Part 14

It was hither that Sir Hildebrand Oates, after a week of nerve-shattering tumult at one of the great Grand Canal hotels, and after horrified examination of the question of balance of expenditure over income, found his way through the kind offices of a gondolier to whom he had promised twenty francs if he could conduct him to the forgotten church, the memorable scene of the adventure of the beggar and the two-franc piece. With unerring instinct the gondolier had rowed him to Santa Maria Formosa, the very spot. Sir Hildebrand troubled himself neither with the church nor the heart-easing wonder of Palma Vecchio's Santa Barbara within, but, with bent brow, traced the course of the lame beggar from the step to the _fondamenta_, and the course of the rolling coin from his Eliza's hand into the canal. Then he paused for a few moments deep in thought, and finally drew a two-lire piece from his pocket, and, recrossing the Campo, handed it gravely to a beggar-woman, the successor of the lame man, who sat sunning herself on the spacious marble seat by the side of the great door. When he returned to the hotel he gave the gondolier his colossal reward and made a friend for life. Giuseppe delighted at finding an English gentleman who could converse readily hi Italian--for Sir Hildebrand, a man of considerable culture, possessed a working knowledge of three or four European languages--expressed his gratitude on subsequent excursions, by overflowing with picturesque anecdote, both historical and personal. A pathetic craving for intercourse with his kind and the solace of obtaining it from one remote from his social environment drew Sir Hildebrand into queer sympathy with a genuine human being. Giuseppe treated him with a respectful familiarity which he had never before encountered in a member of the lower classes. One afternoon, on the silent _lagune_ side of the Giudecca, turning round on his cushions, he confided to the lean, bronzed, rhythmically working figure standing behind him, something of the puzzledom of his soul. Guiseppe, in the practical Italian way, interpreted the confidences as a desire to escape from the tourist-agitated and fantastically expensive quarters of the city into some unruffled haven. That evening he interviewed the second cousin of his wife, the Signora Tonelli of the Albergo of that name, and the next day Sir Hildebrand took possession of the front room overlooking the _campiello_, on the _piano nobile_ or second floor of the hotel.

And here Sir Hildebrand Oates, Knight, once Member of Parliament, Lord of the Manor, Chairman of Quarter Sessions, Director of great companies, orchid rival of His Grace the Duke of Dunster, important and impeccable personage, the exact temperature of whose bath water had been to a trembling household a matter of as much vital concern as the salvation of their own souls--entered upon a life of queer discomfort, privation and humility. For the first time in his life he experienced the hugger-mugger makeshift of the bed-sitting room--a chamber, too, cold and comfortless, with one scraggy rug by the bedside to mitigate the rigour of an inlaid floor looking like a galantine of veal, once the pride of the palazzo, and meagrely furnished with the barest objects of necessity, and these of monstrous and incongruous ugliness; and he learned in the redolent restaurant downstairs, the way to eat spaghetti like a contented beast and the relish of sour wine and the overrated importance of the cleanliness of cutlery. In his dignified acceptance of surroundings that to him were squalid, he manifested his essential breeding. The correct courtesy of his demeanour gained for the _illustrissimo signore inglese_ the wholehearted respect of the Signore and Signora Tonelli. And the famous scourge nailed (symbolically) over his hard little bed procured him a terrible reputation for piety in the _parrocchia_. After a while, indeed, as soon as he had settled to his new mode of living, the inveterate habit of punctilio caused him, almost unconsciously, to fix by the clock his day's routine. Called at eight o'clock, a kind of eight conjectured by the good-humoured, tousled sloven of a chamber-maid, he dressed with scrupulous care. At nine he descended for his morning coffee to the chill deserted restaurant--for all the revolution in his existence he could not commit the immorality of breakfasting in his bedroom. At half-past he regained his room, where, till eleven, he wrote by the window overlooking the urchin-resonant _campiello_. Then with gloves and cane, to outward appearance the immaculate, the impeccable Sir Hildebrand Oates of Eresby Manor, he walked through the narrow, twisting streets and over bridges and across _campi_ and _campiello_ to the Piazza San Marco. As soon as he neared the east-end of the great square, a seller of corn and peas approached him, handed him a paper cornet, from which Sir Hildebrand, with awful gravity, fed the pigeons. And the pigeons looked for him, too; and they perched on his arms and his shoulders and even on the crown of his Homburg hat, the brim of which he had, by way of solemn rite, filled with grain, until the gaunt, grey, unsmiling man was hidden in fluttering iridescence. And tourists and idlers used to come every day and look at him, as at one of the sights of Venice. The supply finished, Sir Hildebrand went to the Café Florian on the south of the Piazza and ordering a _sirop_ which he seldom drank, read the _Corriere de la Sera_, until the midday gun sent the pigeons whirring to their favourite cornices. Then Sir Hildebrand retraced his steps to the Albergo Tonelli, lunched, read till three, wrote till five, and again went out to take the air. Dinner, half an hour's courtly gossip in the cramped and smelly apology for a lounge, with landlord or a commercial traveller disinclined for theatre or music-hall, or the absorbing amusement of Venice, walking in the Piazza or along the Riva Schiavoni, and then to read or write till bedtime.

No Englishman of any social position can stand daily in the Piazza San Marco without now and then coming across acquaintances, least of all a man of such importance in his day as Sir Hildebrand Oates. He accepted the greetings of chance-met friends with courteous resignation.

"We're at the Hôtel de l'Europe. Where are you staying, Sir Hildebrand?"

"I live in Venice, I have made it my home. You see the birds accept me as one of themselves."

"You'll come and dine with us, won't you?"

"I should love to," Sir Hildebrand would reply; "but for the next month or so I am overwhelmed with work. I'm so sorry. If you have any time to spare, and would like to get off the beaten track, let me recommend you to wander through the Giudecca on foot. I hope Lady Elizabeth is well. I'm so glad. Will you give her my kindest regards? Good-bye." And Sir Hildebrand would make his irreproachable bow and take his leave. No one learned where he had made his home in Venice. In fact, no one but Messrs. Thomas Cook and Son knew his address. He banked with them and they forwarded his letters to the Albergo Tonelli.

It has been said that Sir Hildebrand occupied much of his time in writing, and he himself declared that he was overwhelmed with work. He was indeed engaged in an absorbing task of literary composition, and his reference library consisted in thirty or forty leather-covered volumes each fitted with a clasp and lock, of which the key hung at the end of his watch-chain; and every page of every volume was filled with his own small, precise handwriting. He made slow progress, for the work demanded concentrated thought and close reasoning. The rumour of his occupation having spread through the parrocchia, he acquired, in addition to that of a pietist, the reputation of an _erudito_. He became the pride of the _campiello_. When he crossed the little square, the inhabitants pointed him out to less fortunate out-dwellers. There was the great English noble who had made vows of poverty, and gave himself the Discipline and wrote wonderful works of Theology. And men touched their hats and women saluted shyly, and Sir Hildebrand punctiliously, and with a queer pathetic gratitude, responded. Even the children gave him a "Buon giorno, Signore," and smiled up into his face, unconscious of the pious scholar he was supposed to be, and of the almighty potentate that he had been. Once, yielding to an obscure though powerful instinct, he purchased in the Merceria a packet of chocolates, and on entering his _campiello_ presented them, with stupendous gravity concealing extreme embarrassment, to a little gang of urchins. Encouraged by a dazzling success, he made it a rule to distribute sweetmeats every Saturday morning to the children of the _campiello_. After a while he learned their names and idiosyncrasies, and held solemn though kindly speech with them, manifesting an interest in their games and questioning them sympathetically as to their scholastic attainments. Sometimes gathering from their talk a notion of the desperate poverty of parents, he put a lire or two into grubby little fists, in spite of a lifelong conviction of the immorality of indiscriminate almsgiving; and dark, haggard mothers blessed him, and stood in his way to catch his smile. All of which was pleasant, though exceedingly puzzling to Sir Hildebrand Oates.

VIII

Between two and three years after their mother's death, Sir Hildebrand's son and daughter, who bore each other a devoted affection and carried on a constant correspondence, arranged to meet in England, Godfrey travelling from Canada, Sybil, with her children, from India. The first thing they learned (from Haversham, the lawyer) was the extent of their father's financial ruin. They knew--many kind friends had told them--that he had had losses and had retired from public life; but, living out of the world, and accepting their childhood's tradition of his incalculable wealth, they had taken it for granted that he continued to lead a life of elegant luxury. When Haversham, one of the few people who really knew, informed them (with a revengeful smile) that their father could not possibly have more than a hundred or two a year, they were shocked to the depths of their clean, matter-of-fact English souls. The Great Panjandrum, arbiter of destinies, had been brought low, was living in obscurity in Italy. The pity of it! As they interchanged glances the same thought leaped into the eyes of each.

"We must look him up and see what can be done," said Godfrey.

"Of course, dear," said Sybil.

"I offered him the use of Eresby, but he was too proud to take it."

"And I never offered him anything at all," said Sybil.

"I should advise you," said Haversham, "to leave Sir Hildebrand alone."

Godfrey, a high-mettled young man and one who was accustomed to arrive at his own decisions, and moreover did not like Haversham, gripped his sister by the arm.

"Whatever advice you give me, Mr. Haversham, I will take just when I think it necessary."

"That is the attitude of most of my clients," replied Haversham drily, "whether it is a sound attitude or not----" he waved an expressive hand.

"We'll go and hunt him up, anyway," said Godfrey. "If he's impossible, we can come back. If he isn't--so much the better. What do you say, Sybil?"

Sybil said what he knew she would say.

"Sir Hildebrand's address is vague," remarked Haversham. "Cook's, Venice."

"What more, in Hades, do we want?" cried the young man.

So, after Sybil had made arrangements for the safe keeping of her offspring, and Godfrey and herself had written to announce their coming, the pair set out for Venice.

"We are very sorry, but we are unable to give you Sir Hildebrand Oates's address," said Messrs. Thomas Cook and Son.

Godfrey protested. "We are his son and daughter," he said, in effect. "We have reason to believe our father is living in poverty. We have written and he has not replied. We must find him."

Identity established, Messrs. Thomas Cook and Son disclosed the whereabouts of their customer. A gondola took brother and sister to the _Campo_ facing the west front of the church behind which lay the _Campiello_ where the hotel was situated. Their hearts sank low as they beheld the mildewed decay of the Albergo Tonelli, lower as they entered the cool, canal-smelling _trattoria_--or restaurant, the main entrance to the Albergo. Signore Tonelli in shirt sleeves greeted them. What was their pleasure?

"Sir Hildebrand Oates?"

At first from his rapid and incomprehensible Italian they could gather little else than the fact of their father's absence from home. After a while the reiteration of the words _ospedale inglese_ made an impression on their minds.

"_Malade?_" asked Sybil, trying the only foreign language with which she had a slight acquaintance.

"_Si, si!_" cried Tonelli, delighted at eventual understanding.

And then a Providence-sent bagman who spoke a little English came out and interpreted.

The _illustrissimo signore_ was ill. A pneumonia. He had stood to feed the pigeons in the rain, in the northeast wind, and had contracted a chill. When they thought he was dying, they sent for the English doctor who had attended him before for trifling ailments, and unconscious he had been transported to the English hospital in the Giudecca. And there he was now. A thousand pities he should die. The dearest and most revered man. The whole neighbourhood who loved him was stricken with grief. They prayed for him in the church, the signore and signora could see it there, and vows and candles had been made to the Virgin, the Blessed Mother, for he too loved all children. Signore Tonelli, joined by this time by his wife, exaggerated perhaps in the imaginative Italian way. But every tone and gesture sprang from deep sincerity. Brother and sister looked at each other in dumb wonder.

"_Ecco, Elizabetta!_" Tonelli, commanding the doorway of the restaurant, summoned an elderly woman from the pump by the well-head and discoursed volubly. She approached the young English couple and also volubly discoursed. The interpreter interpreted. They gained confirmation of the amazing fact that, in this squalid, stone-flagged, rickety little square, Sir Hildebrand had managed to make himself beloved. Childhood's memories rose within them, half-caught, but haunting sayings of servants and villagers which had impressed upon their minds the detestation in which he was held in their Somersetshire home.

Godfrey turned to his sister. "Well, I'm damned," said he.

"I should like to see his rooms," said Sybil.

The interpreter again interpreted. The Tonellis threw out their arms. Of course they could visit the apartment of the _illustrissimo signore_. They were led upstairs and ushered into the chill, dark bed-sitting-room, as ascetic as a monk's cell, and both gasped when they beheld the flagellum hanging from its nail over the bed. They requested privacy. The Tonellis and the bagman-interpreter retired.

"What the devil's the meaning of it?" said Godfrey.

Sybil, kind-hearted, began to cry. Something strange and piteous, something elusive had happened. The awful, poverty-stricken room chilled her blood, and the sight of the venomous scourge froze it. She caught and held Godfrey's hand. Had their father gone over to Rome and turned ascetic? They looked bewildered around the room. But no other sign, crucifix, rosary, sacred picture, betokened the pious convert. They scanned the rough deal bookshelf. A few dull volumes of English classics, a few works on sociology in French and Italian, a flagrantly staring red _Burke's Landed Gentry_, and that was practically all the library. Not one book of devotion was visible, save the Bible, the Book of Common Prayer, and a little vellum-covered Elzevir edition of Saint Augustine's _Flammulæ Amoris_, which Godfrey remembered from childhood on account of its quaint wood-cuts. They could see nothing indicative of religious life but the flagellum over the bed--and that seemed curiously new and unused. Again they looked around the bare characterless room, characteristic only of its occupant by its scrupulous tidiness; yet one object at last attracted their attention. On a deal writing-table by the window lay a thick pile of manuscript. Godfrey turned the brown paper covering. Standing together, brother and sister read the astounding title-page:

"An enquiry into my wife's justification for the following terms of her will:--

"'I will and bequeath to my husband, Sir Hildebrand Oates, Knight, the sum of fifteen shillings to buy himself a scourge to do penance for the arrogance, uncharitableness and cruelty with which he has treated myself and my beloved children for the last thirty years.'

"This dispassionate enquiry I dedicate to my son Godfrey and my daughter Sybil."

Brother and sister regarded each other with drawn faces and mutually questioning eyes.

"We can't leave this lying about," said Godfrey. And he tucked the manuscript under his arm.

The gondola took them through the narrow waterways to the Grand Canal of the Giudecca, where, on the Zattere side, all the wave-worn merchant shipping of Venice and Trieste and Fiume and Genoa finds momentary rest, and across to the low bridge-archway of the canal cutting through the island, on the side of which is Lady Layard's modest English hospital. Yes, said the matron, Sir Hildebrand was there. Pneumonia. Getting on as well as could be expected; but impossible to see him. She would telephone to their hotel in the morning.

That night, until dawn, Godfrey read the manuscript, a document of soul-gripping interest. It was neither an _apologia pro vita sua_, nor a breast-beating _peccavi_ cry of confession; but a minute analysis of every remembered incident in the relations between his family and himself from the first pragmatical days of his wedding journey. And judicially he delivered judgments in the terse, lucid French form. "Whereas I, etc., etc...." and "whereas my wife, etc., etc...."--setting forth and balancing the facts--"it is my opinion that I acted arrogantly," or "uncharitably," or "cruelly." Now and again, though rarely, the judgments went in his favour. But invariably the words were added: "I am willing, however, in this case, to submit to the decision of any arbitrator or court of appeal my children may think it worth while to appoint."

The last words, scrawled shakily in pencil, were:

"I have not, to my great regret, been able to bring this record up-to-date; but as I am very ill and, at my age, may not recover, I feel it my duty to say that, as far as my two years' painful examination into my past life warrants my judgment, I am of the opinion that my wife had ample justification for the terms she employed regarding me in her will. Furthermore, if, as is probable, I should die of my illness, I should like my children to know that long ere this I have deeply desired in my loneliness to stretch out my arms to them in affection and beg their forgiveness, but that I have been prevented from so doing by the appalling fear that, I being now very poor and they being very rich, my overtures, considering the lack of affection I have exhibited to them in the past might be misinterpreted. The British Consul here, who has kindly consented to be my executor, will..."

And then strength had evidently failed him and he could write no more.

The next morning Godfrey related to his sister what he had read and gave her the manuscript to read at her convenience; and together they went to the hospital and obtained from the doctor his somewhat pessimistic report; and then again they visited the Albergo Tonelli and learned more of the strange, stiff and benevolent life of Sir Hildebrand Oates. Once more they mounted to the cold cheerless room where their father had spent the past two years. Godfrey unhooked the scourge from the nail.

"What are you going to do?" Sybil asked, her eyes full of tears.

"I'm going to burn the damned thing. Whether he lives or dies, the poor old chap's penance is at an end. By God! he has done enough." He turned upon her swiftly. "You don't feel any resentment against him now, do you?"

"Resentment?" Her voice broke on the word and she cast herself on the hard little bed and sobbed.

IX

And so it came to pass that a new Sir Hildebrand Oates, with a humble and a contrite heart, which we are told the Lord doth not despise, came into residence once more at Eresby Manor, agent for his son and guardian of his daughter's children. Godfrey transferred his legal business from Haversham to a younger practitioner in the neighbourhood to whom Sir Hildebrand showed a stately deference. And every day, being a man of habit--instinctive habit which no revolution of the soul can alter--he visited his wife's grave in the little churchyard, a stone's throw from the manor house, and in his fancy a cloud of pigeons came iridescent, darkening the air....

The County called, but he held himself aloof. He was no longer the all-important unassailable man. He had come through many fires to a wisdom undreamed of by the County. Human love had touched him with its simple angel wing--the love of son and daughter, the love of the rude souls in the squalid Venetian _Campiello_; and the patter of children's feet, the soft and trusting touch of children's hands, the glad welcome of children's voices, had brought him back to the elemental wells of happiness.

One afternoon, the butler entering the dining-room with the announcement "His Grace, the Duke of----" gasped, unable to finish the title. For there was Sir Hildebrand Oates--younger at fifty-nine than he was at thirty--lying prone on the hearthrug, with a pair of flushed infants astride on the softer portions of his back, using the once almighty man as a being of little account. Sir Hildebrand turned his long chin and long nose up towards his visitor, and there was a new smile in his eyes.

"Sorry, Duke," said he, "but you see, I can't get up."

MY SHADOW FRIENDS

My gentle readers have been good enough to ask me what some of the folk whose adventures I have from time to time described have done in the Great War. It is a large question, for they are so many. Most of them have done things they never dreamed they would be called upon to do. Those that survived till 1914 have worked, like the rest of the community in England and France, according to their several capacities, in the Holiest Crusade in the history of mankind.

Well, let me plunge at once into the midst of things.

About a year ago the great voice of Jaffery came booming across my lawn. He was a Lieutenant-Colonel, and a D.S.O., and his great red beard had gone. The same, but yet a subtly different Jaffery. Liosha was driving a motor-lorry in France. He told me she was having the time of her life.

I have heard, too, of my old friend Sir Marcus, leaner than ever and clad in ill-fitting khaki, and sitting in a dreary office in Havre with piles of browny-yellow army forms before him, on which he had checked packing-cases of bully-beef ever since the war began. And if you visit a certain hospital--in Manchester of all places, so dislocating has been the war--there you will still see Lady Ordeyne (it always gives me a shock to think of Carlotta as Lady Ordeyne) matronly and inefficient, but the joy and delight of every wounded man.

And Septimus? Did you not know that the Dix gun was used at the front? His great new invention, the aero-tank, I regret to say, was looked on coldly by the War Office. Now that Peace has come he is trying, so Brigadier-General Sir Clem Sypher tells me, to adapt it to the intensive cultivation of whitebait.