“I hear the most excellent reports about you, Gene,” stammered Ursula, speaking exactly as she always spoke to him, and in the same words.
“You are very kind, Mrs. Prescott,” he said.
“You are going to the university?” she asked, moving towards the side path.
“I have not yet made up my mind,” he answered. His voice was as expressionless as his face.
“I am sure you ought to. You would distinguish yourself,” she faltered, wishing only to be away from this garden which he had despoiled with his presence.
“You are very kind,” he repeated.
They walked along the path towards the street. All at once, Ursula could not bear the idea of him walking near her. She told herself that her emotions were irrational. Still, she could not bear it. Once or twice, he had even insisted upon accompanying her to her carriage. She contemplated the idea with a horror out of all proportion. So, as she reached the street, she hastily held out a trembling hand to Alice, and exclaimed: “I really must go! It is getting quite late, dear Alice.”
Alice took her hand, bent and kissed her cheek. “Eugene will go with you, my dear,” she said.
“No! No! Not at all! Oliver will take care of me, won’t you, dear?” Ursula looked down at the child, who was holding her arm tightly.
Ursula hurried away, not looking back. Alice watched her go. When she turned to speak to Eugene, he was gone. She went back into the garden. He was snapping off the heads of a few faded calendulas. She stood and watched him. His long hands, like hers, were delicate and fine. He said, bent over the flowers: “What is wrong with that woman? She has everything she wishes. Yet, she is miserable.” He crushed the flower-heads in his fingers, for he would not toss them untidily on the ground.
Alice said, and now her face was sad: “Yes, poor Ursula is miserable.”
Eugene contemplated her contemptuously. “Why? She is a fool, of course.”
“Dear Eugene! You are most uncharitable. Ursula is anything but a fool. If she were a fool, she would be happy. I take exception to your language.”
Eugene laughed. It was a light but ugly laugh.
“I have often wondered how Prescott can stand her. But, of course, he is a fool, too.”
Alice spoke with as much anger as it was possible for her to feel: “Ursula is a woman of great character. I don’t think she ever particularly wanted a lot of money. Her husband is very rich; that does not make her happy, it seems.”
“Because neither she nor her husband knows how to use money,” said Eugene.
“You are talking nonsense, Gene. Mr. Prescott uses his money to make more. He is extremely ambitious.”
“Money will never be enough for him, nor the power that money brings.”
Alice was silent.
She said: “I think that is proof of both Ursula’s and Mr. Prescott’s intelligence.”
Eugene laughed. “Only fools strive for what they do not really want—or people who are afraid. They are both terrified. That is what is so amusing.”
“Gene. I do not understand you.”
The young man shrugged. “‘Take what you want, says God, but pay for it.’ They don’t want what they have taken, and they don’t want to pay for it.” He looked smilingly at the mountains. “Now, I want money. I am willing to pay for it. I shall have it. I am a very simple person, Mother. You ought to be glad of that.”
Alice spoke very softly and slowly: “No, Gene, I am not glad. And you are not a simple young man. Sometimes I think you are a very bad one.”
He stopped smiling. He turned to her quickly. She did not look away.
Then, she went quietly and without hurry towards the kitchen door. He watched her go. There was a deep pucker between his eyes. He had always thought his mother a fool, ever since his father had died. But he had been fond of her. Now, he was not sure she was a fool. Moreover, for the first time, he disliked her.
CHAPTER XXI
Had Ursula heard the conversation between Alice and Eugene, she would have wretchedly agreed with the latter.
Most of the people she had known all her life had been of the “respectable” and smugly religious great middle-class which had arisen after the Protestant Reformation. They had given a certain stability to the world, had brought about the industrial revolution, and had bestowed upon modern life a kind of unimaginative probity. They had conferred righteousness and moral approbation upon the making of money, implying, from pulpit and press, that he whom God hath blessed will undoubtedly succeed in business and get the better of his associates. All this, admittedly, expanded man’s ambition and worldly horizon, thus replacing an agricultural society with a society of immense stony cities and fuming factory chimneys, and creating a vast market for goods.
Yet, reflected Ursula, was all this more desirable than the colorful, light-hearted and brilliant society preceding the Reformation, which, however raffish and irresponsible it might have been, lacking in sober realism and an eye for profits, had endowed life with a mystical adventurousness and exciting gaiety? Was man born to laugh, or was he born solely for the purpose of spending most of his life in a factory in order to supply other men, including himself, with goods?
The majority of business men whom Ursula knew believed that it was immoral not to succeed, and they believed this piously and thoroughly. They had stern anger and contempt for those who failed, or who remained poor. They were men without imagination, the fat burghers of the common-place, the laymen in the temple of mediocrity, the heirs of the Puritan doctrine that religion and respectability resulted in possessions.
William Prescott had become rich; he was successful. Accordingly, he ought to have been admitted to the sacred communion of those upon whom God had smiled. Yet Ursula knew, and she suspected others also knew, that he had been received under false pretenses. William was not truly one of the elect. There was something wrong with him. He was not respectable, for in his heart he did not truly believe that possessions were holy and that money automatically admitted a man to the company of the seraphim.
He had not only to struggle against the stifled but powerful tensions within himself, but with the less subtle yet even more powerful suspicions and enmities of his associates, who were instinctively impelled to destroy him if they could. Though he never spoke of these things to Ursula, she knew that he knew them. Nothing else could explain his almost constant somberness and gloom, his desperate ambition, his feverish drive toward expansion, his amassing of the outward evidences of his triumph in a materialistic and malignantly acquisitive world.
How wealthy was William? Had he enough now, or was he precariously situated? It was impossible for Ursula to know. If he had enough, yet must go on making more, then his situation was tragic. If he did not have enough, and must drive himself relentlessly to keep what he had, then his situation was terrifying. Ursula, who, despite herself, was also heir to the Puritan middle-class tradition, was stricken with fear.
She leaned back in her luxurious carriage, pulled the sable robe over her knees. She dreaded returning to her great mansion, to her servants, her children, the husband she loved so intemperately and so unreasonably. Until these past few years, she had always thought she understood herself. Her father had substituted for Socrates: “Know thyself,” the dictum: “Analyze thyself.” She had been fond of this mental exercise and occupation, and had complacently believed that self-analysis had become an art with her. That, she told herself today, had been only an indication of her stupidity.
An immense weariness washed over her. Usually, on these excursions, she chatted fondly with Oliver, for his intelligence delighted her and she was invariably pleased by the freshness and originality of his young mind. But now she was silent. She did not know that the boy was watching her anxiously, and that he was coming to some quite acute conclusions of his own.
He said at last: “Mama, please don’t take me with you when you go to see Aunt Alice again.”
Ursula brought her vague but disturbed attent
ion to him: “But why, my darling? I thought you were fond of Aunt Alice.”
“I am, Mama. But I don’t like Gene.”
Ursula became interested. “Well, neither do I, Oliver. I don’t know why. Perhaps I am uncharitable.” Her interest quickened. She even smiled mischievously. “Is it because he never speaks to you, pet? Maybe it is because he thinks you are too young.”
Oliver was grave. “No, Mama. I don’t mind Gene not talking to me. I shouldn’t like it if he did. I wouldn’t know what to say to him.” He hesitated, regarded her seriously. “I love your house, Mama. But Gene hates it.”
Being “sensible” had always been one of Ursula’s virtues; now she was beginning to doubt it. However, she said: “I can understand why Gene might not like my house, Oliver. After all, he was born in a much handsomer one, and lived for twelve years in the midst of considerable luxury and wealth.”
Oliver shook his head. “No, Mama. It is not that. I don’t think Gene minds being poor now. He hates your house because of something else.”
Ursula became very thoughtful. She looked with sober pleasure at Oliver. It was very odd that a child his age could be so subtle. “How can you know?” she asked, in her “reasonable” voice, which she knew Oliver disliked. Yet it was often necessary to be “reasonable” with Oliver. He had a habit of being disconcerting.
Oliver did not answer immediately, and then he said in a quiet and determined voice: “Gene doesn’t think of his papa. And he does think Aunt Alice is very silly. I think the house makes Gene hate it.”
Ursula was about to make a sturdily rational comment on this, and then was silent. Oliver, she marvelled, was quite right. Why had she not seen this before? Was Gene another William? Did he prefer opulence and extravagant ostentation?
No, Gene did not want opulence and ostentation. Ursula knew that, suddenly. There was, she reluctantly admitted, a certain elegant austerity in him, a fineness. He might long for grandeur, but it would have to be an immense and majestic grandeur, clean and bare and hard, like marble.
My imagination is running away with me, thought Ursula, severely. But Eugene’s face rose before her vividly. There was something barren about him, and barren men were sinister.
Ursula shook her head impatiently. “Of course, Oliver, if you do not wish to visit Aunt Alice, I shall not insist that you do so. But she is fond of you. She will wonder.”
Oliver said quietly: “No, Aunt Alice isn’t fond of me. She isn’t fond of you either, Mama. She is just sorry for you, and for me, too, and perhaps for everybody. Except that maybe she isn’t sorry for Gene. I think she is afraid of him.”
In spite of her common-sense, Ursula was startled. “Oliver! How can you say such foolish things? You are only a child. What an imagination you have!” She waited. Oliver did not appear sheepish at her reproach. He only gazed at John’s back.
She was so perturbed, so humanly hurt, that she did not realize, immediately, that Oliver had taken her gloved hand and that he was pressing it. His voice was a child’s voice, simple and eager: “But I love you, Mama. And so does Papa.”
“Thank you, dear,” said Ursula. The silly tears were in her eyes.
She became aware of his silence, and looked down at him. Now she felt real pain. He was so quiet, so grave, so still. She wanted to comfort him. There were so many reasons why she ought to comfort him: she saw the enormous house in which she and Oliver lived, she saw William’s face.
Ursula had been brought up in the well-bred tradition that unpleasant things were best “ignored.” In all these years, though keenly aware of Oliver’s changed status in the Prescott household, most deeply aware of William’s indifference, his passionate concentration on his own children to the detriment of Oliver’s needs, and always conscious of the malice of the servants toward Oliver, Ursula had maintained before the child and before everyone an attitude of serenity implying that all was well, that nothing had changed in the least. She had hoped that matters would adjust themselves. They had not.
I have been so hopelessly middle-class, she thought with bitterness. There is no fire, no real indignation in me, nothing strong or assertive. I have always considered these things “ill-bred,” the attributes of those who were still uncivilized. Or perhaps, in common with my class, I have just been afraid of disturbing the stolid surface of things.
Ursula sighed heavily. Oliver looked up at her. He could not know her thoughts, but perhaps he felt their sadness and disgust. Ursula put her arm about his shoulder, and throwing common-sense away in one impetuous gesture, she said: “Oliver, my darling. You are such a dear child. You understand so much, and you never complain or protest. I think you are wiser than I am. You maintain your integrity.” She paused. “What I am saying is beyond you, isn’t it? But I have to say something, and I am saying it to myself. Oliver, do you know about Papa? Do you know how strange he is? And that no one understands him at all, except you and me?”
Her words sounded incoherent even to herself. She awaited a perplexed smile from Oliver. But he was not smiling. He said: “Yes, Mama.”
“He doesn’t even understand himself, my darling, and that is why he is so unhappy. You know he is unhappy?”
“Yes, Mama.”
“Dearest, I love you as much as I do my own children—or more. You know that, too?”
“Oh, yes, I know, Mama.” He smiled now, and leaned against her.
Ursula felt weak and undone, but she went on resolutely: “You must know that Papa doesn’t really love or like children in general. He says he does. He always says that children are the most important people in the world. He doesn’t really believe it. What he means is that his own children, who are part of himself, are more important than anything else in the world. Just because they are his. Oliver, do you understand even a little of what I am saying?”
Oliver drew the sable rug over Ursula’s knees again, for it had slipped. Then, in a low voice, he answered: “Yes, Mama, I think I do. That’s why I don’t ever get angry with Papa, or feel badly when he doesn’t notice me.”
Again, Ursula sighed. “I am sure he loves us,” she said, almost pleadingly.
Oliver nodded gravely.
John, on his high seat, smiled a little grimly. He had been listening with hard sympathy and comprehension to this hushed conversation.
“I’m awfully sorry,” said Oliver. Ursula tried to understand this remark. She told herself that the boy could not possibly have as much understanding as his words might suggest. Then she wondered if she were wrong.
“I love you so much, my dearest,” she said, faintly. “I love you much more than I do my own children. Sometimes I don’t even like them. Tom is so obstreperous and selfish; Matthew doesn’t notice or care for anybody. Julie is a little greedy minx. Oh, I ought not to be saying this! I do love my children!”
She wanted to cry, her misery was so unbearable. Oliver regarded her deeply. He said nothing.
“I am afraid I am a bad mother,” said Ursula, wretchedly. “I can’t dote on my children. But I think that I like them better, most of the time, than Papa does. At least, I am very sorry for them.”
Yes, she was sorry for them, these children to whom nothing was ever denied, these children who had never experienced frustration, who had never been disciplined or defeated in the smallest thing, who were surrounded by love, devotion, solicitude and kindness. Because of this, they were in the most desperate danger, but only she, Ursula, understood this. The fear that lived with her constantly made her faint and sick.
The carriage was now rolling down Schiller Road. It was amazing how this lonely and barren stretch had taken on beauty and richness during the past few years. William had been right: This section was considered the most desirable and fashionable in the whole Andersburg area. William had made his profits from this land. There still were woody spots, unbuilt as yet, but the land was already sold. What had been desolation and forlorn stretches, dotted with hovels and ruined barns, had taken on dignity and opulence. In the
midst of it stood the Prescott mansion. The raw ground had become a small fifteen-acre park, filled with flourishing young shade-trees, evergreens, gardens and grottos. The stone wall that surrounded it was not too high to permit a vision of long green lawns, arbors, summerhouses, hedges and ponds. Nothing, however, could add real and classical loveliness to the mighty swart pile of the house, not even the ivy which had been trained to climb over it, the evergreens which surrounded it. It might be impressive but, to Ursula’s eyes at least, it was hideous.
The gates opened. The gravel paths had been newly raked. The carriage wheels grated over them, approached the porte-cochère. The great bronze doors of the house opened promptly; John leapt down to assist his mistress from the carriage.
Ursula, now in the tremendous reception hall, asked if there had been visitors this afternoon. She was courteously informed that Mr. Jenkins and his lady had dropped in for tea, Dr. and Mrs. Banks, and Mr. and Mrs. Bassett. Ursula was relieved that she had missed them; she disliked them all, quite unreasonably, as they always showed her the greatest affection. Mr. Jenkins had married the elder Miss Bassett, who had been one of Ursula’s bridesmaids. Ursula could not even think of the young lady without a frown, Mrs. Jenkins was so proper, so primly well-bred, so very careful in speech and demure in manner. As for Dr. and Mrs. Banks, Ursula disliked them with vigor; the Bassetts were intolerable to her. At least, thought Ursula, as the butler assisted her with her cloak, my mind has not yet become flaccid. I can hate quite heartily, much more than I did in the old days.
The great marble drawing-room was empty. In spite of the fires on every hearth, and the quiet flare of gaslights, the vast house lay in a mist of Sunday gloom. This meant that all the children were in the nursery. But where was William? Ursula inquired, then sighed at the answer. It was to be expected that he was in the nursery. He was probably indulging in his favorite and conscientious Sunday amusement: he was being a “companion” to his children.