“There the matter ends.”
“I suppose so—if matters ever end.”
“If, by ill-luck, the person does call, I will just see him and say that the boy has gone.”
“You, or I. I have got over all nonsense by this time. He’s absolutely nothing to me now.” He took up the tradesman’s book and played with it idly. On its crimson cover was stamped a grotesque sheep. How stale and stupid their life had become!
“Don’t talk like that, though,” she said uneasily. “Think how disastrous it would be if you made a slip in speaking to him.”
“Would it? It would have been disastrous once. But I expect, as a matter of fact, that Aunt Emily has made the slip already.”
His wife was displeased. “You need not talk in that cynical way. I credit Aunt Emily with better feeling. When I was there she did mention the matter, but only once. She, and I, and all who have any sense of decency, know better than to make slips, or to think of making them.”
Agnes kept up what she called “the family connection.” She had been once alone to Cadover, and also corresponded with Mrs. Failing. She had never told Rickie anything about her visit, nor had he ever asked her. But, from this moment, the whole subject was reopened.
“Most certainly he knows nothing,” she continued. “Why, he does not even realize that Varden lives in our house! We are perfectly safe—unless Aunt Emily were to die. Perhaps then—but we are perfectly safe for the present.”
“When she did mention the matter, what did she say?”
“We had a long talk,” said Agnes quietly. “She told me nothing new—nothing new about the past, I mean. But we had a long talk about the present. I think”—and her voice grew displeased again—“that you have been both wrong and foolish in refusing to make up your quarrel with Aunt Emily.”
“Wrong and wise, I should say.”
“It isn’t to be expected that she—so much older and so sensitive—can make the first step. But I know she’d be glad to see you.”
“As far as I can remember that final scene in the garden, I accused her of ‘forgetting what other people were like.’ She’ll never pardon me for saying that.”
Agnes was silent. To her the phrase was meaningless. Yet Rickie was correct: Mrs. Failing had resented it more than anything.
“At all events,” she suggested, “you might go and see her.”
“No, dear. Thank you, no.”
“She is, after all—” She was going to say “your father’s sister,” but the expression was scarcely a happy one, and she turned it into, “She is, after all, growing old and lonely.”
“So are we all!” he cried, with a lapse of tone that was now characteristic in him.
“She oughtn’t to be so isolated from her proper relatives.”
There was a moment’s silence. Still playing with the book, he remarked, “You forget, she’s got her favourite nephew.”
A bright red flush spread over her cheeks. “What is the matter with you this afternoon?” she asked. “I should think you’d better go for a walk.”
“Before I go, tell me what is the matter with you.” He also flushed. “Why do you want me to make it up with my aunt?”
“Because it’s right and proper.”
“So? Or because she is old?”
“I don’t understand,” she retorted. But her eyes dropped. His sudden suspicion was true: she was legacy-hunting.
“Agnes, dear Agnes,” he began with passing tenderness, “how can you think of such things? You behave like a poor person. We don’t want any money from Aunt Emily, or from any one else. It isn’t virtue that makes me say it: we are not tempted in that way: we have as much as we want already.”
“For the present,” she answered, still looking aside.
“There isn’t any future,” he cried in a gust of despair.
“Rickie, what do you mean?”
What did he mean? He meant that the relations between them were fixed—that there would never be an influx of interest, nor even of passion. To the end of life they would go on beating time, and this was enough for her. She was content with the daily round, the common task, performed indifferently. But he had dreamt of another helpmate, and of other things.
“We don’t want money—why, we don’t even spend any on travelling. I’ve invested all my salary and more. As far as human foresight goes, we shall never want money.” And his thoughts went out to the tiny grave. “You spoke of ‘right and proper,’ but the right and proper thing for my aunt to do is to leave every penny she’s got to Stephen.”
Her lip quivered, and for one moment he thought that she was going to cry. “What am I to do with you?” she said. “You talk like a person in poetry.”
“I’ll put it in prose. He’s lived with her for twenty years, and he ought to be paid for it.”
Poor Agnes! Indeed, what was she to do? The first moment she set foot in Cadover she had thought, “Oh, here is money. We must try and get it.” Being a lady, she never mentioned the thought to her husband, but she concluded that it would occur to him too. And now, though it had occurred to him at last, he would not even write his aunt a little note.
He was to try her yet further. While they argued this point he flashed out with, “I ought to have told him that day when he called up to our room. There’s where I went wrong first.”
“Rickie!”
“In those days I was sentimental. I minded. For two pins I’d write to him this afternoon. Why shouldn’t he know he’s my brother? What’s all this ridiculous mystery?”
She became incoherent.
“But why not? A reason why he shouldn’t know.”
“A reason why he should know,” she retorted. “I never heard such rubbish! Give me a reason why he should know.”
“Because the lie we acted has ruined our lives.”
She looked in bewilderment at the well-appointed room.
“It’s been like a poison we won’t acknowledge. How many times have you thought of my brother? I’ve thought of him every day—not in love; don’t misunderstand; only as a medicine I shirked. Down in what they call the subconscious self he has been hurting me.” His voice broke. “Oh, my darling, we acted a lie then, and this letter reminds us of it and gives us one more chance. I have to say ‘we’ lied. I should be lying again if I took quite all the blame. Let us ask God’s forgiveness together. Then let us write, as coldly as you please, to Stephen, and tell him he is my father’s son.”
Her reply need not be quoted. It was the last time he attempted intimacy. And the remainder of their conversation, though long and stormy, is also best forgotten.
Thus the first effect of Varden’s letter was to make them quarrel. They had not openly disagreed before. In the evening he kissed her and said, “How absurd I was to get angry about things that happened last year. I will certainly not write to the person.” She returned the kiss. But he knew that they had destroyed the habit of reverence, and would quarrel again.
On his rounds he looked in at Varden and asked nonchalantly for the letter. He carried it off to his room. It was unwise of him, for his nerves were already unstrung, and the man he had tried to bury was stirring ominously. In the silence he examined the handwriting till he felt that a living creature was with him, whereas he, because his child had died, was dead. He perceived more clearly the cruelty of Nature, to whom our refinement and piety are but as bubbles, hurrying downwards on the turbid waters. They break, and the stream continues. His father, as a final insult, had brought into the world a man unlike all the rest of them,—a man dowered with coarse kindliness and rustic strength, a kind of cynical ploughboy, against whom their own misery and weakness might stand more vividly relieved. “Born an Elliot—born a gentleman.” So the vile phrase ran. But here was an Elliot whose badness was not even gentlemanly. For that Stephen was bad inherently he never doubted for a moment. And he would have children: he, not Rickie, would contribute to the stream; he, through his remote posterity, might be mingled with
the unknown sea.
Thus musing he lay down to sleep, feeling diseased in body and soul. It was no wonder that the night was the most terrible he had ever known. He revisited Cambridge, and his name was a grey ghost over the door. Then there recurred the voice of a gentle shadowy woman, Mrs. Aberdeen, “It doesn’t seem hardly right.” Those had been her words, her only complaint against the mysteries of change and death. She bowed her head and laboured to make her “gentlemen” comfortable. She was labouring still. As he lay in bed he asked God to grant him her wisdom; that he might keep sorrow within due bounds; that he might abstain from extreme hatred and envy of Stephen. It was seldom that he prayed so definitely, or ventured to obtrude his private wishes. Religion was to him a service, a mystic communion with good; not a means of getting what he wanted on the earth. But tonight, through suffering, he was humbled, and became like Mrs. Aberdeen.
Hour after hour he awaited sleep and tried to endure the faces that frothed in the gloom—his aunt’s, his father’s, and, worst of all, the triumphant face of his brother. Once he struck at it, and awoke, having hurt his hand on the wall. Then he prayed hysterically for pardon and rest.
Yet again did he awake, and from a more mysterious dream. He heard his mother crying. She was crying quite distinctly in the darkened room. He whispered, “Never mind, my darling, never mind,” and a voice echoed, “Never mind—come away—let them die out—let them die out.” He lit a candle, and the room was empty. Then, hurrying to the window, he saw above mean houses the frosty glories of Orion.
Henceforward he deteriorates. Let those who censure him suggest what he should do. He has lost the work that he loved, his friends, and his child. He remained conscientious and decent, but the spiritual part of him proceeded towards ruin.
24
The coming months, though full of degradation and anxiety, were to bring him nothing so terrible as that night. It was the crisis of this agony. He was an outcast and a failure. But he was not again forced to contemplate these facts so clearly. Varden left in the morning, carrying the fatal letter with him. The whole house was relieved. The good angel was with the boys again, or else (as Herbert preferred to think) they had learnt a lesson, and were more humane in consequence. At all events, the disastrous term concluded quietly.
In the Christmas holidays the two masters made an abortive attempt to visit Italy, and at Easter there was talk of a cruise in the Ægean. Herbert actually went, and enjoyed Athens and Delphi. The Elliots paid a few visits together in England. They returned to Sawston about ten days before school opened, to find that Widdrington was again stopping with the Jacksons. Intercourse was painful, for the two families were scarcely on speaking terms; nor did the triumphant scaffoldings of the new boarding-house make things easier. (The party of progress had carried the day.) Widdrington was by nature touchy, but on this occasion he refused to take offence, and often dropped in to see them. His manner was friendly but critical. They agreed he was a nuisance. Then Agnes left, very abruptly, to see Mrs. Failing, and while she was away Rickie had a little stealthy intercourse.
Her absence, convenient as it was, puzzled him. Mrs. Silt, half goose, half stormy-petrel, had recently paid a flying visit to Cadover, and thence had flown, without an invitation, to Sawston. Generally she was not a welcome guest. On this occasion Agnes had welcomed her, and—so Rickie thought—had made her promise not to tell him something that she knew. The ladies had talked mysteriously. “Mr. Silt would be one with you there,” said Mrs. Silt. Could there be any connection between the two visits?
Agnes’s letters told him nothing: they never did. She was too clumsy or too cautious to express herself on paper. A drive to Stonehenge; an anthem in the Cathedral; Aunt Emily’s love. And when he met her at Waterloo he learnt nothing (if there was anything to learn) from her face.
“How did you enjoy yourself?”
“Thoroughly.”
“Were you and she alone?”
“Sometimes. Sometimes other people.”
“Will Uncle Tony’s Essays be published?”
Here she was more communicative. The book was at last in proof. Aunt Emily had written a charming introduction; but she was so idle, she never finished things off.
They got into an omnibus for the Army and Navy Stores: she wanted to do some shopping before going down to Sawston.
“Did you read any of the Essays?”
“Every one. Delightful. Couldn’t put them down. Now and then he spoilt them by statistics—but you should read his descriptions of Nature. He agrees with you: says the hills and trees are alive! Aunt Emily called you his spiritual heir, which I thought nice of her. We both so lamented that you have stopped writing.” She quoted fragments of the Essays as they went up in the Stores’ lift.
“What else did you talk about?”
“I’ve told you all my news. Now for yours. Let’s have tea first.”
They sat down in the corridor amid ladies in every stage of fatigue—haggard ladies, scarlet ladies, ladies with parcels that twisted from every finger like joints of meat. Gentlemen were scarcer, but all were of the sub-fashionable type, to which Rickie himself now belonged.
“I haven’t done anything,” he said feebly. “Ate, read, been rude to tradespeople, talked to Widdrington. Herbert arrived this morning. He has brought a most beautiful photograph of the Parthenon.”
“Mr. Widdrington?”
“Yes.”
“What did you talk about?”
She might have heard every word. It was only the feeling of pleasure that he wished to conceal. Even when we love people, we desire to keep some corner secret from them, however small: it is a human right: it is personality. She began to cross-question him, but they were interrupted. A young lady at an adjacent table suddenly rose and cried, “Yes, it is you. I thought so from your walk.” It was Maud Ansell.
“Oh, do come and join us!” he cried. “Let me introduce my wife.”
Maud bowed quite stiffly, but Agnes, taking it for ill-breeding, was not offended.
“Then I will come!” she continued in shrill, pleasant tones, adroitly poising her tea things on either hand, and transferring them to the Elliots’ table. “Why haven’t you ever come to us, pray?”
“I think you didn’t ask me!”
“You weren’t to be asked.” She sprawled forward with a wagging finger. But her eyes had the honesty of her brother’s. “Don’t you remember the day you left us? Father said, ‘Now, Mr. Elliot—–’ Or did he call you ‘Elliot’? How one does forget. Anyhow, father said you weren’t to wait for an invitation, and you said, ‘No; I won’t.’ Ours is a fair-sized house,”—she turned somewhat haughtily to Agnes,—“and the second spare room, on account of a harp that hangs on the wall, is always reserved for Stewart’s friends.”
“How is Mr. Ansell, your brother?”
Maud’s face fell. “Hadn’t you heard?” she said in awestruck tones.
“No.”
“He hasn’t got his fellowship. It’s the second time he’s failed. That means he will never get one. He will never be a don, nor live in Cambridge and that, as we had hoped.”
“Oh, poor, poor fellow!” said Mrs. Elliot with a remorse that was sincere, though her congratulations would not have been. “I am so very sorry.”
But Maud turned to Rickie. “Mr. Elliot, you might know. Tell me. What is wrong with Stewart’s philosophy? What ought he to put in, or to alter, so as to succeed?”
Agnes, who knew better than this, smiled.
“I don’t know,” said Rickie sadly. They were none of them so clever, after all.
“Hegel,” she continued vindictively. “They say he’s read too much Hegel. But they never tell him what to read instead. Their own stuffy books, I suppose. Look here—no, that’s the ‘Windsor.’ ” After a little groping she produced a copy of “Mind,” and handed it round as if it was a geological specimen. “Inside that there’s a paragraph written about something Stewart’s written about before, and there it says he’
s read too much Hegel, and it seems now that that’s been the trouble all along.” Her voice trembled. “I call it most unfair, and the fellowship’s gone to a man who has counted the petals on an anemone.”
Rickie had no inclination to smile.
“I wish Stewart had tried Oxford instead.”
“I don’t wish it!”
“You say that,” she continued hotly, “and then you never come to see him, though you knew you were not to wait for an invitation.”
“If it comes to that, Miss Ansell,” retorted Rickie, in the laughing tones that one adopts on such occasions, “Stewart won’t come to me, though he has had an invitation.”
“Yes,” chimed in Agnes, “we ask Mr. Ansell again and again, and he will have none of us.”
Maud looked at her with a flashing eye. “My brother is a very peculiar person, and we ladies can’t understand him. But I know one thing, and that’s that he has a reason all round for what he does. Look here, I must be getting on. Waiter! Wai-ai-aiter! Bill, please. Separately, of course. Call the Army and Navy cheap! I know better!”
“How does the drapery department compare?” said Agnes sweetly.
The girl gave a sharp choking sound, gathered up her parcels, and left them. Rickie was too much disgusted with his wife to speak.
“Appalling person!” she gasped. “It was naughty of me, but I couldn’t help it. What a dreadful fate for a clever man! To fail in life completely, and then to be thrown back on a family like that!”
“Maud is a snob and a Philistine. But, in her case, something emerges.”
She glanced at him, but proceeded in her suavest tones, “Do let us make one great united attempt to get Mr. Ansell to Sawston.”
“No.”
“What a changeable friend you are! When we were engaged you were always talking about him.”
“Would you finish your tea, and then we will buy the linoleum for the cubicles.”
But she returned to the subject again, not only on that day but throughout the term. Could nothing be done for poor Mr. Ansell? It seemed that she could not rest until all that he had once held dear was humiliated. In this she strayed outside her nature: she was unpractical. And those who stray outside their nature invite disaster. Rickie, goaded by her, wrote to his friend again. The letter was in all ways unlike his old self. Ansell did not answer it. But he did write to Mr. Jackson, with whom he was not acquainted.