Part 14

He looked clean through Frederic and made no sign of recognition, but passed on with his heavy rolling stride. Frederic fell in by his side like a terrier trying to attract the attention of a Newfoundland.

"I wonder what they've said to him. I suppose he's devilish angry."

And he fell to counting up his income and his debts, and wondering exactly how cheaply he could live in lodgings.

They walked for about half a mile in that fashion and it was Frederic who broke the silence.

"I didn't mean to leave you like that. I meant to have it all out in one grand scene. I didn't jib at it. I'm not a coward. Only suddenly it seemed to me so absurdly melodramatic. I couldn't stand it so I cleared out . . ."

"I don't think any explanation is necessary," replied Francis in a curious toneless voice.

"By George! He _is_ angry!" thought Frederic.

"I only want to know one thing," said Francis. "Did you seduce the young woman with a promise of marriage?"

Frederic stole a glance at his father. It was such an odd question coming from him!

"There was never anything said of marriage from beginning to end. There never is in these cases. It's so casual, you know. It seems to me jolly unfair that it should have the same result as when you are in dead earnest . . ."

"Silence."

"Sorry."

They walked on for a quarter of a mile.

"Does anybody know?"

"Only our two selves, Annie and her mother--oh! and Annette."

"Annette!"

Francis was really angry. The thing had touched his new affection, the treasure of his life, and by that test he saw it in its ugliness and sordidness. For the first time he was wholly human. His one thought was to protect Annette.

"Are you going to marry this girl?" he asked.

"No."

"Are you going to provide for her?"

"I'll do my best."

"After this do you expect me to allow you to stay in my house?"

"I'll clear out if you like."

"I do like."

"Very well then. Only you lose the right to interfere in the matter, or in my affairs in any way."

"I never have interfered in your affairs."

"No. . . . You'll let me come and see my mother?"

That brought Francis up short. (Frederic knew it would.) Frederic was his mother's favourite. His absence from the house or presence in it made an extraordinary difference to her mood. Lately she had grown very jealous of Annette. . . . Francis fumbled for some means of withdrawing the decree of banishment, and he said a little pompously:

"The young woman told me that she was only anxious to get away. I must help her to do that."

"I can't let you do that."

"I must."

"I'm not going to have you interfering . . ."

"You will not marry her. I can conceive of no greater misfortune befalling her than marriage with . . ."

"I quite agree," said Frederic.

"All the same I must see that she is not . . ."

"In short, you are going to connive at her immorality."

"I refuse to discuss the matter with you any further."

"I'm glad of that. I'll leave it in your hands and neither of us will say a word about it to anybody."

"No," said Francis, profoundly ashamed.

Frederic began to hum, and they walked on until they came to the Park.

Frederic said:

"I had a sort of feeling you'd take it like that. You never let us know much of what you're thinking and all that. I suppose you think I'm an infernal scoundrel. I'm not that. You can't despise me half as much as I despise myself, but what I most despise is the way I've let you take the thing out of my hands. I'm very grateful."

"If there is one thing in the world I don't want," said Francis, "it is gratitude from you."

"I knew I should say the wrong thing," replied Frederic, more to himself than to his father. They were passing the little muddy pond inhabited by a few grimy ducks and a black swan, and Frederic stopped and amused himself by throwing bits of paper to the birds, who for some moments were excited by the hope that they were bread. Francis passed on, relieved to find himself once more alone. The nervous irritation caused in him by Frederic's presence at his side had exhausted him. Victory lay with Frederic, but he felt no resentment about that. Hundreds of times in his life the words _Judgment is Mine, saith the Lord_ had been on his lips--(one of his sermons had them for text)--but now he seemed to see them in a new light and for the first time to read a real meaning into them.

He was very tired. He felt as though he had been engaged in a long, long fight with shadows, no tangible enemy, but only an evil presence.

As he passed the children's playground he saw some of his choir boys playing tipcat. He turned in through the little gate and stood watching them. They were entirely engrossed in their game, keenly excited about it, and they did not notice him. Their cheeks were aglow and their eyes were sparkling with their healthy activity, and he began to be interested in their play. An exceptionally good shot from one of the boys made him cry out "Bravo!" At once they became self-conscious and uneasy. He tried to talk to them for a little but they assumed an unnatural spryness, and he knew that he had spoiled their game.

He went away unhappier than ever, hurried home to Fern Square and went straight to his study. There he sat in silence and suffered under the tyranny of his thoughts, which went round and round in a silly circle and would not be controlled. With tragic whimsicality he began to run the events of the day together, to merge the Lipsett and the Lawrie households, and he began to think what Mrs. Lawrie would have made of Frederic. She would not have relieved Frederic of the consequences of his folly; she would have pushed him into the morass, forced him down to the common Lipsett level or left him to drown with his paramour. The use of the word paramour struck Francis as particularly absurd, and he smiled. His dislike of Mrs. Lawrie swamped everything else. Decidedly any course of action which could seem right to her must seem wrong to him. The impression left on his mind by Mrs. Lawrie and her dark room was one of grinding effort to make life as like death as possible. To Francis life was--what? The joy of boys at play, health physical and spiritual, the struggle to reach and maintain health; colour and light and sweetness; all things that for want of any other outlet he had expressed, or sought to express, in the services in his Church. . . . The first consequence of it all had been that his wife was a querulous old woman before her time. He had faced that long ago. The second tangible consequence was this affair of Frederic's, and this also he had faced, and the worst that was demanded of him was that he should for the first time deliberately withhold a fact, a new development in his life, from his wife. There was an extraordinary ironic justice about it all. The sins of the fathers are visited upon the children for the castigation of the fathers. . . . Francis found himself on the verge of reflections so unclerical that he flung himself back, and to save himself from further thought took down his Bible. He was familiar with almost every word of it, but now to his dismay he found himself finding in it practical wisdom bearing on the brief life of man here below rather than prophesy and gorgeous promises of the life to come which should be everlasting. It was amazingly comforting to read the book in this (to him) new fashion and to let himself be excited by its call to action. He wearied a little of the savagery and dark pessimism of the Old-Testament, and turning to the Gospels found in them one stirring principle of active love, and hatred only for hypocrisy and fraud and slovenliness.

"Verily I say unto you, whosoever shall not receive the Kingdom of God as a little child shall in no wise enter therein."

He put down the Bible and took up "Tom Jones," and remembered an Irishman, a student in Dublin, who had shocked him by maintaining that Tom Jones had certainly entered into the Kingdom of God and was rewarded with an angel, to wit Sophia Western. Curiously that seemed to Francis to be something more than a profane joke.

"All the same," he said, "it is a long stride from Tom Jones to Frederic."

With that he fell to thinking of the student in Dublin and the men of old days, and wondered what might have become of them all and if they had fared better or worse than himself.

XVI

MRS. FOLYAT DISSECTED

_If you had married a conscientious Bishop and made_ him _live in a pig-stye--à la bonne heure!_ JOHN RUSKIN

FROM being a governess with extremely small wages Annette became a servant with no wages at all. A few months after her return to her father's house, Ada, the cook-general, married (beneath her) and she was replaced by a gnomish child of sixteen who wore short dresses and had her hair done up at the back in a tight little bun. She talked an entirely unintelligible language and delighted the Folyat family on the day after her arrival by saying to Annette, who happened to be in the kitchen:

"Eeh! Annie,"--never a "Miss" from a North-country girl--"Eeh! Annie, will ye whack t' pots on t' table while I wash me 'ead?"

Annette obliged, and "whacking the pots on the table" became the family euphemism for getting a meal ready.

Gertrude and Mary had gradually retired from active service--Mary with better excuse than Gertrude--and the whole administration of the household devolved on Annette. Nothing was said to her about it, no arrangement was made; it just happened, and nobody noticed that it had happened. From early morning when she prepared tea for her mother, to late at night when she boiled her chocolate, Annette was cooking, washing up, dusting, making the beds, &c., and her only excursions, except to church or the schools, were to the shops to buy the wherewithal to cook, wash-up, dust, &c. Nobody ever thanked her: for many weeks nobody remarked that she was doing so much, and then Serge found her dragging a heavy coal-scuttle up the stairs to his studio, relieved her of it and questioned her. After that, when he was at home, he did what he could to assist her in the heavy work.

As for Mrs. Folyat, she was a very lily, in that she toiled not neither did she spin. When she thought of it, she resented the decline and fall of her kitchen from cook-housemaid and parlourmaid to the sixteen-year-old hobgoblin, but, resentment being rather an active state of mind, she avoided it by giving no thought to the matter.

If Mrs. James Lawrie could be likened to a garden roller, Mrs. Folyat could most nearly be said to resemble a mill-stone. She was of the great and ignoble army of people who are neither good nor bad, renounce their potentialities in either direction, and drag all those to whom they cling--for cling they must if they are to remain above ground--down to the lowest depths of impotence, than which there is no worse state. She made herself comfortable with fiction and preferred everything to truth. An amazing capacity she had for compelling others to acquiesce in her self-deceptions by tickling their sentimentality so that it rose in them like a flood of treacle and slopped over their imagination and critical faculty. Had it ever occurred to her to exercise this power in print she might have become an enormously successful novelist. She was to all appearances much loved, and all her acquaintances and many of those whom she called her friends always spoke of her as "dear Mrs. Folyat." She was never unhappy, but, on the other hand, she was never happy. In all material matters she was a furious optimist. She liked eating and sleeping and gossiping and going to the theatre and reading. If she could indulge in all these seemingly harmless pleasures to the extent of her appetite it seemed to her that all was well with the world.

When she married Francis, ambition was stirred in her and satisfied. Through the long years at St. Withans she bore him children with great regularity and also with the indifference of an automaton. She regarded herself as a perfect wife because she was faithful, and as a perfect mother for no other reason than that she was a mother. When her children offended her she chastised them, when they pleased her she kissed and fondled them. On the whole she brought them up on the principle of Rabelais' Abbé: _Fais ce que vouldras._ On that principle also she conducted her own life, but, unhappily, she never wanted anything much.

She believed herself to be a Christian. She was so familiar with the Bible that it had absolutely no meaning for her. Her memory was astonishing, so that she did not need to read the book. Her childhood had been spent in an atmosphere of great piety, and she had absorbed the whole Scripture from Genesis to Revelation, through the pores of her skin rather than through her brains. What most nearly penetrated her consciousness was, curiously enough, the prophecies of the end of the world: _There shall be wars and rumours of wars_, and every now and then she indulged herself in the luxury of terror, reading signs in everything. She was extremely superstitious and would never walk under a ladder, nor sit thirteen at a table, and when a mirror was broken in the house or salt was spilt or knives were crossed, she would see in the next disaster, great or small, the infallible consequence. She was delighted when she met a hunchback in the street, for that portended luck; alarmed on an encounter with a cross-eyed woman, for that boded no good. Her mind was like a dusty empty room, the door of which was sealed with cobwebs, showing that she had not for many years passed out nor had any entered in. She was romantic and picturesque, loving the romance of fiction, and entirely oblivious of the romance of fact. Only twice in her life did she deliver herself of utterances the least philosophical, and as, being what she was, her sincerity must remain suspect, neither can be taken as giving a clue to the inward workings of her mind. These are they:

(1) Long after Gertrude was married and had lived through her little tragi-comedy she said:

"All men are beasts. I married the best of them, and he's a beast."

(2) When one of her grandchildren--(this being a digression we may skirmish up and down the alleys of time)--beset by philosophic doubt, wanted to know what was going to happen to the world she made this pronunciamento:

"The world will go on getting worse and worse until the end of everything comes, just as the Bible tells you. There shall be wars and rumours of wars, . . . &c."

At the back of her mind during all her adult life was the belief in the proximity of the end of the world, and in her inevitable translation to divine regions, where, with her husband, she would live an untroubled and unsexed life of uninterrupted habit. She took her husband with her, partly because he was a clergyman and had a prescriptive right to a heavenly mansion, but chiefly because, after so many years, she was unable to conceive of an existence without him. It was all very hazy, but it was towards this future that she turned when she said her prayers morning and evening. This she did as mechanically as she dressed and undressed, between which two operations she devoted herself to her public duties as rector's wife--Bible classes, mothers' meetings, and mission work--and to the cultivation of the nearest approach to a passion in her existence, gentility. She spent many solitary hours in the drawing-room because she could not sit with Francis in his study, as she disliked the smell of tobacco and detested his allegiance to a clay pipe. She was hardly ever known to stoop to enter the kitchen.

Withal her authority was never questioned, and she obtained from her family, their friends and acquaintances, the homage and service she expected.

She was a match-maker, and no combination of male and female was too grotesque for her. She was delighted with Gertrude's engagement. Bennett Lawrie's personality lent itself to sentimental heroics, and she was more than a little in love with him herself--as a little girl is in love with the first-comer. Minna's plurality in affairs of the heart baffled and annoyed her, for in love she always looked for constancy. She had marked down Streeten Folyat for Mary, though, beyond sending a brace of grouse every August, he showed little sign of desiring the more acquaintance of his cousins. . . . Annette and Serge she left unmated, of Serge she was afraid, and of Annette she took little account. But for Frederic she had planned many famous weddings and had laid countless traps for him. He never saw her scheming, but, going his own way, he ever evaded her until, having failed in her higher flights, she came to look nearer home. The Clibran-Bells had inherited money, and there was only one life between them and a large fortune, so that all the girls would possess some three hundred a year, while George would eventually be a man of large means, for the money came through Mrs. Clibran-Bell and avoided Mr. Clibran-Bell altogether. This sudden and unexpected outcrop of wealth occasioned great excitement in Fern Square, and the Clibran-Bells added another servant to their two. They also made a gift of two new altar-cloths and a chalice to the church. One of the altar-cloths was worked by Jessie Clibran-Bell with embroidery and appliqué. She was an accomplished needlewoman, had many little talents, and she was intelligent and pious. She was the eldest of the family and the most nearly beautiful. Her nose was straight and like her mother's, whereas her sisters had unfortunately gone to their father for their noses and got them of an unwomanly hugeness. Mrs. Folyat selected Jessie for Frederic, and soon perceived, what had escaped her before, that she was in love with him.

Jessie was two years older than Frederic. She was just a little austere in temperament, singularly pure and innocent in mind. The wave of religious fervour which follows on confirmation had endured with her, and she had secretly aspired to become a nun until the advent of Frederic. Then, having escaped the wasteful expenditure of affection upon folly that fills the adolescence of most young women, she suffered a tremendous upheaval. Living with a prying, curious family, she thrust her emotion away and tried to cover it, and affected a frivolity which was entirely foreign to her. Alternately she avoided and sought Frederic's company, as first one and then the other procedure seemed to her the less conspicuous. Her labours were all in vain, for Minna knew her condition almost as soon as she did herself, and made no secret of it. As time went on Jessie grew accustomed to the presence of love in her life, realised that it would be impossible for her to take any other husband than Frederic, and resigned herself with truly Christian fortitude and patience to wait until that happened which she desired should happen. She had never enjoyed any confidence with her mother, whom she had been brought up to regard as the most beautiful lady in the world, the "very pinnacle of human virtue." (The phrase was her father's, often on his lips, and Minna always referred to Mrs. Clibran-Bell as "The Pinnacle.")

It may be ennobling and purifying to idealise your womenkind, but if your womenkind accept the position they are rather apt to believe, with disastrous results, that it is more blessed to receive than to give. Certain it is that if Robert Clibran-Bell had an ideal, he never had a wife, and that his children never had a mother.

Jessie Clibran-Bell in her simplicity believed that the Folyats had all that she had lacked. She was devoted to Francis, and when Mrs. Folyat played her sentimentalist's game with her she was entirely deceived, saw in Mrs. Folyat a perfect hen of a mother and crept under her wing. All this took some time, and it was not until the change in the Clibran-Bell fortunes that Mrs. Folyat made room for Jessie. She made her snug and warm, and, in sheer gratitude, without making any actual confession, Jessie laid bare her feelings. Mrs. Folyat kissed her and gave her to understand that though Frederic was her favourite child and a paragon among men, yet he was unworthy of such profound, such patient, such unselfish devotion. The more she abused Frederic the more warmly did Jessie's fondness flow. They both enjoyed themselves thoroughly, and often met in conclave in the Folyat drawing-room. So absorbed did Mrs. Folyat become in the pursuit of this new intrigue that she lost interest in Gertrude's affair and devoted herself to the snaring of Frederic.

XVII

FREDERIC SNARED

_There is a special providence in the fall of a sparrow._ HAMLET

THE snaring of men is the tamest sport in the world. It is so ridiculously easy. Let but the female cast a favourable eye upon the male and he is hers--for as long as she is clever enough to keep him. Whether a prize so easily won is worth the keeping is a matter for every woman to decide for herself. Generally the matter is settled by the advent of children, or by economic complications, or by fear of public opinion. Desire waits upon vanity and vanity is the destroyer of love. Unhappily passion is so exceedingly rare that there would be neither marriage nor giving in marriage if men and women did not hoodwink themselves and each other. Quite clearly the world would be the better without the hoodwinking and the marriages resulting from it, but, these being in the majority, and the ignoble art of hoodwinking being passed on from generation to generation, and commended by eminent divines and popular writers, and since women insist on getting married in all circumstances and at whatever cost of degradation and disappointment, there is nothing to be done but to grin and bear it and applaud every active protest that is made against it.

These were the sentiments roused in Serge Folyat when it was announced that Frederic had entered upon an indefinite engagement to marry Jessie Clibran-Bell.

Quite other and not at all philosophical were the sentiments of Frederic's father when the announcement was made to him exactly a week after his visit to Miller Street, to the house of Mrs. Lipsett. He was shocked and outraged, but as the announcement was made to him by his wife--in their bedroom--and she seemed to take an extraordinary pleasure in it, he was silent. Mrs. Folyat declared herself entirely taken by surprise. She had made Frederic take her and Jessie to the pantomime, and on the way home Jessie had stolen her hand into hers and said:

"I am so happy."

And Frederic had added:

"Yes. Isn't she?"

And then she knew! And Frederic was so proud and happy too. And so brave and manly! He could not think of marrying Jessie until he was making three hundred a year. And didn't Francis think it was time they set Frederic up in a practice by himself?

Francis groaned inwardly.

It would be delightful (continued Mrs. Folyat) to have Frederic settled. Of course he would only have a small establishment to begin with, but when he had made his position, he would be able to live in the best suburbs on the south of the town and his sons would go to public schools. Jessie was such a dear girl, as Francis would find when he knew her better, and she was so devotedly attached to Frederic, and Frederic was so very much in love, so chivalrous and attentive. Nothing better could be wished for. Francis must really consider the possibility of providing Frederic with an office of his own.

"I'll think it over," said Francis. "If you don't mind, I would like to sleep."

Mrs. Folyat continued her monologue for a quarter of an hour and lulled herself to sleep with the sound of her own voice.