Part 10

“That’s all right,” I assured her, adding that she certainly had had provocation on the first occasion, and no doubt also I was not very nice to her. I was younger then and perhaps too assertive: perhaps rather offensively proud of being selected by Theodore as his daughter’s guardian.

“No you weren’t,” she said. “No one was horrid but myself. I was proud and self-righteous. But,” she added brokenly, “I have been punished.”

She began to cry and I led her into the house.

“Tell me after we have had lunch,” I said. “You must be tired and hungry.”

She said that she could eat nothing, and was as good as her word.

Throughout the meal she looked miserably, and yet with a kind of fierce wistfulness, at little Rose, who did not know in the least what to make of it—why this stranger should be here at all, why the tears rolled down her cheeks with no accompanying uproar, why she refused such delicious cheese-cakes.

A more uncomfortable meal I never ate, and all the while I was speculating as to what had happened. Could the placid George have revolted at last and left her? But that was impossible. Had he been speculating and come to disaster? More likely.

When we were left alone the story burst forth. It was not George. In a way it was worse, more damaging to her pride: it was her youngest daughter Angelica. Angelica, aged only twenty, and not even engaged, was going to have a baby.

O these babies! All the troubles and complications of the world come from them. If only they could be eliminated the globe would gradually fall back into a permanent peaceful wilderness. That was perhaps my thought during the silence that followed her announcement. But “Good Heavens!” was all that I could think to say: said, I hope, with a note of sympathy to balance the surprise.

“I came to you,” Mrs. Stratton resumed, “because poor George is so helpless, and you are a doctor and, I trust, in spite of my behaviour to you, a friend of the family—almost, in a way, one of the family.”

It was no time to repudiate the second suggestion.

“So carefully brought up as she has been!” the mother went on. “But that’s all over,” she added quickly, probably recalling her letter to me. “The thing now is to see what can be done? You will help, won’t you? You must know of some place in Paris where she could go?”

Odd how all doctors are supposed to know this, and odder, perhaps, how naturally even the most insular and irreconcilable of the censors of France turn in these times of despair to that deplorable country!

“Surely you need not exile the girl?” I said.

“The scandal would be bound to leak out at home,” she replied. “Besides, there are her sisters to think of. They must not be contaminated.”

“They don’t know, then?”

“Not yet. Certainly not.”

“Where is Angelica now?”

“She is still with us.”

“Then,” I said, “I should imagine that her sisters do know. And in any case, why contamination? They need not be corrupted by the knowledge. It might make them the more understanding, the more merciful.”

“Don’t you blame her?” Mrs. Stratton asked, as a kind of challenge.

“I blame her—yes,” I said. “I think she has been foolish: she has wronged herself and you; she has flung away treasures of pride. But you must remember that I don’t know her; I have no idea of the strength of her temptation; and in any case I cannot consider everything lost. The error is not irreparable. It is according to Nature. At its worst, apart from a criminal want of prudence, it is but an anticipation of a ceremony.”

“Then you think we should condone it? Keep her among us?”

“Within touch, most certainly,” I said. “Don’t exile her. This is when she wants kindness more than at any time in her life—this is when you have your first real opportunity to be her mother. You ought to jump at it instead of suddenly freezing into a judge.”

“But the disgrace?”

“Well, you must exercise a little discretion, of course, and do all you can to preserve her good name. Many a family has been confronted with the same problem and carried it off with success.” I had it in my mind to add that if no cupboard held a worse skeleton than an unlegalized baby there would not be much wrong with the world; but I refrained. I refrained also from reminding her of the line in “Lear”, “The gods stand up for bastards.” Mrs. Stratton could not have understood, nor was she in the mood for any levity. Indeed, I was perplexing her sufficiently, all unready as she was for such novel ideas as I had been unfolding.

“What does Stratton say?” I was moved to ask, to break her silence.

“George?--Oh, he doesn’t know about it. I wanted to see you first.”

“You must tell him,” I said. “You’ll find that he will agree with me.”

“Won’t you come back with me?” she asked. “It would all be so much easier if you would. Angelica might tell you things that she won’t tell me. I don’t mean the man’s name—no one could get that from her. I am sure you could help. It would be such a load off my mind if you would come.”

And I had of course to comply.

I could not leave instantly, and while I was making the preparations I was amused to see, out of the window, Mrs. Stratton stealthily approaching the kitchen door. She knew that Suzanne ruled there, and her mind had by no means relinquished France as an ally!

I discovered afterwards that my guess had been right. But Suzanne had as little practical sympathy as Mrs. Stratton had colloquial French, and the interview was a complete failure. There are delicacies of situation beyond Ollendorff’s range.

If Mrs. Stratton assured me once on the journey, she assured me thirty times, that she would never be able to hold up her head again.

“Nonsense!” I replied; and I was right. She is holding it fairly high still, but with far less self-righteous aloofness. Angelica’s illicit bantling, whose existence we were able to conceal from the world, did more to humanize its grandmother than anything else could have done. As for Angelica, she is now married and a respected matron, with sons and daughters born in as lawful a form of wedlock as Church and State can provide.

But that has nothing to do with my story, and I apologize for the digression. My reconciliation with the Fergussons also is not precisely in the direct line of this narrative, but having described the earlier stages of the coolness, I must be permitted to record the later.

Coming back along the Lowcester road one afternoon, I found a big car at such an angle across it that it could not be passed; and on approaching closer I discovered it to be the Fergussons’, with Lady Fergusson inside. So they had returned! I had become accustomed to looking fixedly in front of me when we had chanced to meet before they took refuge in town; but the present situation would have rendered such a manœuvre impossible, even if, directly I pulled up, the Fergussons’ chauffeur had not come to ask if I would do her Ladyship the kindness of speaking to her for a moment.

I went to the door and she extended her hand.

“Do come in for a few moments,” she said. “I want very much to speak to you.” Here she groaned.

“But—” I began. There was something very offensive, after being cast off as I had been, in the assumption that I should be ready to be taken on again whenever the relenting mood occurred to them. Nor had I shaken her hand.

She burst forthwith into tears and I entered the car. I could not (as she knew) allow her to make an exhibition of herself at the window, with the chauffeur looking on.

“Dr. Greville,” she said, “I am a very miserable woman. Don’t be hard on me. I have been punished enough.” She groaned again, among the sobs.

“Tell me as quickly as possible,” I said. “I want to get on. My rounds are not finished yet.”

“I knew you would come back this way,” she said, “and I intercepted you. It is so little that I am able to do alone. That letter, now—it was not my letter, I did not wish it, it was Sir Edmund’s. Sir Edmund was implacable, but I—I knew that blame cannot be cast like that, just on one, and Ronnie was so fascinating, how could a girl help falling in love with him? But Sir Edmund could not see it. All he could see was Rose as a temptress and the ruin of his son and his name. You know how I have to give way to him? Believe me, I have regretted it ever since, and nothing but very wicked pride—we were always so proud, we Ancasters—has kept me from trying to see you sooner. But now my pride is humbled. Poor Sir Edmund—I don’t know what he would say if he knew I was talking to you like this—poor Sir Edmund is ill, and you must forgive us for his sake. Say you will. No doctor but you inspires any confidence. We have tried so many.”

“I forgave you long ago,” I said.

“Then you will come to the Hall again? Quickly? Will you? Sir Edmund is ill. I don’t know what it is, but something grave, something new and mysterious. Never mind about me”—she groaned again—“but he, poor darling! he must be looked after, he must be healed. You will do this for my sake? You will come to us again?”

“I must think about it,” I said. “It is not quite as simple as you seem to suppose. I have been very oddly treated in a very public manner.”

“I know you’ll come,” she cried, as I returned to my car. “You have such a good heart and I am so penitent.”

That evening I was sitting over my cigar after dinner—Rose having gone to bed—when the servant announced a gentleman to see me.

“What name?” I asked, for I was enjoying some well-earned repose, and indiscriminate callers had to be guarded against; but before she could reply a muffled-up figure was in the room. Removing his scarf, cap and goggles, he revealed himself as Sir Edmund Fergusson.

“You must excuse this visit,” he began nervously, “after what has happened, but it has been on my mind for a long while to explain.”

“Won’t you sit down?” I said.

“You are very kind,” he replied, taking a seat, while a spasm of pain crossed his heavy features. “The fact is—but that has nothing to do with it. What I want to do is to explain. This unhappy business of Ronnie has broken us up, but I want you to know—” He broke off and again a twinge took him.

“Would you mind if I were to light my pipe?” he asked.

I offered him cigars.

“You are too kind,” he said, taking one. “More than I deserve really. But—”—he lit it—“you, well, the best way I can put it is perhaps to say you are not a married man.”

I agreed.

“And not being married, you, well—in point of fact, you can’t know. A man, especially as he gets on in years, has to make concessions to his wife. All life is compromise, as you know, and married life in particular. A certain happiness, or, at any rate, peace, must be secured, and compromise is the highroad to it—in fact, the only road. But it is absurd for me to be saying all this, because of course you know Lady Fergusson.”

I knew her well, but I knew also that in that _ménage_ the grey mare was not the better animal; it was Sir Edmund who ruled, and any compromise that was made came from his wife’s side.

He may suddenly have been aware that some such thoughts were passing in my mind, for he added, not without a slight flush, “Of course, you have not seen her lately”—as though during the few months of our estrangement both her character and his own had undergone one of those changes that happen only in tracts and fairy tales. He even had the hardihood to add, “You’ll notice a great difference when,” but stumbled over it and went on quickly—“that is, if you ever honour us by your company again, as I most cordially hope you will.

“For,” he continued more fluently, “it is about that that I have come; about that, and our letter to you, which I have been regretting ever since it was sent. What I want to make clear—without any disloyalty, mind, to Lady Fergusson—is that that letter was written when we were in a highly nervous state and was written almost wholly at her Ladyship’s wish. You recall what I said about compromise?

“Well, my dear doctor,” he said, “my dear Greville, if you will permit me to call you that once more—for the sake of harmony, for the sake of that peace which must dominate a home, I consented to write that letter and to do many other things which were a natural consequence of it. When your reply came, I recognized the good sense of it at once; I knew, as any man of the world must know, that my poor boy cannot be wholly absolved, that it takes two to make an elopement no less than a marriage. I knew—but women have not our penetration and common reasonableness, our sagacity, shall I say?

“Lady Fergusson,” he continued, “could not take that view, and compromise made me, in that moment of stress and disaster, when the Hall and all it stood for seemed to be toppling about us like a house of cards, compromise made me as wax in her hands.

“I have come now, in humility and shame, to apologize for my share of this most lamentable quarrel, and to ask you, for the sake of my poor wife, to overlook it, to forget it, and once more to show your magnanimity by coming to the Hall and doing something to relieve that poor distraught creature’s pain.

“I ask nothing for myself,” he concluded. “I merely grovel. But for her sake you will come, won’t you? No one knows her symptoms as you do. In no one has she such confidence.”

I had listened to the harangue without a word, but not without many thoughts. Chiefly had I been wondering if husband and wife were in collusion, or if they were really acting independently. To this day I don’t know.

As he came to an end, he advanced to me with an extended hand, which I took.

“I will come to the Hall to-morrow,” I said. “But I should like as much publicity to be given to your new friendly attitude as to the hostile one now terminating. I count on you to let others know, as well as myself, that you have reason to be ashamed of your conduct towards me.”

“How?” he asked blankly.

“I must leave that to you,” I said.

I was relieved that the hatchet was buried, not because I had been incommoded by the feud to any great extent, but quarrels are not in my line, and this one was uncomfortable to the village. More than uncomfortable: degrading.

It was humiliating, for example, to one who would wish every one to be dependent and honest, to see the embarrassment into which some of my neighbours could be plunged when I had come suddenly upon them while they were talking with Sir Edmund or Lady Fergusson. They had to decide in a moment which side to be on, whether to acknowledge me or not. I was, of course, in the long run, of infinitely more use to them than the Hall people could be: but wealth is wealth, and position is position, and poor human nature is poor human nature and ever will be. I don’t expect it to change, but I cannot bear to be a cause of plunging it into its less admirable moods.

Our community was too small for the Hall people and the doctor to be at enmity; and a large part of a country doctor’s duty is to act as cement, a fuser of classes, and while the vendetta held how could I be this?

But if a sigh of relief went up when it was known that I had been seen to drive into the Hall gates again, no one emitted it with more genuine heartiness than the rector, who had been put in a peculiarly awkward position. For although my friend of many years’ standing, he had not, poor fellow, enough courage to take any stand in the matter. I am not blaming him. The church does not train men to take a very strong stand on such occasions, nor indeed require recruits from the ranks of the independent and outspoken. Clerics, it is true, can become approximately courageous and frank, but preferment usually precedes the operation. Your country rector or vicar keeps himself as free from trouble as possible—very wisely—and listens to all sides even if he is not a partisan of all sides.

The Fergussons were too important for our rector even to contemplate the risk of losing them. So far as his church was concerned, he was safe, as I was not an attendant; but I was on this committee and that with both Sir Edmund and himself; we were all three of us governors of the almshouses. I had brought the rector’s numerous children into the world; I was even godfather to one of them. The rector was continually coming to me for advice. My usefulness was as necessary to him, or at any rate as comforting, as the Hall’s prestige, patronage and port.

Both of us he had, of course, held reprehensible in a very high degree for the effect on his parishioners of the defiance of morality involved in Ronnie and Rose’s escapade. He blamed the Fergussons for providing a Ronnie, and me for my association, although so vicarious, with Rose. How could he expect his simple flock to keep in the straight path, he asked, if the seventh commandment was treated with such contempt by the sons and daughters of the rich and exalted? He felt that his stewardship was under a cloud, even though Ronnie was merely a visitor among us from India and Rose from Wilton Place. Both had been children under him, when he was young and far more energetic than now. If they had weakened and fallen, was it not a reflection on his own zeal?

Mrs. O’Gorman told me something of the good man’s line of self-torturing argument when I called on her one day, for he did not himself dare to present the case to me.

“What do you think the old fellow’s saying now?” she said. “He’s saying that if any of the husbands and wives in his congregation—Joe Smithers, for example, and Alice Leith—were to bolt together for the bad motive, he’d have not a word to reply to them if they were to say they did it because Captain Fergusson and Mrs. Holt had made a break.

“‘Rubbish! my dear sir,’ I said to him. ‘People don’t argue like that; at least not honestly: only for effect. And people don’t wait for examples; they do what they want if they have the courage, but for the most part they do nothing at all, because they’re cowards.’

“It takes more courage, I told him, to do what Captain Fergusson and Mrs. Holt have done than to resist temptations; and my own belief is that no temptation worth the name ever is resisted. It’s only resisted when it’s pretending to be strong. Passion isn’t resisted; but mercifully there’s very little of it in England. What we call passion is usually a mixture of a certain amount of loneliness and a certain amount of curiosity and a certain amount of appetite and a tremendous desire to escape from what one is doing and have an adventure. But passion, burning hot and self-sacrificing—there’s very little!

“The rector,” she went on, “actually had the nerve to congratulate himself on the good conduct of the parish. He seemed to think it’s due to his sermons. I put him right. ‘My dear man,’ I said, ‘it’s not your sermons; it’s the want of opportunity.’”

“You’re so uncompromising, Mrs. O’Gorman,” I said. “And you put into speech what other people only dare to think, and sometimes not even that. It’s a great privilege to be Irish.”

“Well,” she said, “all I hope is that that poor child of yours is happier with her soldier than she ever was with her solicitor.”

“Barrister,” I corrected.

“Barrister,” she said. “I knew he was a barrister but I wanted to be alliterative. Don’t forget that my father was a scholar and a poet, and he taught us to make phrases.”

* * * * *

Rose—the older Rose—used to write regularly. They were living at Kwala Lumpur, in the Straits Settlements, and Ronnie was doing well with rubber. He would never be really strong again, but they seemed to be happy. I wrote regularly in reply and sent news of Rose the less, whose perplexity about her mother’s disappearance and the change of home was no longer acute. In the first instance Eustace had told her that her mother had gone away across the sea, and left it vaguely there. To a child of five such voyages may seem natural.

“What message shall I give to your mother?” I wanted to ask, but I never did; nor did Rose send any message to her daughter. It seemed better to let the tie relax and gradually cease to be. Rose was never one to ask for things “both ways.”

Eustace meanwhile was still in the Argentine, and it was three years before he returned to England. His work at Buenos Aires had led to various profitable ventures into which he had been glad to throw himself as he shrank more and more from the idea of resuming life in London. The house in Wilton Place being let furnished at a high rent, and Rose being safe with me, why should he return? The hymnist may ask, with an outraged wonderment in his voice, “Can a mother’s tender care cease towards the child she bare?” but my experience is that it can do so quite easily. I have watched it in the process. As for a father’s tender care for the child he engendered, that often never begins to exist at all. Eustace, at any rate, endured separation from his daughter with exemplary fortitude.

At the end of three years he was ready, however, to face the music again, and a letter arrived saying that he would come down for the week-end to see Rose and talk things over.

He duly arrived, very grey, but looking strong and hard and handsome. He watched Rose very carefully at lunch, but seemed to have no wish to be alone with her—almost a fear that he might have to be. Rose studied him gravely, too, but merely answered his questions and volunteered nothing. I have had all my life only one rule of conduct with regard to children, and that is to treat them as if they were grown up; I ask their advice, consult with them, even conspire; and great has been my reward in consequence. But Eustace was one of those men who too consciously come down a peg or two with the young, and Rose was made uneasy. She disappointed him by her ignorance of the Argentine and expressed no interest when her father told her that in sailors’ language Buenos Aires became Bows and Arrows.

I had been troubled by the fear that he would want to take Rose away and try the experiment of being a father to her: but it was a false alarm. Once again I had been guilty of the folly of anticipating disaster—a foible to which human nature is ever too prone.

Eustace had many plans, but they did not embrace any intimate association with his flesh and blood. Having satisfied himself of my genuine desire to keep Rose, he told me some of them. He was selling most of the Wilton Place furniture, keeping only enough for a small service flat. He would spend most of his week-ends in the Dormy House at Bellingdon (what golf and tobacco can do for bachelors, widowers and the separated, no pen can ever compute!), but would like to come down to me occasionally, if I had no objection.

“I don’t think I am the best companion for a child of Rose’s age,” he said. “When she is older I hope that she may come and live with me, but just now I am both unsettled and unhappy and I should not be able to give her sufficient attention. She should go to school, I think, and then part at least of the holidays—the summer holidays—she and I could spend together by the sea. I might do a little sailing.”

Of the other Rose he said nothing. Nor did I mention her. But Rose the less was like enough to her mother (her double in expression, in certain moods) for him inevitably to have her in his thoughts whenever the child was present. Except at meals, however, she was careful to be absent.

* * * * *