Part 2

He put back the receiver—and was astonished at his emotion. The force of his feelings shocked him. He had imagined himself past caring for anything very much. His life was so easy—so well ordered—so few demands were made upon him, except for money—and those were easily met. There was nothing to disturb him—nothing to excite him—except perhaps now and then a rather bigger venture than usual in the city—which as a rule meant more money (he was lucky) with which to buy china, glass, prints, anything he liked, and to his manifold likes his room testified. His house was beautiful and the things in it were chosen for their beauty. For these things he had come to care because he had been left alone in the world. He liked to think of himself as neglected. He had felt for his sister a deep affection and she had chosen to marry and leave him.

He couldn’t compete for her love. He never competed. Even as a collector he had suffered from this amiable inability to assert himself. Now he deputed others less sensitive to buy for him. In his young days, before he had gone to America, he remembered at an auction losing a vase he had particularly wanted. He had allowed himself to be outbidden by a girl with wide, grey eyes—who wore dogskin gloves. He could have outbidden her, but something had moved him to pity. Her gloves probably—they betrayed such a lack of social knowledge. It was a blue vase he would have bought. He loved the colour of it—the feel of it. She could have known nothing of the feel of it, for she held it in gloved hands, for which lack of feeling and understanding he pitied her—pitied her ignorance. She held the vase upside down to look at the mark: even about that she was undecided—or else she was short-sighted, which probability the clearness of her eyes questioned. Having examined the mark, she handed the vase back to the man from whom she had taken it and sharply bid a figure to which Marcus could have gone if he had wished. But he had not. So the vase became hers and she looked him straight in the eyes—and her eyes said “Beaten!”

“Goth!” thought Marcus as he recalled the scene. “She held the vase in gloved hands. Vandal—nice grey-eyed, clean, ignorant woman—” But he had thought of her oftener than he knew in those days, bemuse for a certain time he had thought of her every time he had seen a woman whose eyes were not grey.

Marcus, thinking now only of his sister, walked to a mirror that hung on the wall between two windows and looked at himself anxiously. Would she find him changed? At forty-six he was bound to look different, a little grey, of course. That did not matter, so long as she was not grey. He lit a cigarette; then put it down unsmoked, remembering that as a girl she had hated the smell of tobacco. Then he went to the window and ran up the blind; then pulled it down again halfway: not too strong a light, he decided; and pulled all the blinds down halfway. It would be kinder to Sibyl. Or should he pull them right up and face the worst? Leave her to face the light? A taxi stopped in the street below. It was absurd, but he was too nervous to go down and meet her and he counted the seconds it would take Pillar to get upstairs, to open the door. One! He must have been waiting in the hall. Supposing she were grey-haired, old, and wrinkled—or fat—? How should he keep it from her that he was shocked, distressed, pained? The door opened and in a moment two arms were round his neck. He almost said, “Where is your mother?”—was delighted he should almost have said it; wished he had really said it. What prettier compliment could he have paid this delightful being he held in his arms?

She was still young—still brown-haired—still impulsive. He held her at arm’s length—Still in love with Eustace! He could see that: no woman remains so young who is not in love.

“Marcus, Marcus, you dear funny old thing!”

“Why funny?” he asked, gently disengaging himself from her arms; “let me look at you again.”

With a feeling of apprehension he knew to be absurd, he looked again, gaining courage as he looked. Had he overestimated the youthfulness of her appearance? Did not her pallor detract just a little from the radiance that had been her greatest beauty? Had he missed wrinkles? Yes, one or two—finely drawn, put in with a light hand, emphasizing only the passage of smiles—nothing more. If she had lost anything in looks she had gained much in expression. He might have left the blinds up. Her eyes were large. There were women he knew whose eyes got smaller as they grew older; that he could not have borne. Sibyl’s eyes were just as they had always been. They had lost naturally something of their look of childlike questioning. That he did not mind. The childlike woman he had long ceased to admire. He read here true womanliness; a depth of real understanding, and a certain knowledge of the big things in life—things that mattered.

“Sit down,” he said, and he drew her down on to the sofa beside him. “She looked like a rose, did she?”

“My Diana?”

Marcus nodded. “Pillar saw her.”

“Did he say she looked like a rose? Well, then it must have been very evident.”

“Not necessarily,” said Marcus, unconsciously championing Pillar. Not that he altogether trusted Pillar’s taste. He had shown in the Louvre, Marcus remembered, a weakness for Rubens’s women. He might have admired the consummate technique of a great master while deploring a certain coarseness in his choice of subjects, but he had not done so—

“Is she pretty?” asked Marcus.

“She’s rather delicious.”

“When is she coming to see me?”

“At any moment, but she’s a will-o’-the-wisp. She comes and goes as she wills.”

“She’s slight, then?”

“Oh, slight! You could pull her through a ring.”

Marcus was glad of that.

“Now tell me about your dear self, Marcus.”

There was so little to tell, he said.

“Not when everything interests me—Give me a cigarette.”

“But you used not to—” he began, handing her his cigarette case.

“Smoke? No—but Eustace likes me to sit with him, and we smoke—you get to like it in hot climates.”

“I shouldn’t have let you smoke if you had been mine.”

“No?” she laughed gently. “Dear old Marcus!”

Looking at Sibyl, and finding her so perfectly satisfying to his artistic sense, he fell to wondering what Diana was really like. And whom she was like? He dared not ask. He had no wish to hear she was like her father. She could not be like her mother or the papers would be bound to have got hold of it. He was glad they hadn’t—but still girls far less pretty _were_ advertised.

“I’m so glad,” said Sibyl; “it shows you won’t let Diana.”

“Smoke? No, certainly not.”

“You don’t know Diana—I must tell you about her—a little about her, without saying she is like her father, is that it?” She laughed—how gay she was! When she had told him that little, omitting that much, she asked: “Does she sound nice?” And Marcus, smiling, said she sounded delicious.

“She is.”

Marcus laughed; this was the old Sibyl back again, with all her enthusiasms, the same charming companion she had been as a girl. Because of that charm of hers, he liked to think, he had not married.

“Sibyl, is she like you?” he asked impatiently.

“Yes.”

He breathed again.

“And I so wanted her to be like her father,” she added.

“I suppose so—Is his sister—the one you call Elsie—married?”

“No.”

“You said she had no children—”

“She hasn’t.”

“But naturally. It was hardly necessary to say it, was it?”

And Sibyl laughed. Marcus needed just what she was going to give him, a disturbing young thing to live with him. Marcus dreaded it, although he would not have said so because of that sister he so disliked, who wanted Diana.

“I won’t have Diana running off whenever Miss Carston chooses to send for her. That I think you understand.”

“But there will be times when you will want to get rid of her. You won’t want to give up travelling, will you?”

“Couldn’t she come with me?”

“You can’t conceive, dear, the trouble a woman is travelling. You would hate to have to think of some one else—another place to find in a crowded train—another person’s luggage to look after—another ticket to lose—you would hate it.”

“Then I shan’t travel.”

“But surely it would be easier to send Diana to Elsie than to do that.”

“I detest that woman—”

“She has—nice eyes. You are a dear old thing, Marcus, and not a bit changed.”

“I never change.”

Marcus waited all day. Diana did not come. He was disappointed. It showed a want of reverence for the older on the part of the younger generation. At last he went to bed with a volume of Rabelais to read (in order to keep up his French). He read until he grew sleepy. He put out the light and slept until a flash of light awoke him and he wondered—What was this thing sitting on the end of his bed in white—a being so slim and so exquisite!

“Darling! the same old Marcus,” the being exclaimed,—“so sleepy and I woke him up. I couldn’t wait to see him—such years since we met!”

“Sibyl!” he murmured.

“Not this time, it’s Diana—is she like Sibyl? I am so glad—well, darling, talk!”

The slim being sat on his bed and sticking out her feet, on which twin shoe-buckles twinkled, urged him to amuse her. He dreaded “This little pig went to market” played through the bedclothes. He saw Diana eyeing the spot where she must know his toes were bound to be.

“How did you get here?” he asked.

“Pillar opened wide the portal and we walked in. He wasn’t in the least surprised.”

“Not surprised?”

“Not in the least. He said we might turn up the carpet and dance—if we liked. He offered us a gramaphone—his own—to dance to.”

“My dear Diana, you ought to be in bed.”

“Ought? Why?”

“It’s time.”

“What is he reading?” She put out her hand. He seized the book.

“A bedside classic, is it?”

He put it under his pillow.

“You look nice in bed,” she said softly, “but not a bit what I expected.”

“I am not what I was, of course,” he said hastily.

“Are you a Once Was? Poor darling—does it hurt? Do you like my frock?”

He said he liked it—enormously.

“And my shoes?”

He nodded.

“Mother says I get my slim feet from you.”

“Oh, does she? Do go home, my child. How are you going home?”

“Where are your slippers?” She dived down.

“You’ve kicked them under the bed,” he moaned; “they _were_ there.”

“I never touched them; here they are!” She slipped her feet into them; huge, red morocco slippers they were. Pillar would have remembered where they had been bought, the day on which they had been bought, and what kind of a woman she was who had passed at the moment of buying. They must have been the only size left in the bazaar. Diana sat on the edge of the bed again and put out her feet, the slippers swinging like pendulums from the tips of her toes. “Mummy must retract her words—she spoke in her haste—Marcus, my Once Was, I’ve been dancing—did you ever dance?”

“Dear child, do go, who is taking you home?”

“Six people. Pillar is taking care of them downstairs—Well, if you insist, I suppose I must. I shall love to stay with you. You don’t mind my coming like this—do you? Look at me! D’you like me?”

She was exactly—in theory—what Marcus would have liked another man’s niece to be, slight, graceful, with just that amount of assurance he found right in woman; but one does not always want one’s theories to live with one.

When he awoke a few hours later, he was firmly convinced he had dreamed and had dreamed pleasantly enough, and he closed his eyes to dream again; but the dream had vanished. Pillar remained. He brought him his tea, pulled up the blinds, put his things in order, stooped and picked up from the floor something that sparkled and laid it down on the dressing-table.

When he had gone Marcus jumped out of bed, went to the dressing-table and saw lying upon it a small stone of glittering paste. He had not dreamed then. He was glad—in a way. Diana would be a disturbing element in a quiet life—distracting, perhaps, rather than disturbing.

IV

_A mother may laugh with a master; she goes and the joke goes with her: the boy stays behind._

Sibyl Carston, having arranged things entirely to her satisfaction, straightway made preparations to join her husband in that far-off dependency. The preparations were quickly made. She went down to see Dick at school: walked with him through cool cloisters, out into the sun; paced close-shaven lawns; drank in the beauty of it all and expressed a hope that it was sinking into the soul of her son.

“Oh, rather,” said the son, a little surprised that his soul should be discussed. He realized the occasion was a special one, otherwise it was the sort of thing you didn’t talk about. It was there all right, his soul, he supposed. It stirred to the sound of beautiful music; also when he read in history of deeds of valour!—you bet it did—at the greatness of England in general; at the left-hand bowling of one master in particular. It was all there, but he didn’t want to talk about it.

“I understand, darling,” said his mother, “but don’t stifle it.”

He wouldn’t, rather not. “But, I say, what’s this about Diana and this London business and Aunt Elsie? Rough on her, isn’t it?”

“No, darling, I don’t think so. I want Diana to have some fun.”

“There’s lots at Aunt Elsie’s. There are the dogs, they’re good fun, and the rabbits, and the farm. There’s always something to do there. Aunt Elsie is jolly good fun, isn’t she?”

“So is Uncle Marcus.”

“Is he?” This doubtfully.

“He’s my brother, darling.”

“Oh, I see. I suppose you are bound in a kind of way to think him funny then—you like him in a way.”

“Very much.”

“Aunt Elsie doesn’t.”

“She has never seen him.”

“She jolly well doesn’t want to either.”

“Dick, darling, you will take care of Diana, won’t you?” said his mother, changing the subject: it was so difficult to keep to any subject with the good-bye looming in the near distance.

Any one who says good-bye to the child she loves for a long time (and a year to a mother is an eternity) drinks deep of the cup of self-sacrifice. Sibyl’s one thought was that Dick should not know what she was suffering. Of course he knew: but if it were her business—as mother—to bridge the distance across the sea, to talk of the near days when they should be together again, it was his—as son—to pretend he believed her. He assured her it was no distance: he didn’t mind: it happened to lots of boys: it was all right.

“You will take care of Diana?” she repeated—readjusting the distance.

“Yes, rather; you don’t want her to marry while you’re away, I suppose?—because I don’t quite see how I should manage that.”

“I don’t want her to marry while I’m away, of course, although I hope she may some day.”

“Taboret Major admires her so, I thought I would just ask.”

“He would be young to marry, wouldn’t he?”

“Well, so would she—anyway, he wouldn’t like me to talk about his private affairs, so don’t say anything about it. And, I say, if you do see him, I think you’d better not speak to him at all; he doesn’t like people speaking to him. He’s going to be a great writer—he thinks.”

Sibyl promised she wouldn’t speak to Taboret Major, but Mr. Wane she must see. Mr. Wane was Dick’s house-master, and Dick allowed he was very fairly decent. But Dick had started early in life with prejudices against masters and it was difficult to overcome them. When he had come back from his first term at a private school, he had resented with the whole force of his small being the injustice of being given a holiday task. Until he had got home he hadn’t known the beastly thing had come with him. The perfidy of the master had embittered him. “How could he have wished me a happy holiday when he knew all the time that he had given me this beastly thing to do?” he had asked.

It was a difficult question to answer. Masters must answer it for themselves—at that day when they too must answer questions: not only ask them.

“Oh, yes, you must see old Wane,” Dick admitted.

“We will walk about a little first—and talk—there is so much to say—isn’t there?” said his mother.

Dick nodded: she tightened the pressure of her arm on his, and it spoke volumes. He kicked at the little pebbles in the path, anything seemed to help. “How high do you suppose that tree is?” he asked. “It’s awfully old.”

The sun was in his mother’s eyes, she couldn’t see. Neither could he, but he knew; it was sixty feet high, so it wasn’t quite a fair question, was it?

“Not quite fair, my Dick.”

So much wasn’t quite fair.

If you can’t talk you can always eat an ice, at least you can if you are a boy. Sibyl suggested it. “Good business,” said Dick.

The ice was a help—a still greater help, two ices. They seemed to help the swallowing part of the business and good-byes largely consist of that. Then Sibyl went to see Mr. Wane and Dick waited outside—hoping she wouldn’t do anything funny—or try to make the old man laugh. If Sibyl had been, as a mother, a little less pretty and charming, it is possible Dick would have been—as a boy—a little less forward for his age, and might have been possessed of a character that was less surprising in its strength to his house-master. It is possible.

Mr. Wane was a just man and honourable, but perhaps, to convince himself that Dick’s mother had dimples, he may have emphasized a little more than he need have done certain things that had been “curiously brought to his notice” about Dick. A certain sterling honesty of purpose—unusual in so young a boy—Yes, they were there! Two of them, one on each side of her mouth. A very pretty mouth—a mouth that told of a certain fastidiousness of character that appealed to Mr. Wane. He only needed to give one or two instances, which bore out what he had said about Dick’s character, and a depth he had suspected, in the eyes of Dick’s mother, he found and fathomed.

“Show me a boy’s mother!” he was wont to say.

Dick had shown him a pretty mother, and had waited patiently outside while she talked about him! At last she joined him. Old Wane came out with her and he was laughing, but he seemed all right, _otherwise_.

Dick and his mother walked back through the cool cloisters, out into the sun and over close-shaven lawns. “Point out to your mother,” Mr. Wane had said, “architectural features of interest, my boy!” And Dick proceeded to do it. “That gate, see? It was built—I don’t know when—in the year, I don’t know what—by—I don’t know who,”—and his mother was duly impressed. To pay for this knowledge and other things there must be spent years in hot climates. Money must be saved so that when Dick was grown to be a man he should look back to this time as the happiest in his life. If all this and the sense of its past should sink into his soul, it must help to make him one of England’s proudest sons.

At the railway station they parted, and Sibyl watched till she could no longer see her small pink-faced son, who was growing, for all his smallness—so big, so tall, so reserved.

After Dick’s mother had left him, an uncomfortable way all visiting mothers have, Dick, unconscious of that curious nobility of character that Mr. Wane, somewhat to his own surprise, had endowed him with, felt very lonely. He hated islands, beastly far-off islands, rotten places for mothers to go to—what was the matter with England? He asked Taboret Major, and Taboret Major said, “Nothing, absolutely nothing—England was all right.” And he and Dick walked down to the cricket fields (their England) and it was all right.

Mrs. Wane, who had lately been brought to bed of her third son, was propped up on her pillows and Mr. Wane was sitting beside her. That he had something on his mind she knew. Mothers always upset him: they upset boys too; being altogether upsetting things.

“He _is_ a very nice boy—a _very_ nice boy—a _particularly_ nice boy, I should say,” he said thoughtfully.

He had said it three times, so Mrs. Wane put out her hand and closing it on his said—“Was she so very charming and attractive?” And Mr. Wane laughed, for in spite of what Dick knew to the contrary, “old Wane” could see a joke, and that joke against himself.

“You dear!” he said to his wife, and she answered: “He _is_ a nice boy—a _very_ nice boy—a _particularly_ nice boy—and there’s another just as nice—and you might tell his mother so without its causing you any after pricks of conscience, or remorse.” And she looked towards the cradle in which slept profoundly Wane Minimus.

“He’s very good and quiet,” admitted his father.

“He knows perhaps,” said his mother, “that his father is one from whom it is supposed the secrets of no small boy can be hid. By instinct he knows that: later on I shall tell him that he need not be quite so good, or so quiet; that although as a schoolmaster it is your bounden duty to know the secrets of all small schoolboys, as a father you are just as blind—and just as weak as any other well-dispositioned father. It is in order to make schoolmasters human that mothers marry them—there could be no other reason. Now tell me all about Carston’s mother and just what it was you said to her about him?”

That night, as Mr. Wane undressed, he was still a little uneasy.

“He is a _particularly_ nice boy,” he murmured; but this it was that rankled—Barker’s mother had been down, too, and Barker was a particularly nice boy—he had faults, of course, so had Dick—but he had told Barker’s mother of Barker’s faults. He had not spared her: nor had he cared whether she had dimples or not—perhaps because she had not.

Before he got into bed he thanked God for the inestimable gift of a good wife—and he meant it; and of an understanding wife—he meant that too; and of a beautiful wife—he meant that too—in the highest sense.

V

_If my sister have a child then am I straightway an uncle, and who shall save me?_

When Diana took up her abode in the house of her uncle, she arrived late, dressed, and went out again to dinner. That was not how Marcus would have had her arrive. She must understand that order was the keynote of his establishment. How otherwise could he expect to keep so excellent a housekeeper as Mrs. Oven? Pillar, too, must be considered. She must state definitely when she would be in to dinner and when not.

“I was not,” she said later, when taxed, “definitely not.”

Marcus dined alone. As he came downstairs dressed for dinner, he met a housemaid going up, with a glass of milk on a tray. On the tray there was also a plate, on the plate there was a banana, and beside the banana lay glistening a halfpenny bun. The meal of some one’s particular choosing, he should say. In no other way could it have found its way upstairs in his house. But whose meal was it?

That he had two housemaids he knew. He saw evidence of their being in the brightness of the brasses, the polish of the furniture, but he hardly knew them apart. The bun-bearer was one of them. He went on his way deploring that in his house there was no back staircase. But for whom could a vagrant banana be?

Tentatively he put the question to Pillar, as ashamed to ask it as Pillar was to answer it. Pillar murmured something about a mischance, and Mr. Maitland was quick to admit it. It was certainly an accident meeting the banana on the stairs; but the meal itself remained unexplained, and inexcused; it must have been predestined. Then it struck him that Diana must have brought a maid. It was quite right she should. He might have guessed it. But a maid who lived on buns and bananas, could she be efficient?

Marcus dined uncomfortably. The dinner seemed less good than usual. Gradually it was borne in upon him that it must be Mrs. Oven who was in bed and who was feeding on buns and bananas. She had lost her taste, her sense, her gastronomic taste—her sense of taste. Everything!