Part 20

“Have you any idea,” he said, “what the empire might be? Have you thought of these hundreds of millions to whom we might give light—_had_ we light? Are we to be a possessing and profit-hunting people because we have not the education to be a leaderly people? Are we to do no better than Rome and Carthage—and loot the provinces of the world? Loot or education, that is the choice of every imperial opportunity. All England, I find, is echoing with screams for loot. Have none of us vision? None?”

The bishop shook his head sadly. The man, he thought, was raving.

“What _is_ this vision of yours?” sneered Walsall. “Ten thousand professors?”

“After all,” said Slingsby Darton with a weary insidiousness, “we do not differ about our fundamental idea. You must have funds. You must endow your schools. Without Tariff Reform to give you revenue——”

But Oswald was not going to begin over again.

“I ought to be in bed,” he said, looking at his watch. “My doctor sends me to bed at ten....”

“My God!” he whispered as he put on his coat under the benevolent supervision of an exceptionally fine Indian buffalo.

“What is to happen to the empire,” he cried, going out into the night and addressing himself to the moon, to the monument which commemorates the heroic incompetence of the Duke of York, and to an interested hansom cabby, “what is to happen to the empire—when these are its educated opinions?”

§ 5

But it is high time that Joan and Peter came back into this narrative. For this is their story, it bears their names on its covers and on its back and on its title-page and at the head of each left-hand page. It has been necessary to show the state of mind, the mental condition, the outlook, of their sole guardian when their affairs came into his hands. This done they now return by telephone. Oswald had not been back in the comfortable sitting-room at the Climax Club for ten minutes before he was rung up by Mr. Sycamore and reminded of his duty to his young charges. A club page called Mr. Sydenham to the receiver in his bedroom.

In those days the telephone was still far from perfection. It had not been in general use for a decade.... Mr. Sycamore was audible as a still small voice.

“Mr. Sydenham? Sycamore speaking.”

“No need to be,” said Oswald. “You haven’t been speaking to me.”

“Who am I speaking to? I want Mr. Sydenham. Sycamore speaking.”

“I’m Mr. Sydenham. Who are you? No need to be sick of your speaking so far as I’m concerned. I’ve only just been called to the telephone——”

“Your solicitor, Sycamore. S.Y.C.A.M.O.R.E.”

“Oh! Right O. How are you, Mr. Sycamore? I’m Sydenham. How are those children?”

“Hope you’re well, Mr. Sydenham?”

“Gaudy—in a way. How are you?”

“I’ve been with Lady Charlotte today. I don’t know if you’ve heard anything of——”

Whop! Whop. Bunnik. _Silence._

After a little difficulty communication with Mr. Sycamore was partially restored. I say partially because his voice had now become very small and remote indeed. “I was saying, I don’t know if you understand anything of the present state of affairs.”

“Nothing,” said Oswald. “Fire ahead.”

“Can you hear me distinctly? I find you almost inaudible.”

Remonstrances with the exchange led after a time to slightly improved communications.

“You were saying something about a fire?” said Mr. Sycamore.

“I said nothing about a fire. You were saying something about the children?”

“Well, well. Things are in a very confused state, Mr. Sydenham. I hope you mean to take hold of their education. These children are not being educated, they are being fought over.”

“Who’s thinking over them?”

“No one. But the Misses Stubland and Lady Charlotte are fighting over them.... F.I.G.H.T.I.N.G. I want _you_ to think over them.... You—yes.... Think, yes. Both clever children. Great waste if they are not properly educated.... Matters are really urgent. I have been with Lady Charlotte today. You know she kidnapped them?”

“Kidnapped?”

A bright girlish voice, an essentially happy voice, cut into the conversation at this point. “Three minutes _up_,” it said.

Empire-building language fell from Oswald. In some obscure way this feminine intervention was swept aside, and talk was resumed with Mr. Sycamore.

It continued to be a fragmentary talk, and for a time the burthen of some unknown lady complaining to an unknown friend about the behaviour of a third unknown named George, stated to lack “gumption,” interwove with the main theme. But Mr. Sycamore did succeed in conveying to Oswald a sense of urgency about the welfare of his two charges. Immediate attention was demanded. They were being neglected. The girl was ill. “I would like to talk it over with you as soon as possible,” said Mr. Sycamore.

“Can you come and breakfast here at eight?” said the man from the tropics.

“Half past nine,” said the Londoner, and the talk closed.

The talk ended, but for a time the bell of Oswald’s telephone remained in an agitated state, giving little nervous rings at intervals. When he answered these the exchange said “Number please,” and when he said, “You rang _me_,” the exchange said, “Oh, no! we didn’t....”

“An empire,” whispered Oswald, sitting on the edge of his bed, “which cannot even run a telephone service efficiently....”

“Education....”

He tried to recall his last speech at the club. Had he ranted? What had they thought of it? What precisely had he said? While they sat and talked _muck_—his memory was unpleasantly insistent upon that “_muck_”—the sands ran out of the hour-glass, a new generation grew up.

Had he said that? That was the point of it all—about the new generation. A new generation was growing up and we were doing nothing to make it wiser, more efficient, to give it a broader outlook than the generation that had blundered into and blundered through the Boer war. Had he said that? That was what he ought to have said.

§ 6

For a long time he sat on his bed, blank-minded and too tired to finish undressing. He got to bed at last. But not to sleep. He found that the talk in the club had disturbed his mind almost unendurably. It had pointed and endorsed everything that he had been trying not to think about the old country. Now, too weary and too excited to sleep, he turned over and over again, unprofitably and unprogressively, the tangled impressions of his return to England.

How many millions of such hours of restless questioning must have been spent by wakeful Englishmen in the dozen years between the Boer war and the Great war; how many nocturnally scheming brains must have explored the complicated maze of national dangers, national ambitions, and national ineptitude! If “Wake up, England,” sowed no great harvest of change in the daylight, it did at any rate produce large phantom crops at night. He argued with Walsall over and over again, sometimes wide awake and close to the point, sometimes drowsily with the discussion becoming vague and strangely misshapen and incoherent. Was Walsall right? Was it impossible to change the nature and quality of a people? Must we English always be laggards in peace and blunderers in war? Were our achievements accidents, and our failures essential? Was slackness in our blood? Surely a great effort might accomplish much, a great effort to reorganize political life, to improve national education, to make the press a better instrument of public thought and criticism. To which Walsall answered again with, “How can a democratic community take an intelligent interest in its destinies unless it is educated, and how can it educate itself unless it takes an intelligent interest in its destinies?”

Oswald groaned and turned over in bed.

Thought passed by insensible degrees into dreaming and dreaming shallowed again to wakefulness. Always he seemed to be arguing with Walsall and the bishop for education and effort; nevertheless, now vaguely apprehended as an atmospheric background, now real and close, the black forest of his African nightmare was about him. Always he was struggling on and always he was hoping to see down some vista the warm gleam of daylight, the promise of the open. And Walsall, a vast forest owl with enormous spectacles, kept getting in the way, flapping hands that were really great wings at him and assuring him that there was no way out. None. “This forest is life. This forest will always be life. There is no other life. After all it isn’t such a very bad forest.” Other figures, too, came and went; a gigantic bishop sitting back in an easy chair blocked one hopeful vista, declaring that book-learning only made the lower classes discontented and mischievous, and then a stupidly contented fat man smoking a fat cigar drove in a gig athwart the line of march. He said nothing; he just drove his gig. Then somehow an automobile came in, a most hopeful means of escape, except that it had broken down; and Oswald was trying to repair it in spite of the jeering of an elderly gentleman in a white waistcoat. Suddenly the whole forest swarmed with children. There were countless children; there were just two children. Instead of a multitudinous expedition Oswald found himself alone in the black jungle with just two children, two white and stunted children who were dying for the air and light. No one had cared for them. One was ill, seriously ill. Unless the way out was found they could not live. They were Dolly’s children, his wards. But what was he to do for them?...

Then far ahead he saw that light of the great conflagration, that light that promised to be daylight and became a fire....

“Black coffee,” said Oswald during one of the wide-awake intervals. “Cigars. Talk. Over-excited.... I ought to be more careful.... I forget how flimsy I am still....

“I must get my mind off these things. I’ll talk to old Sycamore tomorrow and see about this little master Peter Stubland and his foster-sister. I’ll go into the matter thoroughly. I haven’t thought of them before.

“I wonder if the boy still takes after Dolly....

“After all,” he said, rolling over, “it’s true. Education is the big neglected duty of the time. It’s fundamental. And what am I doing? It’s just England—England all over—to let that boy be dragged up. I ought to see about him—now. I’ll go down there....

“I’ll go and stay with Aunt Charlotte for a day or so. I’ll send her a wire tomorrow.”

§ 7

The quiet but observant life of old Cashel at Chastlands was greatly enlivened by the advent of Oswald.

Signs of a grave and increasing agitation in the mind of Cashel’s mistress became evident immediately after the departure of Mr. Sycamore. Manifestly whatever that gentleman had said or done—old Cashel had been able to catch very little—had been of a highly stimulating nature. So soon as he was out of the house, Lady Charlotte abandoned her sofa and table, upsetting her tonic as she did so, and still wearing her dressing-gown and cap, proceeded to direct a hasty packing for Italy. Unwin became much agitated, and a housemaid being addressed as a “perfect fool” became a sniffing fount of tears. There was a running to and fro with trunks and tea-baskets, a ringing of bells, and minor orders were issued and countermanded; the carriage was summoned twice for an afternoon drive and twice dismissed. When at last the lace peignoir was changed for a more suitable costume in which to take tea, Lady Charlotte came so near to actual physical violence that Unwin abruptly abandoned her quest of a perfect pose for wig and cap, and her ladyship surprised and delighted Cashel with a blond curl cocked waggishly over one eye. She did not have tea until half-past five.

She talked to herself with her hard blue eyes fixed on vacancy. “I will not stay here to be insulted,” she said.

“Rampageous,” whispered Cashel on the landing. “Rumbustious. What’s it all about?”

“Cashel!” she said sharply as he was taking away the tea-things.

“M’lady.”

“Telephone to Mr. Grimes and ask him to take tickets as usual for myself and Unwin to Pallanza—for tomorrow.”

It was terrible but pleasing to have to tell her that Mr. Grimes would now certainly have gone home from his office.

“See that it is done tomorrow. Tomorrow I must catch the eleven forty-seven for Charing Cross. I shall take lunch with me in the train. A wing of chicken. A drop of claret. Perhaps a sandwich. Gentleman’s Relish or shrimp paste. And a grape or so. A mere mouthful. I shall expect you to be in attendance to help with the luggage as far as Charing Cross....”

So she was going after all.

“Like a flight,” mused Cashel. “What’s after the Old Girl?”...

He grasped the situation a little more firmly next day.

The preparations for assembling Lady Charlotte in the hall before departure were well forward at eleven o’clock, although there was no need to start for the station until the half hour. A brief telegram from Oswald received about half-past ten had greatly stimulated these activities....

Unwin, very white in the face—she always had a bilious headache when travelling was forward—and dressed in the peculiar speckled black dress and black hat that she considered most deterrent to foreign depravity, was already sitting stiffly in the hall with Lady Charlotte’s purple-coloured dressing-bag beside her, and Cashel having seen to the roll of rugs was now just glancing through the tea-basket to make sure that it was in order, when suddenly there was the flapping, rustling sound of a large woman in rapid movement upon the landing above, and Lady Charlotte appeared at the head of the stairs, all hatted, veiled and wrapped for travelling. Her face was bright white with excitement. “Unwin, I want you,” she cried. “Cashel, say I’m in bed. Say I’m ill and must not be disturbed. Say I’ve been taken ill.”

She vanished with the agility of a girl of twenty—except that the landing was of a different opinion.

The two servants heard her scuttle into her room and slam the door. There was a great moment of silence.

“Oh, _Lor’_!” Unwin rose with the sigh of a martyr, and taking the dressing-bag with her—the fittings alone were worth forty pounds—and pressing her handkerchief to her aching brow, marched upstairs.

Cashel, agape, was roused by the ringing of the front door bell. He opened to discover Mr. Oswald Sydenham with one arm in a sling and a rug upon the other.

“Hullo, Cashel,” he said. “I suppose my room isn’t occupied? My telegram here? How’s Lady Charlotte?”

“Very poorly, sir,” said Cashel. “She’s had to take in her bed, sir.”

“Pity. Anything serious?”

“A sudden attact, sir.”

“H’m. Well, tell her I’m going to inflict myself upon her for a day or so. Just take my traps in and I’ll go on with this fly to Limpsfield. Say I’ll be back to dinner.”

“Certainly, sir.”

The old man bustled out to get in the valise and Gladstone bag that constituted Oswald’s luggage. When he came into the hall again he found the visitor scrutinizing the tea-basket and the roll of rugs with his one penetrating eye in a manner that made him dread a question. But Oswald never questioned servants; on this occasion only he winked at one.

“Nothing wrong with the arm, sir?” asked old Cashel.

“Nothing,” said Oswald, still looking markedly at the symptoms of imminent travel. “H’m.”

He went out to the fly, stood ready to enter it, and then swivelled round very quickly and looked up at his aunt’s bedroom window in time to catch an instant impression of a large, anxious face regarding him.

“Ah!” said Oswald, and returned smiling grimly into the hall.

“Cashel,” he called.

“Sir?”

“Her ladyship is up. Tell her I have a few words to say to her before she goes.”

“Beg pardon, sir——”

“Look here, Cashel, you do what I tell you.”

“I’ll tell Miss Unwin, sir.”

He went upstairs, leaving Oswald still thinking over the rugs. Yes, she was _off!_ She had got everything; pointed Alpine sticks, tea-basket, travelling campstool. It must be Switzerland or Italy for the winter at least. A great yearning to see his aunt with his own eye came upon Oswald. He followed Cashel upstairs quietly but swiftly, and found him in a hasty whispered consultation with Unwin on the second landing. “Oh my ’ed’ll burst _bang_,” Unwin was saying.

“’Er ladyship, sir,” she began at the sight of Oswald.

“Ssh!” he said to her, and held her and Cashel silent with an uplifted forefinger while he listened to the sounds of a large powerful woman going to bed swiftly and violently in her clothes.

“I must go in to her, sir,” said Unwin breaking the silence. “Poor dear! It’s a _very_ sudden attact.”

The door opened and closed upon Unwin.

“Lock the door on him, you—you _Idiot!_” they heard Lady Charlotte shout—too late.

The hated and dreaded visage of Oswald appeared looking round the corner of the door into the great lady’s bedroom. Her hat had been flung aside, she was tying on an unconvincing night cap over her great blond travelling wig; her hastily assumed nightgown betrayed the agate brooch at her neck.

“How dare you, sir!” she cried at the sight of him.

“You’re not ill. You’re going to cut off to Italy this afternoon. What have you done to my Wards?”

“A lady’s sick room! Sacred, Sir! Have you no sense of decency?”

“Is it measles, Auntie?”

“Go _away_!”

“I daren’t. If I leave you alone in this country for a year or two you’re bound to get into trouble. What am I to _do_ with you?”

“Unbecoming intrusion!”

“You ought to be stopped by the Foreign Office. You’ll lead to a war with Italy.”

“Go for a doctor, Cashel,” she cried aloud in her great voice. “Go for the doctor.”

“M’lady,” very faintly from the landing.

“And countermand the station cab, Cashel,” said Oswald.

“If you do anything of the sort, Cashel!” she cried, and sitting up in bed clutched the sheets with such violence that a large spring-sided boot became visible at the foot of the bed. The great lady had gone to bed in her boots. Aunt and nephew both glared at this revelation in an astonished silence.

“How _can_ you, Auntie,” said Oswald.

“If I choose,” said Lady Charlotte. “If I choose——Oh! _Go away!_”

“Back to dinner,” said Oswald sweetly, and withdrew.

He was still pensive upon the landing when Unwin appeared to make sure that the station cab was not countermanded....

Under the circumstances he was not surprised to find on his return from The Ingle-Nook that he was now the only occupant of Chastlands. Aunt Charlotte had fled, leaving behind a note that had evidently been written before his arrival.

_My dear Nephew,—I am sorry that my arrangements for going abroad this winter, already made, prevent my welcoming you home for this uninvited and totally unexpected visit. I am sure Cashel and the other servants will take good care of you. You seem to know the way to their good graces. There are many things I should have liked to talk over with you if you had given me due and proper notice of your return as you ought to have done, instead of leaving it to a solicitor to break the glad tidings to me, followed by a sixpenny telegram. As it is, I shall just miss you. I have to go, and I cannot wait. All my arrangements are made. I suppose it is idle to expect civility from you ever or the slightest attention to the convenances. The Sydenhams have never shone in manners. Well, I hope you will take those two poor children quite out of the hands of those smoking, blaspheming, nightgown-wearing Limpsfield women. They are utterly unfit for such a responsibility. Utterly. I would not trust a pauper brat in their hands. The children require firm treatment, the girl especially, or they will be utterly spoilt. She is deceitful and dishonest, as one might expect; she gave Mrs. Pybus a very trying time indeed, catching measles deliberately and so converting the poor woman’s house into a regular hospital. I fear for her later. I have done my best for them both. No doubt you will find it all spun into a fine tale, but I trust your penetration to see through a tissue of lies, however plausible it may seem at the first blush. I am glad to think you are now to relieve me of a serious responsibility, though how a single man not related to her in the slightest degree can possibly bring up a young girl, even though illegitimate, without grave scandal, passes my poor comprehension. No doubt I am an old fashioned old fool nowadays! Thank God! I beg to be excused!_

_Your affectionate Aunt_ CHARLOTTE.

Towards the end of this note her ladyship’s highly angular handwriting betrayed by an enhanced size and considerable irregularity, a deflection from her customary calm.

§ 8

Oswald knocked for some time at the open green door of The Ingle-Nook before attracting any one’s attention. Then a small but apparently only servant appeared, a little round-faced creature who looked up hard into Oswald’s living eye—as though she didn’t quite like the other. She explained that “Miss Phyllis” was not at home, and that “Miss Phœbe mustn’t be disturved.” Miss Phœbe was working. Miss Phyllis had gone away with Mary——

“Who’s Mary?” said Oswald.

“Well, Sir, it’s Mary who always ’as been ’ere, Sir,”—to Windsor to be with Miss Joan. “And it’s orders no one’s allowed to upset Miss Phœbe when she’s writing. Not even Lady Charlotte Sydenham, Sir. I dursn’t give your name, Sir, even. I dursn’t.”

“Except,” she added reverentially, “it’s Death or a Fire.”

“You aren’t the Piano, per’aps?” she asked.

Oswald had to confess he wasn’t.

The little servant looked sorry for him.

And that was in truth the inexorable law now of The Ingle-Nook. Aunt Phœbe was taking herself very seriously—as became a Thinker whose _Stitchwoman_ papers, deep, high, and occasionally broad in thought, were running into a sale of tens of thousands. So she sat hard and close at her writing-table from half-past nine to twelve every morning, secluded and defended from all the world, correcting, musing deeply over, and occasionally reading aloud the proofs of the third series of _Stitchwoman_ papers. (Old Groombridge, the occasional gardener, used to listen outside in awe and admiration. “My word, but she do give it ’em!” old Groombridge used to say.) Oswald perceived that there was nothing to do but wait. “I’ll wait,” he said, “downstairs.”

“I suppose I ought to let you in,” said the little servant, evidently seeking advice.

“Oh, decidedly,” said Oswald, and entered the room in which he had parted from Dolly six years ago.