Chapter IV: Part 1: Cambridge (4)

You couldn’t know. I didn’t know for a moment. But this letter of yours is the most wonderful thing that has ever happened to me yet—more wonderful (I don’t exaggerate) than the moment when Agnes promised to marry me. I always knew you liked me, but I never knew how much until this letter. Up to now I think we have been too much like the strong heroes in books who feel so much and say so little, and feel all the more for saying so little. Now that’s over and we shall never be that kind of an ass again. We’ve hit—by accident—upon something permanent. You’ve written to me, “I hate the woman who will be your wife,” and I write back, “Hate her. Can’t I love you both?” She will never come between us, Stewart (She wouldn’t wish to, but that’s by the way), because our friendship has now passed beyond intervention. No third person could break it. We couldn’t ourselves, I fancy. We may quarrel and argue till one of us dies, but the thing is registered. I only wish, dear man, you could be happier. For me, it’s as if a light was suddenly held behind the world.

R.E.

Shelthorpe, 9 Sawston Park Road, Sawston.

Dear Mrs. Lewin,

The time goes flying, but I am getting to learn my wonderful boy. We speak a great deal about his work. He has just finished a curious thing called “Nemi”—about a Roman ship that is actually sunk in some lake. I cannot think how he describes the things, when he has never seen them. If, as I hope, he goes to Italy next year, he should turn out something really good. Meanwhile we are hunting for a publisher. Herbert believes that a collection of short stories is hard to get published. It is, after all, better to write one long one.

But you must not think we only talk books. What we say on other topics cannot so easily be repeated! Oh, Mrs Lewin, he is a dear, and dearer than ever now that we have him at Sawston. Herbert, in a quiet way, has been making inquiries about those Cambridge friends of his. Nothing against them, but they seem to be terribly eccentric. None of them are good at games, and they spend all their spare time thinking and discussing. They discuss what one knows and what one never will know and what one had much better not know. Herbert says it is because they have not got enough to do.—Ever your grateful and affectionate friend,

Agnes Pembroke

Shelthorpe, 9 Sawston Park Road, Sawston.

Dear Mr. Silt,

Thank you for the congratulations, which I have handed over to the delighted Rickie.

(The congratulations were really addressed to Agnes—a social blunder which Mr. Pembroke deftly corrects.)

I am sorry that the rumor reached you that I was not pleased. Anything pleases me that promises my sister’s happiness, and I have known your cousin nearly as long as you have. It will be a very long engagement, for he must make his way first. The dear boy is not nearly as wealthy as he supposed; having no tastes, and hardly any expenses, he used to talk as if he were a millionaire. He must at least double his income before he can dream of more intimate ties. This has been a bitter pill, but I am glad to say that they have accepted it bravely.

Hoping that you and Mrs. Silt will profit by your week at Margate.—I remain, yours very sincerely,

Herbert Pembroke

Cadover, Wilts.

Dear Miss Pembroke—Agnes,

I hear that you are going to marry my nephew. I have no idea what he is like, and wonder whether you would bring him that I may find out. Isn’t September rather a nice month? You might have to go to Stone Henge, but with that exception would be left unmolested. I do hope you will manage the visit. We met once at Mrs. Lewin’s, and I have a very clear recollection of you.—Believe me, yours sincerely,

Emily Failing

X

The rain tilted a little from the south-west. For the most part it fell from a grey cloud silently, but now and then the tilt increased, and a kind of sigh passed over the country as the drops lashed the walls, trees, shepherds, and other motionless objects that stood in their slanting career. At times the cloud would descend and visibly embrace the earth, to which it had only sent messages; and the earth itself would bring forth clouds—clouds of a whiter breed—which formed in shallow valleys and followed the courses of the streams. It seemed the beginning of life. Again God said, “Shall we divide the waters from the land or not? Was not the firmament labour and glory sufficient?” At all events it was the beginning of life pastoral, behind which imagination cannot travel.

Yet complicated people were getting wet—not only the shepherds. For instance, the piano-tuner was sopping. So was the vicar’s wife. So were the lieutenant and the peevish damsels in his Battleston car. Gallantry, charity, and art pursued their various missions, perspiring and muddy, while out on the slopes beyond them stood the eternal man and the eternal dog, guarding eternal sheep until the world is vegetarian.

Inside an arbour—which faced east, and thus avoided the bad weather—there sat a complicated person who was dry. She looked at the drenched world with a pleased expression, and would smile when a cloud would lay down on the village, or when the rain sighed louder than usual against her solid shelter. Ink, paperclips, and foolscap paper were on the table before her, and she could also reach an umbrella, a waterproof, a walking-stick, and an electric bell. Her age was between elderly and old, and her forehead was wrinkled with an expression of slight but perpetual pain. But the lines round her mouth indicated that she had laughed a great deal during her life, just as the clean tight skin round her eyes perhaps indicated that she had not often cried. She was dressed in brown silk. A brown silk shawl lay most becomingly over her beautiful hair.

After long thought she wrote on the paper in front of her, “The subject of this memoir first saw the light at Wolverhampton on May the 14th, 1842.” She laid down her pen and said “Ugh!” A robin hopped in and she welcomed him. A sparrow followed and she stamped her foot. She watched some thick white water which was sliding like a snake down the gutter of the gravel path. It had just appeared. It must have escaped from a hollow in the chalk up behind. The earth could absorb no longer. The lady did not think of all this, for she hated questions of whence and wherefore, and the ways of the earth (“our dull stepmother”) bored her unspeakably. But the water, just the snake of water, was amusing, and she flung her golosh at it to dam it up. Then she wrote feverishly, “The subject of this memoir first saw the light in the middle of the night. It was twenty to eleven. His pa was a parson, but he was not his pa’s son, and never went to heaven.” There was the sound of a train, and presently white smoke appeared, rising laboriously through the heavy air. It distracted her, and for about a quarter of an hour she sat perfectly still, doing nothing. At last she pushed the spoilt paper aside, took a fresh piece, and was beginning to write, “On May the 14th, 1842,” when there was a crunch on the gravel, and a furious voice said, “I am sorry for Flea Thompson.”

“I daresay I am sorry for him too,” said the lady; her voice was languid and pleasant. “Who is he?”

“Flea’s a liar, and the next time we meet he’ll be a football.” Off slipped a sodden ulster. He hung it up angrily upon a peg: the arbour provided several.

“But who is he, and why has he that disastrous name?”

“Flea? Fleance. All the Thompsons are named out of Shakespeare. He grazes the Rings.”

“Ah, I see. A pet lamb.”

“Lamb! Shepherd!”

“One of my Shepherds?”

“The last time I go with his sheep. But not the last time he sees me. I am sorry for him. He dodged me today.”

“Do you mean to say”—she became animated—“that you have been out in the wet keeping the sheep of Flea Thompson?”

“I had to.” He blew on his fingers and took off his cap. Water trickled over his unshaven cheeks. His hair was so wet that it seemed worked upon his scalp in bronze.

“Get away, bad dog!” screamed the lady, for he had given himself a shake and spattered her dress with water. He was a powerful boy of twenty, admirably muscular, but rather too broad for his height. People called him “Podge” until they were dissuaded. Then they called him “Stephen” or “Mr. Wonham.” Then he said, “You can call me Podge if you like.”

“As for Flea—!” he began tempestuously. He sat down by her, and with much heavy breathing told the story,—“Flea has a girl at Wintersbridge, and I had to go with his sheep while he went to see her. Two hours. We agreed. Half an hour to go, an hour to kiss his girl, and half an hour back—and he had my bike. Four hours! Four hours and seven minutes I was on the Rings, with a fool of a dog, and sheep doing all they knew to get the turnips.”

“My farm is a mystery to me,” said the lady, stroking her fingers.

“Some day you must really take me to see it. It must be like a Gilbert and Sullivan opera, with a chorus of agitated employers. How is it that I have escaped? Why have I never been summoned to milk the cows, or flay the pigs, or drive the young bullocks to the pasture?”

He looked at her with astonishingly blue eyes—the only dry things he had about him. He could not see into her: she would have puzzled an older and clever man. He may have seen round her.

“A thing of beauty you are not. But I sometimes think you are a joy for ever.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Oh, you understand right enough,” she exclaimed irritably, and then smiled, for he was conceited, and did not like being told that he was not a thing of beauty. “Large and steady feet,” she continued, “have this disadvantage—you can knock down a man, but you will never knock down a woman.”

“I don’t know what you mean. I’m not likely—”

“Oh, never mind—never, never mind. I was being funny. I repent. Tell me about the sheep. Why did you go with them?”

“I did tell you. I had to.”

“But why?”

“He had to see his girl.”

“But why?”

His eyes shot past her again. It was so obvious that the man had to see his girl. For two hours though—not for four hours seven minutes.

“Did you have any lunch?”

“I don’t hold with regular meals.”

“Did you have a book?”

“I don’t hold with books in the open. None of the older men read.”

“Did you commune with yourself, or don’t you hold with that?”

“Oh Lord, don’t ask me!”

“You distress me. You rob the Pastoral of its lingering romance. Is there no poetry and no thought in England? Is there no one, in all these downs, who warbles with eager thought the Doric lay?”

“Chaps sing to themselves at times, if you mean that.”

“I dream of Arcady. I open my eyes. Wiltshire. Of Amaryllis: Flea Thompson’s girl. Of the pensive shepherd, twitching his mantle blue: you in an ulster. Aren’t you sorry for me?”

“May I put in a pipe?”

“By all means put a pipe in. In return, tell me of what you were thinking for the four hours and the seven minutes.”

He laughed shyly. “You do ask a man such questions.”

“Did you simply waste the time?”

“I suppose so.”

“I thought that Colonel Robert Ingersoll says you must be strenuous.”

At the sound of this name he whisked open a little cupboard, and declaring, “I haven’t a moment to spare,” took out of it a pile of “Clarion” and other reprints, adorned as to their covers with bald or bearded apostles of humanity. Selecting a bald one, he began at once to read, occasionally exclaiming, “That’s got them,” “That’s knocked Genesis,” with similar ejaculations of an aspiring mind. She glanced at the pile. Reran, minus the style. Darwin, minus the modesty. A comic edition of the book of Job, by “Excelsior,” Pittsburgh, Pa. “The Beginning of Life,” with diagrams. “Angel or Ape?” by Mrs. Julia P. Chunk. She was amused, and wondered idly what was passing within his narrow but not uninteresting brain. Did he suppose that he was going to “find out”? She had tried once herself, but had since subsided into a sprightly orthodoxy. Why didn’t he read poetry, instead of wasting his time between books like these and country like that?

The cloud parted, and the increase of light made her look up. Over the valley she saw a grave sullen down, and on its flanks a little brown smudge—her sheep, together with her shepherd, Fleance Thompson, returned to his duties at last. A trickle of water came through the arbour roof. She shrieked in dismay.

“That’s all right,” said her companion, moving her chair, but still keeping his place in his book.

She dried up the spot on the manuscript. Then she wrote: “Anthony Eustace Failing, the subject of this memoir, was born at Wolverhampton.” But she wrote no more. She was fidgety. Another drop fell from the roof. Likewise an earwig. She wished she had not been so playful in flinging her golosh into the path. The boy who was overthrowing religion breathed somewhat heavily as he did so. Another earwig. She touched the electric bell.

“I’m going in,” she observed. “It’s far too wet.” Again the cloud parted and caused her to add, “Weren’t you rather kind to Flea?” But he was deep in the book. He read like a poor person, with lips apart and a finger that followed the print. At times he scratched his ear, or ran his tongue along a straggling blonde moustache. His face had after all a certain beauty: at all events the colouring was regal—a steady crimson from throat to forehead: the sun and the winds had worked on him daily ever since he was born. “The face of a strong man,” thought the lady. “Let him thank his stars he isn’t a silent strong man, or I’d turn him into the gutter.” Suddenly it struck her that he was like an Irish terrier. He worried infinity as if it was a bone. Gnashing his teeth, he tried to carry the eternal subtleties by violence. As a man he often bored her, for he was always saying and doing the same things. But as a philosopher he really was a joy for ever, an inexhaustible buffoon. Taking up her pen, she began to caricature him. She drew a rabbit-warren where rabbits were at play in four dimensions. Before she had introduced the principal figure, she was interrupted by the footman. He had come up from the house to answer the bell. On seeing her he uttered a respectful cry.

“Madam! Are you here? I am very sorry. I looked for you everywhere. Mr. Elliot and Miss Pembroke arrived nearly an hour ago.”

“Oh dear, oh dear!” exclaimed Mrs. Failing. “Take these papers. Where’s the umbrella? Mr. Stephen will hold it over me. You hurry back and apologize. Are they happy?”

“Miss Pembroke inquired after you, madam.”

“Have they had tea?”

“Yes, madam.”

“Leighton!”

“Yes, sir.”

“I believe you knew she was here all the time. You didn’t want to wet your pretty skin.”

“You must not call me ‘she’ to the servants,” said Mrs. Failing as they walked away, she limping with a stick, he holding a great umbrella over her. “I will not have it.” Then more pleasantly, “And don’t tell him he lies. We all lie. I knew quite well they were coming by the four-six train. I saw it pass.”

“That reminds me. Another child run over at the Roman crossing. Whish—bang—dead.”

“Oh my foot! Oh my foot, my foot!” said Mrs. Failing, and paused to take breath.

“Bad?” he asked callously.

Leighton, with bowed head, passed them with the manuscript and disappeared among the laurels. The twinge of pain, which had been slight, passed away, and they proceeded, descending a green airless corridor which opened into the gravel drive.

“Isn’t it odd,” said Mrs. Failing, “that the Greeks should be enthusiastic about laurels—that Apollo should pursue any one who could possibly turn into such a frightful plant? What do you make of Rickie?”

“Oh, I don’t know.”

“Shall I lend you his story to read?”

He made no reply.

“Don’t you think, Stephen, that a person in your precarious position ought to be civil to my relatives?”

“Sorry, Mrs. Failing. I meant to be civil. I only hadn’t—anything to say.”

She laughed. “Are you a dear boy? I sometimes wonder; or are you a brute?”

Again he had nothing to say. Then she laughed more mischievously, and said—

“How can you be either, when you are a philosopher? Would you mind telling me—I am so anxious to learn—what happens to people when they die?”

“Don’t ask _me_.” He knew by bitter experience that she was making fun of him.

“Oh, but I do ask you. Those paper books of yours are so up-to-date. For instance, what has happened to the child you say was killed on the line?”

The rain increased. The drops pattered hard on the leaves, and outside the corridor men and women were struggling, however stupidly, with the facts of life. Inside it they wrangled. She teased the boy, and laughed at his theories, and proved that no man can be an agnostic who has a sense of humour. Suddenly she stopped, not through any skill of his, but because she had remembered some words of Bacon: “The true atheist is he whose hands are cauterized by holy things.” She thought of her distant youth. The world was not so humorous then, but it had been more important. For a moment she respected her companion, and determined to vex him no more.

They left the shelter of the laurels, crossed the broad drive, and were inside the house at last. She had got quite wet, for the weather would not let her play the simple life with impunity. As for him, he seemed a piece of the wet.

“Look here,” she cried, as he hurried up to his attic, “don’t shave!”

He was delighted with the permission.

“I have an idea that Miss Pembroke is of the type that pretends to be unconventional and really isn’t. I want to see how she takes it. Don’t shave.”

In the drawing-room she could hear the guests conversing in the subdued tones of those who have not been welcomed. Having changed her dress and glanced at the poems of Milton, she went to them, with uplifted hands of apology and horror.

“But I must have tea,” she announced, when they had assured her that they understood. “Otherwise I shall start by being cross. Agnes, stop me. Give me tea.”

Agnes, looking pleased, moved to the table and served her hostess. Rickie followed with a pagoda of sandwiches and little cakes.

“I feel twenty-seven years younger. Rickie, you are so like your father. I feel it is twenty-seven years ago, and that he is bringing your mother to see me for the first time. It is curious—almost terrible—to see history repeating itself.”

The remark was not tactful.

“I remember that visit well,” she continued thoughtfully, “I suppose it was a wonderful visit, though we none of us knew it at the time. We all fell in love with your mother. I wish she would have fallen in love with us. She couldn’t bear me, could she?”

“I never heard her say so, Aunt Emily.”

“No; she wouldn’t. I am sure your father said so, though. My dear boy, don’t look so shocked. Your father and I hated each other. He said so, I said so, I say so; say so too. Then we shall start fair.—Just a cocoanut cake.—Agnes, don’t you agree that it’s always best to speak out?”

“Oh, rather, Mrs. Failing. But I’m shockingly straightforward.”

“So am I,” said the lady. “I like to get down to the bedrock.—Hullo! Slippers? Slippers in the drawingroom?”

A young man had come in silently. Agnes observed with a feeling of regret that he had not shaved. Rickie, after a moment’s hesitation, remembered who it was, and shook hands with him. “You’ve grown since I saw you last.”

He showed his teeth amiably.

“How long was that?” asked Mrs. Failing.

“Three years, wasn’t it? Came over from the Ansells—friends.”

“How disgraceful, Rickie! Why don’t you come and see me oftener?”

He could not retort that she never asked him.

“Agnes will make you come. Oh, let me introduce—Mr. Wonham—Miss Pembroke.”

“I am deputy hostess,” said Agnes. “May I give you some tea?”

“Thank you, but I have had a little beer.”

“It is one of the shepherds,” said Mrs. Failing, in low tones.

Agnes smiled rather wildly. Mrs. Lewin had warned her that Cadover was an extraordinary place, and that one must never be astonished at anything. A shepherd in the drawing-room! No harm. Still one ought to know whether it was a shepherd or not. At all events he was in gentleman’s clothing. She was anxious not to start with a blunder, and therefore did not talk to the young fellow, but tried to gather what he was from the demeanour of Rickie.

“I am sure, Mrs. Failing, that you need not talk of ‘making’ people come to Cadover. There will be no difficulty, I should say.”

“Thank you, my dear. Do you know who once said those exact words to me?”

“Who?”

“Rickie’s mother.”

“Did she really?”

“My sister-in-law was a dear. You will have heard Rickie’s praises, but now you must hear mine. I never knew a woman who was so unselfish and yet had such capacities for life.”

“Does one generally exclude the other?” asked Rickie.

“Unselfish people, as a rule, are deathly dull. They have no colour. They think of other people because it is easier. They give money because they are too stupid or too idle to spend it properly on themselves. That was the beauty of your mother—she gave away, but she also spent on herself, or tried to.”

The light faded out of the drawing-room, in spite of it being September and only half-past six. From her low chair Agnes could see the trees by the drive, black against a blackening sky. That drive was half a mile long, and she was praising its gravelled surface when Rickie called in a voice of alarm, “I say, when did our train arrive?”

“Four-six.”

“I said so.”

“It arrived at four-six on the time-table,” said Mr. Wonham. “I want to know when it got to the station?”

“I tell you again it was punctual. I tell you I looked at my watch. I can do no more.”

Agnes was amazed. Was Rickie mad? A minute ago and they were boring each other over dogs. What had happened?

“Now, now! Quarrelling already?” asked Mrs. Failing.

The footman, bringing a lamp, lit up two angry faces.

“He says—”

“He says—”

“He says we ran over a child.”

“So you did. You ran over a child in the village at four-seven by my watch. Your train was late. You couldn’t have got to the station till four-ten.”

“I don’t believe it. We had passed the village by four-seven. Agnes, hadn’t we passed the village? It must have been an express that ran over the child.”

“Now is it likely”—he appealed to the practical world—“is it likely that the company would run a stopping train and then an express three minutes after it?”

“A child—” said Rickie. “I can’t believe that the train killed a child.” He thought of their journey. They were alone in the carriage. As the train slackened speed he had caught her for a moment in his arms. The rain beat on the windows, but they were in heaven.

“You’ve got to believe it,” said the other, and proceeded to “rub it in.” His healthy, irritable face drew close to Rickie’s. “Two children were kicking and screaming on the Roman crossing. Your train, being late, came down on them. One of them was pulled off the line, but the other was caught. How will you get out of that?”

“And how will you get out of it?” cried Mrs. Failing, turning the tables on him. “Where’s the child now? What has happened to its soul? You must know, Agnes, that this young gentleman is a philosopher.”

“Oh, drop all that,” said Mr. Wonham, suddenly collapsing.

“Drop it? Where? On my nice carpet?”

“I hate philosophy,” remarked Agnes, trying to turn the subject, for she saw that it made Rickie unhappy.

“So do I. But I daren’t say so before Stephen. He despises us women.”

“No, I don’t,” said the victim, swaying to and fro on the window-sill, whither he had retreated.

“Yes, he does. He won’t even trouble to answer us. Stephen! Podge! Answer me. What has happened to the child’s soul?”

He flung open the window and leant from them into the dusk. They heard him mutter something about a bridge.

“What did I tell you? He won’t answer my question.”

The delightful moment was approaching when the boy would lose his temper: she knew it by a certain tremor in his heels.

“There wants a bridge,” he exploded. “A bridge instead of all this rotten talk and the level-crossing. It wouldn’t break you to build a two-arch bridge. Then the child’s soul, as you call it—well, nothing would have happened to the child at all.”

A gust of night air entered, accompanied by rain. The flowers in the vases rustled, and the flame of the lamp shot up and smoked the glass. Slightly irritated, she ordered him to close the window.

XI

Cadover was not a large house. But it is the largest house with which this story has dealings, and must always be thought of with respect. It was built about the year 1800, and favoured the architecture of ancient Rome—chiefly by means of five lank pilasters, which stretched from the top of it to the bottom. Between the pilasters was the glass front door, to the right of them the drawing room windows, to the left of them the windows of the dining-room, above them a triangular area, which the better-class servants knew as a “pendiment,” and which had in its middle a small round hole, according to the usage of Palladio. The classical note was also sustained by eight grey steps which led from the building down into the drive, and by an attempt at a formal garden on the adjoining lawn. The lawn ended in a Ha-ha (“Ha! ha! who shall regard it?”), and thence the bare land sloped down into the village. The main garden (walled) was to the left as one faced the house, while to the right was that laurel avenue, leading up to Mrs. Failing’s arbour.

It was a comfortable but not very attractive place, and, to a certain type of mind, its situation was not attractive either. From the distance it showed as a grey box, huddled against evergreens. There was no mystery about it. You saw it for miles. Its hill had none of the beetling romance of Devonshire, none of the subtle contours that prelude a cottage in Kent, but profferred its burden crudely, on a huge bare palm. “There’s Cadover,” visitors would say. “How small it still looks. We shall be late for lunch.” And the view from the windows, though extensive, would not have been accepted by the Royal Academy. A valley, containing a stream, a road, a railway; over the valley fields of barley and wurzel, divided by no pretty hedges, and passing into a great and formless down—this was the outlook, desolate at all times, and almost terrifying beneath a cloudy sky. The down was called “Cadbury Range” (“Cocoa Squares” if you were young and funny), because high upon it—one cannot say “on the top,” there being scarcely any tops in Wiltshire—because high upon it there stood a double circle of entrenchments. A bank of grass enclosed a ring of turnips, which enclosed a second bank of grass, which enclosed more turnips, and in the middle of the pattern grew one small tree. British? Roman? Saxon? Danish? The competent reader will decide. The Thompson family knew it to be far older than the Franco-German war. It was the property of Government. It was full of gold and dead soldiers who had fought with the soldiers on Castle Rings and been beaten. The road to Londinium, having forded the stream and crossed the valley road and the railway, passed up by these entrenchments. The road to London lay half a mile to the right of them.

To complete this survey one must mention the church and the farm, both of which lay over the stream in Cadford. Between them they ruled the village, one claiming the souls of the labourers, the other their bodies. If a man desired other religion or other employment he must leave. The church lay up by the railway, the farm was down by the water meadows. The vicar, a gentle charitable man, scarcely realized his power, and never tried to abuse it. Mr. Wilbraham, the agent, was of another mould. He knew his place, and kept others to theirs: all society seemed spread before him like a map. The line between the county and the local, the line between the labourer and the artisan—he knew them all, and strengthened them with no uncertain touch. Everything with him was graduated—carefully graduated civility towards his superior, towards his inferiors carefully graduated incivility. So—for he was a thoughtful person—so alone, declared he, could things be kept together.

Perhaps the Comic Muse, to whom so much is now attributed, had caused his estate to be left to Mr. Failing. Mr. Failing was the author of some brilliant books on socialism,—that was why his wife married him—and for twenty-five years he reigned up at Cadover and tried to put his theories into practice. He believed that things could be kept together by accenting the similarities, not the differences of men. “We are all much more alike than we confess,” was one of his favourite speeches. As a speech it sounded very well, and his wife had applauded; but when it resulted in hard work, evenings in the reading-rooms, mixed-parties, and long unobtrusive talks with dull people, she got bored. In her piquant way she declared that she was not going to love her husband, and succeeded. He took it quietly, but his brilliancy decreased. His health grew worse, and he knew that when he died there was no one to carry on his work. He felt, besides, that he had done very little. Toil as he would, he had not a practical mind, and could never dispense with Mr. Wilbraham. For all his tact, he would often stretch out the hand of brotherhood too soon, or withhold it when it would have been accepted. Most people misunderstood him, or only understood him when he was dead. In after years his reign became a golden age; but he counted a few disciples in his life-time, a few young labourers and tenant farmers, who swore tempestuously that he was not really a fool. This, he told himself, was as much as he deserved.

Cadover was inherited by his widow. She tried to sell it; she tried to let it; but she asked too much, and as it was neither a pretty place nor fertile, it was left on her hands. With many a groan she settled down to banishment. Wiltshire people, she declared, were the stupidest in England. She told them so to their faces, which made them no brighter. And their county was worthy of them: no distinction in it—no style—simply land.

But her wrath passed, or remained only as a graceful fretfulness. She made the house comfortable, and abandoned the farm to Mr. Wilbraham. With a good deal of care she selected a small circle of acquaintances, and had them to stop in the summer months. In the winter she would go to town and frequent the salons of the literary. As her lameness increased she moved about less, and at the time of her nephew’s visit seldom left the place that had been forced upon her as a home. Just now she was busy. A prominent politician had quoted her husband. The young generation asked, “Who is this Mr. Failing?” and the publishers wrote, “Now is the time.” She was collecting some essays and penning an introductory memoir.

Rickie admired his aunt, but did not care for her. She reminded him too much of his father. She had the same affliction, the same heartlessness, the same habit of taking life with a laugh—as if life is a pill! He also felt that she had neglected him. He would not have asked much: as for “prospects,” they never entered his head, but she was his only near relative, and a little kindness and hospitality during the lonely years would have made incalculable difference. Now that he was happier and could bring her Agnes, she had asked him to stop at once. The sun as it rose next morning spoke to him of a new life. He too had a purpose and a value in the world at last. Leaning out of the window, he gazed at the earth washed clean and heard through the pure air the distant noises of the farm.

But that day nothing was to remain divine but the weather. His aunt, for reasons of her own, decreed that he should go for a ride with the Wonham boy. They were to look at Old Sarum, proceed thence to Salisbury, lunch there, see the sights, call on a certain canon for tea, and return to Cadover in the evening. The arrangement suited no one. He did not want to ride, but to be with Agnes; nor did Agnes want to be parted from him, nor Stephen to go with him. But the clearer the wishes of her guests became, the more determined was Mrs. Failing to disregard them. She smoothed away every difficulty, she converted every objection into a reason, and she ordered the horses for half-past nine.

“It is a bore,” he grumbled as he sat in their little private sitting-room, breaking his finger-nails upon the coachman’s gaiters. “I can’t ride. I shall fall off. We should have been so happy here. It’s just like Aunt Emily. Can’t you imagine her saying afterwards, ‘Lovers are absurd. I made a point of keeping them apart,’ and then everybody laughing.”

With a pretty foretaste of the future, Agnes knelt before him and did the gaiters up. “Who is this Mr. Wonham, by the bye?”

“I don’t know. Some connection of Mr. Failing’s, I think.”

“Does he live here?”

“He used to be at school or something. He seems to have grown into a tiresome person.”

“I suppose that Mrs. Failing has adopted him.”

“I suppose so. I believe that she has been quite kind. I do hope she’ll be kind to you this morning. I hate leaving you with her.”

“Why, you say she likes me.”

“Yes, but that wouldn’t prevent—you see she doesn’t mind what she says or what she repeats if it amuses her. If she thought it really funny, for instance, to break off our engagement, she’d try.”

“Dear boy, what a frightful remark! But it would be funnier for us to see her trying. Whatever could she do?”

He kissed the hands that were still busy with the fastenings. “Nothing. I can’t see one thing. We simply lie open to each other, you and I. There isn’t one new corner in either of us that she could reveal. It’s only that I always have in this house the most awful feeling of insecurity.”

“Why?”

“If any one says or does a foolish thing it’s always here. All the family breezes have started here. It’s a kind of focus for aimed and aimless scandal. You know, when my father and mother had their special quarrel, my aunt was mixed up in it,—I never knew how or how much—but you may be sure she didn’t calm things down, unless she found things more entertaining calm.”

“Rickie! Rickie!” cried the lady from the garden, “Your riding-master’s impatient.”

“We really oughtn’t to talk of her like this here,” whispered Agnes. “It’s a horrible habit.”

“The habit of the country, Agnes. Ugh, this gossip!” Suddenly he flung his arms over her. “Dear—dear—let’s beware of I don’t know what—of nothing at all perhaps.”

“Oh, buck up!” yelled the irritable Stephen. “Which am I to shorten—left stirrup or right?”

“Left!” shouted Agnes.

“How many holes?”

They hurried down. On the way she said: “I’m glad of the warning. Now I’m prepared. Your aunt will get nothing out of me.”

Her betrothed tried to mount with the wrong foot according to his invariable custom. She also had to pick up his whip. At last they started, the boy showing off pretty consistently, and she was left alone with her hostess.

“Dido is quiet as a lamb,” said Mrs. Failing, “and Stephen is a good fielder. What a blessing it is to have cleared out the men. What shall you and I do this heavenly morning?”

“I’m game for anything.”

“Have you quite unpacked?”

“Yes.”

“Any letters to write?”

“No.”

“Then let’s go to my arbour. No, we won’t. It gets the morning sun, and it’ll be too hot today.” Already she regretted clearing out the men. On such a morning she would have liked to drive, but her third animal had gone lame. She feared, too, that Miss Pembroke was going to bore her. However, they did go to the arbour. In languid tones she pointed out the various objects of interest.

“There’s the Cad, which goes into the something, which goes into the Avon. Cadbury Rings opposite, Cadchurch to the extreme left: you can’t see it. You were there last night. It is famous for the drunken parson and the railway-station. Then Cad Dauntsey. Then Cadford, that side of the stream, connected with Cadover, this. Observe the fertility of the Wiltshire mind.”

“A terrible lot of Cads,” said Agnes brightly.

Mrs. Failing divided her guests into those who made this joke and those who did not. The latter class was very small.

“The vicar of Cadford—not the nice drunkard—declares the name is really ‘Chadford,’ and he worried on till I put up a window to St. Chad in our church. His Cambridge wife pronounces it ‘Hyadford.’ I could smack them both. How do you like Podge? Ah! you jump; I meant you to. How do you like Podge Wonham?”

“Very nice,” said Agnes, laughing.

“Nice! He is a hero.”

There was a long interval of silence. Each lady looked, without much interest, at the view. Mrs. Failing’s attitude towards Nature was severely aesthetic—an attitude more sterile than the severely practical. She applied the test of beauty to shadow and odour and sound; they never filled her with reverence or excitement; she never knew them as a resistless trinity that may intoxicate the worshipper with joy. If she liked a ploughed field, it was only as a spot of colour—not also as a hint of the endless strength of the earth. And today she could approve of one cloud, but object to its fellow. As for Miss Pembroke, she was not approving or objecting at all. “A hero?” she queried, when the interval had passed. Her voice was indifferent, as if she had been thinking of other things.

“A hero? Yes. Didn’t you notice how heroic he was?”

“I don’t think I did.”

“Not at dinner? Ah, Agnes, always look out for heroism at dinner. It is their great time. They live up to the stiffness of their shirt fronts. Do you mean to say that you never noticed how he set down Rickie?”

“Oh, that about poetry!” said Agnes, laughing. “Rickie would not mind it for a moment. But why do you single out that as heroic?”

“To snub people! to set them down! to be rude to them! to make them feel small! Surely that’s the lifework of a hero?”

“I shouldn’t have said that. And as a matter of fact Mr. Wonham was wrong over the poetry. I made Rickie look it up afterwards.”

“But of course. A hero always is wrong.”

“To me,” she persisted, rather gently, “a hero has always been a strong wonderful being, who champions—”

“Ah, wait till you are the dragon! I have been a dragon most of my life, I think. A dragon that wants nothing but a peaceful cave. Then in comes the strong, wonderful, delightful being, and gains a princess by piercing my hide. No, seriously, my dear Agnes, the chief characteristics of a hero are infinite disregard for the feelings of others, plus general inability to understand them.”

“But surely Mr. Wonham—”

“Yes; aren’t we being unkind to the poor boy. Ought we to go on talking?”

Agnes waited, remembering the warnings of Rickie, and thinking that anything she said might perhaps be repeated.

“Though even if he was here he wouldn’t understand what we are saying.”

“Wouldn’t understand?”

Mrs. Failing gave the least flicker of an eye towards her companion. “Did you take him for clever?”

“I don’t think I took him for anything.” She smiled. “I have been thinking of other things, and another boy.”

“But do think for a moment of Stephen. I will describe how he spent yesterday. He rose at eight. From eight to eleven he sang. The song was called, ‘Father’s boots will soon fit Willie.’ He stopped once to say to the footman, ‘She’ll never finish her book. She idles: ‘She’ being I. At eleven he went out, and stood in the rain till four, but had the luck to see a child run over at the level-crossing. By half-past four he had knocked the bottom out of Christianity.”

Agnes looked bewildered.

“Aren’t you impressed? I was. I told him that he was on no account to unsettle the vicar. Open that cupboard, one of those sixpenny books tells Podge that he’s made of hard little black things, another that he’s made of brown things, larger and squashy. There seems a discrepancy, but anything is better for a thoughtful youth than to be made in the Garden of Eden. Let us eliminate the poetic, at whatever cost to the probable.” Then for a moment she spoke more gravely. “Here he is at twenty, with nothing to hold on by. I don’t know what’s to be done. I suppose it’s my fault. But I’ve never had any bother over the Church of England; have you?”

“Of course I go with my Church,” said Miss Pembroke, who hated this style of conversation. “I don’t know, I’m sure. I think you should consult a man.”

“Would Rickie help me?”

“Rickie would do anything he can.” And Mrs. Failing noted the half official way in which she vouched for her lover. “But of course Rickie is a little—complicated. I doubt whether Mr. Wonham would understand him. He wants—doesn’t he?—some one who’s a little more assertive and more accustomed to boys. Some one more like my brother.”

“Agnes!” she seized her by the arm. “Do you suppose that Mr. Pembroke would undertake my Podge?”

She shook her head. “His time is so filled up. He gets a boarding-house next term. Besides—after all I don’t know what Herbert would do.”

“Morality. He would teach him morality. The Thirty-Nine Articles may come of themselves, but if you have no morals you come to grief. Morality is all I demand from Mr. Herbert Pembroke. He shall be excused the use of the globes. You know, of course, that Stephen’s expelled from a public school? He stole.”

The school was not a public one, and the expulsion, or rather request for removal, had taken place when Stephen was fourteen. A violent spasm of dishonesty—such as often heralds the approach of manhood—had overcome him. He stole everything, especially what was difficult to steal, and hid the plunder beneath a loose plank in the passage. He was betrayed by the inclusion of a ham. This was the crisis of his career. His benefactress was just then rather bored with him. He had stopped being a pretty boy, and she rather doubted whether she would see him through. But she was so raged with the letters of the schoolmaster, and so delighted with those of the criminal, that she had him back and gave him a prize.

“No,” said Agnes, “I didn’t know. I should be happy to speak to Herbert, but, as I said, his time will be very full. But I know he has friends who make a speciality of weakly or—or unusual boys.”

“My dear, I’ve tried it. Stephen kicked the weakly boys and robbed apples with the unusual ones. He was expelled again.”

Agnes began to find Mrs. Failing rather tiresome. Wherever you trod on her, she seemed to slip away from beneath your feet. Agnes liked to know where she was and where other people were as well. She said: “My brother thinks a great deal of home life. I daresay he’d think that Mr. Wonham is best where he is—with you. You have been so kind to him. You”—she paused—“have been to him both father and mother.”

“I’m too hot,” was Mrs. Failing’s reply. It seemed that Miss Pembroke had at last touched a topic on which she was reticent. She rang the electric bell,—it was only to tell the footman to take the reprints to Mr. Wonham’s room,—and then murmuring something about work, proceeded herself to the house.

“Mrs. Failing—” said Agnes, who had not expected such a speedy end to their chat.

“Call me Aunt Emily. My dear?”

“Aunt Emily, what did you think of that story Rickie sent you?”

“It is bad,” said Mrs. Failing. “But. But. But.” Then she escaped, having told the truth, and yet leaving a pleasurable impression behind her.

XII

The excursion to Salisbury was but a poor business—in fact, Rickie never got there. They were not out of the drive before Mr. Wonham began doing acrobatics. He showed Rickie how very quickly he could turn round in his saddle and sit with his face to Æneas’s tail. “I see,” said Rickie coldly, and became almost cross when they arrived in this condition at the gate behind the house, for he had to open it, and was afraid of falling. As usual, he anchored just beyond the fastenings, and then had to turn Dido, who seemed as long as a battleship. To his relief a man came forward, and murmuring, “Worst gate in the parish,” pushed it wide and held it respectfully. “Thank you,” cried Rickie; “many thanks.” But Stephen, who was riding into the world back first, said majestically, “No, no; it doesn’t count. You needn’t think it does. You make it worse by touching your hat. Four hours and seven minutes! You’ll see me again.” The man answered nothing.

“Eh, but I’ll hurt him,” he chanted, as he swung into position. “That was Flea. Eh, but he’s forgotten my fists; eh, but I’ll hurt him.”

“Why?” ventured Rickie. Last night, over cigarettes, he had been bored to death by the story of Flea. The boy had a little reminded him of Gerald—the Gerald of history, not the Gerald of romance. He was more genial, but there was the same brutality, the same peevish insistence on the pound of flesh.

“Hurt him till he learns.”

“Learns what?”

“Learns, of course,” retorted Stephen. Neither of them was very civil. They did not dislike each other, but they each wanted to be somewhere else—exactly the situation that Mrs. Failing had expected.

“He behaved badly,” said Rickie, “because he is poorer than we are, and more ignorant. Less money has been spent on teaching him to behave.”

“Well, I’ll teach him for nothing.”

“Perhaps his fists are stronger than yours!”

“They aren’t. I looked.”

After this conversation flagged. Rickie glanced back at Cadover, and thought of the insipid day that lay before him. Generally he was attracted by fresh people, and Stephen was almost fresh: they had been to him symbols of the unknown, and all that they did was interesting. But now he cared for the unknown no longer. He knew.

Mr. Wilbraham passed them in his dog-cart, and lifted his hat to his employer’s nephew. Stephen he ignored: he could not find him on the map.

“Good morning,” said Rickie. “What a lovely morning!”

“I say,” called the other, “another child dead!” Mr. Wilbraham, who had seemed inclined to chat, whipped up his horse and left them.

“There goes an out and outer,” said Stephen; and then, as if introducing an entirely new subject—“Don’t you think Flea Thompson treated me disgracefully?”

“I suppose he did. But I’m scarcely the person to sympathize.” The allusion fell flat, and he had to explain it. “I should have done the same myself,—promised to be away two hours, and stopped four.”

“Stopped—oh—oh, I understand. You being in love, you mean?”

He smiled and nodded.

“Oh, I’ve no objection to Flea loving. He says he can’t help it. But as long as my fists are stronger, he’s got to keep it in line.”

“In line?”

“A man like that, when he’s got a girl, thinks the rest can go to the devil. He goes cutting his work and breaking his word. Wilbraham ought to sack him. I promise you when I’ve a girl I’ll keep her in line, and if she turns nasty, I’ll get another.”

Rickie smiled and said no more. But he was sorry that any one should start life with such a creed—all the more sorry because the creed caricatured his own. He too believed that life should be in a line—a line of enormous length, full of countless interests and countless figures, all well beloved. But woman was not to be “kept” to this line. Rather did she advance it continually, like some triumphant general, making each unit still more interesting, still more lovable, than it had been before. He loved Agnes, not only for herself, but because she was lighting up the human world. But he could scarcely explain this to an inexperienced animal, nor did he make the attempt.

For a long time they proceeded in silence. The hill behind Cadover was in harvest, and the horses moved regretfully between the sheaves. Stephen had picked a grass leaf, and was blowing catcalls upon it. He blew very well, and this morning all his soul went into the wail. For he was ill. He was tortured with the feeling that he could not get away and do—do something, instead of being civil to this anaemic prig. Four hours in the rain was better than this: he had not wanted to fidget in the rain. But now the air was like wine, and the stubble was smelling of wet, and over his head white clouds trundled more slowly and more seldom through broadening tracts of blue. There never had been such a morning, and he shut up his eyes and called to it. And whenever he called, Rickie shut up his eyes and winced.

At last the blade broke. “We don’t go quick, do we?” he remarked, and looked on the weedy track for another.

“I wish you wouldn’t let me keep you. If you were alone you would be galloping or something of that sort.”

“I was told I must go your pace,” he said mournfully. “And you promised Miss Pembroke not to hurry.”

“Well, I’ll disobey.” But he could not rise above a gentle trot, and even that nearly jerked him out of the saddle.

“Sit like _this_,” said Stephen. “Can’t you—see like _this_?” Rickie lurched forward, and broke his thumb nail on the horse’s neck. It bled a little, and had to be bound up.

“Thank you—awfully kind—no tighter, please—I’m simply spoiling your day.”

“I can’t think how a man can help riding. You’ve only to leave it to the horse so!—so!—just as you leave it to water in swimming.”

Rickie left it to Dido, who stopped immediately.

“I said _leave_ it.” His voice rose irritably. “I didn’t say ‘die.’ Of course she stops if you die. First you sit her as if you’re Sandow exercising, and then you sit like a corpse. Can’t you tell her you’re alive? That’s all she wants.”

In trying to convey the information, Rickie dropped his whip. Stephen picked it up and rammed it into the belt of his own Norfolk jacket. He was scarcely a fashionable horseman. He was not even graceful. But he rode as a living man, though Rickie was too much bored to notice it. Not a muscle in him was idle, not a muscle working hard. When he returned from the gallop his limbs were still unsatisfied and his manners still irritable. He did not know that he was ill: he knew nothing about himself at all.