Part 7

He stepped in. Minna rushed away, and he heard her calling all over the house:

"Serge has come! Serge has come!"

There was a pattering of feet on the stairs, a banging of doors, and presently Gertrude, Mary, Mrs. Folyat and Minna came down upon him. He caught his mother up in a great hug and squeezed the breath out of her, and she stood talking and crying while he kissed Gertrude and Mary on the cheek and Minna full on the lips.

Mrs. Folyat led the way to the dining-room, and he sat at the table and they round him, and they devoured him with their eyes. He looked from one to the other. He thought that Gertrude looked sly, Mary plain, but he liked the mischief in Minna's eyes, and she had a wide friendly grin and a dimple in her cheek. His mother was so much older than he had imagined her and he wanted to tease her out of it. She was wearing a white woollen shawl, and she had shoved her spectacles up on to her forehead when Minna broke in upon her reading. The room was dark and rather oppressive and none of the windows were open.

Minna lit the gas and pulled down the blinds.

"Well!" said Mrs. Folyat, "you _have_ taken us by surprise."

"I meant to," replied Serge. "I went to St. Withans first. I didn't know you'd gone. I walked on here."

"Walked!" This came from Mary.

"Yes. It's a nice cheerful hole you've come to live in."

"Horrible!" said Minna.

"Dreadful!" capped Mrs. Folyat. "But your father would come. He said his place was among the poor."

Gertrude and Mary exchanged glances, but said nothing. Serge noticed it and tried another topic.

"How's all the children? How many are there?"

"Oh! My dear." Mrs. Folyat felt for her handkerchief.

Minna answered for her.

"Annette's away. She's a governess with some rich vulgar people. James is dead. He fell from the roof. Frederic is out. He always is. We're in. We always are. And that's the lot."

"What about Leedham?"

"I forgot Leedham. He's in Rio, in a bank. Are you rich, Serge?"

Serge felt in his trousers pocket and produced four sovereigns, three shillings and ten coppers. He laid them out neatly on the red baize table-cloth.

"That's all," he said.

Minna laughed and counted out the money. Gertrude and Mary and his mother looked at Serge in dismay.

"I don't know," said Serge. "If this place isn't full of money, there's no excuse for it."

"It's a queer place," said Minna, "and not so much money in it as all that. What you've got would be wealth to most of father's people."

"Your father," put in Mrs. Folyat, "said his place was among the poor. I'm sure he got what he wanted."

Serge felt that she was fishing for his opinion. He gave it.

"I met a man," he said, "who brought me to the door. He said my father was very good to the poor. He was a wretched devil who had just been let out of prison."

"Sam Dimsdale. That's his name." Minna heaped Serge's money up into little piles.

"How's Frederic?" asked Serge.

"Frederic's a solicitor," replied Mrs. Folyat with a little show of pride.

Conversation flagged until Mrs. Folyat asked Gertrude and Mary to get the supper, and then Serge insisted on helping and asked if he might cook an omelette. Mrs. Folyat bade him stay with her.

He sat opposite her and she fixed her spectacles and looked long at him. Then she said:

"You're like your father, but there's a look in you too of my mother. What are you going to do?"

"Do? I don't know. I've spent all my life trying things and leaving them before they left me."

"It was a terrible blow to us, your leaving the Navy like that."

"Was it? It's so long ago now, but I was rather surprised at it myself. I was sick of the water and pretending to defend England's shores when nobody seemed to want to attack them."

"But you were only a boy."

"I sometimes think I shall never be anything else. I can't stand the things men do. They waste such a lot of time over them."

"But you must work."

"I suppose so. But I shall have to ask you to feed me for a little."

"Oh! your father won't say no to you. He never says no to any one."

"There's consistency in that."

"Your father is not the man he was. We have had terrible times, my dear. Too dreadful. The people in this town."

"Why don't the girls get married?" asked Serge.

"My dear," answered his mother, "there are so few men whom one would like to see them marry."

Mary and Gertrude returned, and just then Francis came in. Serge went up to him and kissed him, and Francis said "God bless my soul." When he realised who it was he shook his son warmly by the hand and went on saying: "I'm glad to see you, glad to see you, glad to see you." And he chuckled inside him and made Serge sit down, and stood looking at him, taking him in, and went on:

"Something like a prodigal son, eh, Martha? Only the queer thing is that I feel it is I who ought to say 'I am no more worthy to be called thy father!'"

Martha protested, and they sat down to supper.

Francis sat absolutely silent at the head of the table and Martha prattled and told Serge all the family news, all the deaths, and all the contents of all the wills, especially those by which neither she nor Francis had benefited, and how Willie Folyat had won his case and become Earl of Leedham, and how Minna had been practically engaged to him once and might have been a countess but for her folly.

"I couldn't have borne Willie for a husband. He was so mushy," said Minna.

"You might have left him and got a handsome settlement," suggested Serge.

"Oh, no! The title carries very little money."

"Left him! Serge!" Mrs. Folyat apostrophised him.

Minna winked at Serge and said:

"You're not married, I suppose?"

"No."

They ate cold ham and pickles and Gruyère cheese and captains' biscuits. Francis drank toast and water and Serge disposed of two bottles of beer. He looked round at the family portraits and drank their healths.

"I wonder," he said, "how they like seeing us here?"

"I often sit with them," replied Francis, breaking his silence, "and I fancy they are snobs and like being in a place where they can feel themselves immeasurably superior."

"Some of them," remarked Mrs. Folyat, "are worth at least a hundred pounds."

"I found myself rather liking this place as I walked here," said Serge. "But I found myself wondering what happens to all the suppressed vitality of the people in it. How many people are there? There must be half a million. What do they all do? Their work can't be very satisfying. Do they produce children at an appalling rate? Or is there any artistic outlet? There can't be, or it wouldn't be so ugly. I suppose there's a lot of crime and a lot of mess. I must have a look at it. Do they have frightful diseases, and isn't it rather a mockery spreading the Gospel of Christ in such a place?"

"Serge!" Mrs. Folyat was unable to follow what he said, but she was hurt at the mention of one whom she had always regarded as her Saviour at the supper-table.

"Have I shocked you, mother? I'm sorry," said Serge. "You're all so different from what I have been thinking you for years and years and I find it difficult to say anything. You're not exactly full of news about yourselves, and my thoughts ran away with me. That's bad."

"You haven't become an infidel I hope." Mrs. Folyat was rather querulous. "You went to church in Africa?"

"I was lay reader to the Bishop of Bloemfontein for six months."

"Ah!"

That reassured Mrs. Folyat, and she turned to her food again. She enjoyed eating, and took very small mouthfuls and nibbled at them in a most genteel fashion. Francis on the other hand ate hurriedly in large gulps and had always finished his plateful before everybody else. Serge suddenly found their methods of eating intensely interesting. He too loved eating--he had revelled in English cooking after his years in Africa--and it was pleasant to find that he had something in common with his father and mother, though, instinctively, he knew that he must not talk about it.

Francis rose from the table and took up pipe and tobacco. Serge produced his calabash and filled it.

"You don't smoke cigarettes?" asked Francis.

"No."

"Frederic does. Beastly habit."

Mary and Minna cleared away the things from the table and Gertrude disappeared upstairs. Francis sat by the fireplace and said nothing. Mrs. Folyat remained in her chair at the end of the table and said nothing either. Serge blew rings and clouds of smoke into the air and stretched his legs. Outside it had begun to rain, and the water gurgled in the gutters.

"How long have you been here?" asked Serge.

For a long time it seemed that he was to receive no answer, but then Mrs. Folyat in a ventriloquial voice, without the smallest expression in her face and without turning her head said to her husband:

"How many years have we been here, Frank?"

"A good many. Nine, ten--more."

"It seems more than that."

Again there was a silence, and Serge glared at the gas-jet until black spots swam in front of his eyes. A gust of indignation swept through him, and he brought his fist down on the table with a bang.

"Look here!" he almost shouted, "this isn't good enough! Aren't you glad to see me? I've come home to you after nearly twenty years, and here you are as silent and gloom-stricken as though I'd risen and confronted you from the grave. . . . Do you remember how I blubbered when I left you at the rectory gate at St. Withans? A boy's grief is a little thing, but it's kept you warm in my thoughts all these years. . . ."

He stopped. He saw that his mother was mopping at her eyes and her hand was fumbling at the tablecloth, and she seemed very old and pitiful to him then, and he knew that he must not hurt her. His father seemed not to have heard him and went on sucking at his pipe, which he smoked with great skill so that the blue smoke only came from the bowl and his mouth at long intervals. He looked all beard and spectacles, impersonal and unexpressive, sitting there by the fireplace, and yet there was humour in his very bulk. Serge felt that he had made an error in tactics, a blunder in manners. These people, his father and mother, were not to be taken by assault. They had ramparts and bulwarks against all comers, perhaps against each other, and their inmost lives were not to be laid bare for the first clamorous belligerent. He realised that his mother's tears were defensive weapons--a shower of Greek fire and boiling pitch. They were very effective, and they drove Serge back blistered and wounded, but also they roused the devil of obstinacy in him and made him resolved to stay in the queer dark house so full of shadows and to fight with all his might against its oppressive atmosphere, and to win his way through to the hearts of the old woman, his mother, and the bulky, silent, bearded man, his father.

He leaned forward and took his mother's hand and fondled it. He squeezed it like a lover, and gave a funny little laugh deep down in his chest.

"I'm sorry," he said.

She gave his hand a convulsive, sudden little pressure, and he began to talk about himself and his adventures. How he had wandered in America and worked his way across to Cape Town and gone up-country hunting elephants; and how he had fought in the Zulu War and taught Dutch girls English on a Boer farm, done anything and everything--prospected for gold, diamonds; cheated and been cheated; thrashed and been thrashed; and as he told the smoke came faster from his father's bowl and pipe, and at last he told how he had taken to painting pictures for a living, because he was starving in Kimberley, and how he made enough money to pay his passage home, and came because he wanted to see green England again and the people with whom he had been happy as a boy.

"Did you get the pictures I sent you?"

"Oh, yes," said Francis. "I thought some of them very good."

"I'm glad of that. I don't know much about it, but they said out there the colour was fine. One or two were sent to London and a picture swell there wrote to me about them."

Mrs. Folyat said she thought she would like to finish her book before she went to bed, gathered her shawl about her shoulders, told them not to be late, gave Serge her cheek to kiss, and wandered from the room. Serge opened the door and closed it after her.

Francis laid down his pipe. He grunted once or twice and then leaned forward in his chair and said:

"I don't think I realised before that my children are grown men and women. It makes a difference. One loses the right to interfere, if one ever had any. What are you going to do?"

"If possible I shall become a painter. If it's impossible--there are plenty of other things to do."

"And where will you live?"

"Here. I've got four pounds and a few shillings and the clothes I stand up in and my drawings."

"I'm not a rich man."

"You haven't paid out a penny for me since I was fifteen."

"That's true."

"Give me a couple of years' board and lodging and a hundred a year and I'll pay you back every penny as soon as I can."

"I can't give you a hundred a year."

"How much has Frederic had?"

"Frederic? A good deal. . . . More than I could afford. Your mother's very fond of Frederic."

"Shall I tell you what will happen if you don't take my offer? I shall stay, and go on staying until you suddenly realise that I have been here for years."

"How do you know that?" asked Francis, a little uneasily.

"The house is like that. I'm rather like that myself--sometimes. I suppose it's in the blood. We get into false positions--we're intelligent enough to know that they're false, but we're not strong enough to break away. Isn't it so? It's called good-nature. Doesn't everybody call you a good-natured man? They do me. A damned good sort they call me--men I hate too--but it only means that I'm easy and don't make situations painful by demanding a clear issue."

"Isn't that what you're doing now?"

"Only because we're both good-natured men and there won't be any issue at all if I don't. I've come home. I'm interested. Things are going to happen in the house, and I want to be in at the fun. I may be useful."

"What sort of things?"

"I don't know. Who does? What matters is that they should happen. . . ."

Francis began to chuckle, and Serge threw back his head and laughed, though there was nothing particular to laugh at, and yet it was very strange to him to be sitting opposite a man and trying to get at him and salute his soul, and that man his father. Their conversation seemed to him like two cogged wheels in a machine missing their clutch and whizzing round separately. They went on talking, but finally admitted the futility of it, exchanged tobacco and sat in silence, enjoying it and each other. Francis found company in his eldest son, and it was very pleasant just to sit and look at him, he was so strong and clean and healthy.

Frederic come in very late and found them sitting there and the room full of smoke. Serge rose and took his thin nervous hand in his great paw and said:

"Hello! Frederic. I'm Serge."

"How are you?" returned Frederic. "Going to stay long?"

"About two years."

"The devil you are. I've just been talking to some men about you. I showed them your drawings. One man says you're a genius. What does it feel like?"

"Being a genius? I don't know. But I imagine it's like being an ordinary person--only more so. You look rather washed out."

"Oh! I've been working hard. I'm tired."

"You're very late," said Francis.

"Yes. I didn't think you'd be sitting up. All the women in bed? Where are you to sleep?"

"I don't know."

"Where is he to sleep, pa?"

"I don't know. I can't wake your mother up, and the girls will be asleep."

Serge laughed.

"I don't see anything to laugh at," muttered Frederic. "I don't want you in my bed."

"I'll sleep on the sofa," said Serge. "I was laughing because it was so like the Folyats."

Francis took a book in his hand and rolled out of the room. Serge removed his collar and covered his feet with his coat and lay down on the sofa. Frederic stood tugging at his little golden-red moustache and looked down at him.

"Good-night," he muttered, and went away.

"God!" said Serge. "What a weak chin he has."

IX

INTERIOR

_Polyerges, on the contrary, already illustrates the lowering tendency of slavery._ ANTS, BEES AND WASPS.

FREDERIC had omitted to make any mention of the fact that he had lost his brother's drawings, and had brushed the thought of them aside. He had a comfortable memory and a convenient conscience which never worried about his lapses and misdemeanours until they were known or in danger of being known to other people. Then he lived in dread of the application of official morality and indulged in a perfect orgy of self-torment, grinding himself between the upper and nether millstones of his own laxity and the rigid codes with which his upbringing had imbued him. He had had a qualm or two about Serge's drawings, but it was not until his brother appeared on the scene that he began to think their loss might be serious--that is, fraught with unpleasant consequences to himself. He was essentially amiable. Disagreement hurt him, and he would go to any lengths to avoid an unprofitable quarrel. On the other hand if a squabble seemed to lead to immediate gain he would rush at it head down.

In the morning he was out and away while Serge was still in the bathroom splashing and roaring at the top of his voice. He spent the morning in his office writing letters to Beecroft and Strutt telling them that his brother had come home with a stock of drawings better even than those he had shown them, and letters from London men about them. He had no clear purpose in doing this, but was filled with a vague notion that if the first drawings were irreparably lost he was making some amends.

In the lunch interval he went round to the Arts Club and asked the grubby boy if the drawings had been found. The grubby boy made an effort of memory and said that he seemed to recollect Mr. Lawrie going off with something under his arm that night. Yes; it was a big, square thing, because he had put Mr. Lawrie into a cab and it fell on to the floor, and he picked it up and laid it on Mr. Lawrie's knees.

Frederic gave the boy a penny, got Mr. Lawrie's address, and, as soon as he could get away in the evening went down to his house. It was one of a terrace of four stucco houses with Gothic windows. It stood at the corner, and a little bye-street led down one side of it to a slum. It had a little raised lawn, two laurel trees and a privet hedge in front of it, and a wide asphalt path led up to the front door, which lay far back in a huge gloomy porch. The windows looked out on to another row of stucco houses with a shop at the corner which for the time being was a laundry. Opposite the laundry was a public-house. Two streets met a few yards along the road, and in the cleft of them was a large red-brick house with its garden gate gleaming with brass plates. Here lived Dr. Haslam, the father of the spotty-faced youth.

Frederic gave a long tug at the bell and stood looking stupidly at the door, the lower panels of which were scratched and dented with heavy kicks. A large tabby cat came and rubbed herself against his legs.

Presently the latch was drawn and the door was opened about six inches, and in the aperture there appeared a long bony face, incredibly lined and wrinkled, and in it two burning-sorrowful eyes. The mouth of this face opened, and out of it came a toneless mournful voice saying:

"What is it?"

"Is Mr. Lawrie in?" asked Frederic.

"He is. But he's busy. Are ye from the office? We'll be ready in ten minutes."

"I want to see Mr. Lawrie most particularly on a private matter."

"Ye cannot see him."

"I must."

"What name?"

"Folyat. Mr. Frederic Folyat."

"I'll see."

The door was closed to and Frederic, left with the cat, stood trying to quiet the omen at his heart. A very pale young man came through the gate and walked up the asphalt path and came into the porch. He looked at Frederic shyly and stood as far away from him as possible. There was an awkward moment until he said:

"Have you rung?"

"Yes."

"She's a bit slow. She's got rheumatism in her feet. I know you, but you don't know me. I've seen you at your father's church. My name's Bennett Lawrie. I'm in business. It's beastly."

"Do you often go to our church?"

"I go to all the High Churches, when I can get away. I wanted to be a clergyman, but I suppose I never shall be now."

"You'd better come and see us. We have supper on Sundays for anybody who likes to come."

"I'd just love to know your father."

"I want to see _your_ father."

"Oh! _My_ father!"

The boy shied away on that, and again the door was opened six inches. Bennett pushed it open and disappeared into the dark house leaving Frederic confronted with the gaunt personage who owned the haggard face.

"Will ye come with me now?" she said.

Frederic followed her down a long gloomy passage and into a large dining-room, where at the table, surrounded with papers, sat James Lawrie, cursing, smoking, and writing full tilt. He had a huge cup of strong coffee by his side. His brows were drawn tight over his eyes, and Frederic was most struck by his huge jutting nose. He seemed all nose--a nose and a flying pen. He took no notice of Frederic, but growled:

"The figures--give me the figures!"

The old servant took up a newspaper and read out a series of figures which, as far as Frederic could make out, related to the price of cotton. Lawrie took them down as she read, added a few words after them, gathered and folded his sheets, thrust them into a dirty inky envelope and held them out to the old woman.

"I'll be late if I don't take a cab," she said.

Lawrie fumbled in his waistcoat pocket and produced a florin. She took it and shuffled away. Lawrie gulped down the remainder of his coffee, took up a battered green book and said:

"Now we'll have some poetry."

And he read half a canto of Spenser's "Faërie Queene" in a big rumbling voice, mouthing the archaic words.

Frederic could make little sense of it and sat taking in the room, the heavy mahogany sideboard, the horsehair chairs by the fireplace, the Biblical prints on the walls, the books on either side of the window, and through the window the dismal walled garden with its starved hawthorn trees and the cats playing about on the wall. The windows were closed and the air in the room was thick and smelled of tobacco and food and clothes. It was a dingy dusty room, made more than ever forbidding by a reproduction of Munkaczy's _Christ before Pilate_, which hung over the mantelpiece between the _Crucifixion_ of Rubens and a photograph of a little Scotch church and a manse with gloomy hills in the background.

When the reading was finished Frederic said:

"I'm sorry I interrupted you."