CHAPTER XX. IN A SIDE PATH
“To sum up all, he has the worst fault-a husband can have, he's not my choice.”
There is something doubtful in a love-making that is in more than two pairs of hands. This is a day of syndicates. The strength that lies in union is cultivated nowadays with much assiduity. But in matters of love the case is not yet altered, and never will be. It is a matter for two people to decide between themselves, and all interference is mistaken and deplorable. It is usually, one notices, those persons who are incapable of the feeling themselves who seek to interfere in the affairs of others.
That one of the principals should seek aid in such interference proves without appeal that he does not know his business. Such aid as this Arthur Agar had sought. He had, as Dora suspected, written to his mother, with full particulars of the conversation beneath the Hurlingham trees. He had laid before her many arguments, which, by reason of their effeminacy, appealed to her illogical mind, proving that Dora could not do better than marry him. The arrangement, he argued, was satisfactory from whatever point of view it might be taken; and, finally, he begged his mother to try and succeed where he had failed. He did not propose that Mrs. Agar should appeal to Dora; not because such a course was repellent, but merely because he knew a better. He suggested that Mrs. Agar should sound Mr. Glynde upon the matter.
This suggestion was in itself a stroke of diplomacy. The astute have no doubt found out by this time that the Reverend Thomas Glynde loved money; and a man who loves money has not the makings of a good father within him, whatever else he may have. Whether Arthur was aware of this it would be hard to say. Whether he had the penetration to know that, in the nature of things, Mr. Glynde would urge Dora to marry Arthur Agar and Stagholme, without due regard to her own feelings in the matter, is a question upon which no man can give a reliable opinion. Certain it is that such a course was precisely what the Reverend Thomas had marked out for himself.
He had an exaggerated respect for money and position—a title was a thing to be revered. Clergymen, like artists, are dependent on patronage, and must swallow their pride. It is therefore, perhaps, only natural that Mr. Glynde should be quite prepared to make some sacrifice of feeling or sentiment (especially the feeling and sentiment of another) in order to secure a position.
Arthur Agar simply followed the spirit of the age. He could not succeed alone, and therefore he proceeded to form a syndicate to compel Dora to love him, or in the meantime to marry him.
“Of course,” said Sister Cecilia to Mrs. Agar, when the matter was first under discussion, “she would soon learn to care for him. Women always do.”
Which shows how much Sister Cecilia knew about it.
“And besides, I believe she cares for him already,” added Mrs. Agar, who never did things by halves.
Sister Cecilia dropped her head on one side and looked convinced—to order.
“Of course,” pursued Mrs. Agar vaguely, “I am very fond of Dora; no one could be more so. But I must confess that I do not always understand her.”
Even to Sister Cecilia it would not do to confess that she was afraid of her.
The interview was easily brought about. Mrs. Agar wrote a note to the Rector and asked him to luncheon. The Rector, who had not had many legal affairs to settle during his uneventful life, was always pleased to be consulted upon a subject of which he knew absolutely nothing. Besides, they gave one a good luncheon at Stagholme in those days.
“I have had a letter from dear Arthur,” said Mrs. Agar, at a moment which she deemed propitious, namely, after a third glass of the Stagholme brown sherry.
“Ah! I hope he is well. The boy is not strong.”
“Yes, he is quite well, thank you. But of course he has had a great shock, and one cannot expect him to get over it all at once.”
The Rector did not hold much by sentiment, so he contented himself with a grave sip of sherry.
“And now I am afraid there is fresh trouble,” added Mrs. Agar.
“Been running into debt?” suggested Mr. Glynde.
“No, it is not that. No, it is Dora.”
“Dora! What has Dora been doing?”
Mrs. Agar was polishing the rim of a silver salt-cellar with her forefinger.
“Of course,” she said, “I have seen it going on for a long time. My poor boy has always—well, he has always admired Dora.”'
“Oh!”
“Yes, and of course I should like nothing better. I am sure they would be most happy.”
The Rector looked doubtful.
“We must not forget,” he said, “that Arthur is constitutionally delicate. That extreme repugnance to active exercise, the love of ease and—er—indoor pursuits, show a tendency to enfeeble the organisation which might—I don't say it will, but it might—turn to decline.”
“But the doctors say that he is quite strong. Everybody cannot be robust and—and massive.”
She was thinking of Jem, against whom she had always borne a grudge, because his inoffensive presence alone had the power of making Arthur look puny.
“No; and of course with care one may hope that Arthur will live to a ripe old age,” said the Rector, who was only coquetting with the question.
Mrs. Agar played with a biscuit. She had a rooted aversion to the query direct.
“I should have thought,” she said, “that you or her mother would have seen that such an attachment was likely to form itself.”
The truth was that the Reverend Thomas did not devote very much thought to any subject which did not directly influence his own well-being. He had at one time thought that an attachment between Jem and Dora might conveniently result from a childhood's friendship, but Arthur had not entered into his prognostications at all. He rather despised the youth, as much on his own account as that he was Anna Agar's son.
“Can't say,” he replied, “that the thing ever entered my head. Of course, if the young people have settled it all between themselves, I suppose we must give them our blessing, and be thankful that we have been saved further trouble.”
He thought it rather strange that Dora should have fixed her affections on such an unlikely object as Arthur Agar; but it was part of his earthly creed that the feelings of women are as incomprehensible as they are unimportant. Which, by the way, serves to show how very little the Rector of Stagholme knew of the world.
“But,” protested Mrs. Agar, “they have not settled it between themselves. That is just it.”
“Just what?”
“Just the difficulty.”
Immediately Mr. Glynde's face fell to its usual degree of set depression.
“What do they want me to do?” he inquired, with that air of resignation which is in reality no resignation at all.
“Well,” said Mrs. Agar volubly, “it appears that Arthur spoke to Dora at Hurlingham, and for some reason she said No. I can't understand it at all. I am sure she has always appeared to like him very much. It may have been some passing fancy or something, you know. When she is told that it would please us all, perhaps she will change her mind. Poor Arthur is terribly cut up about it. Of course a man in his position does not quite expect to be treated cavalierly like that.”
Mr. Glynde smiled. Behind the parson there was somewhat even better; there was a just and honest English gentleman, which, in the way of human species, is very hard to beat.
“I am afraid Arthur will have to manage such affairs for himself. When a girl is settling a question involving her whole life she does not usually pause to consider the position of the man who asks her to be his wife. He would have no business to ask her had he no position, and the rest is merely a matter of degrees.”
“Then you don't care about the match?” said Mrs. Agar, to whose mind the earliest rudiments of logic were incomprehensible.
“I do not say that,” replied the Rector, with the patience of a man who has had dealings with women all his life; “but I should like it to be understood that Dora is quite free to choose for herself. I am willing to tell her that the match would be satisfactory to me. Arthur is a gentleman, which is saying a good deal in these days. He is affectionate, and, so far as I know, a dutiful son. I have little doubt he would make a good husband.”
Mrs. Agar wiped away an obvious tear, which ran off Mr. Glynde's mental epidermis like water off the back of the proverbial fowl. This also he had learnt in the course of his dealings with the world.
“He has been a good son to me,” sniffed the fond and foolish mother.
Neither of these persons was capable of understanding that “goodness” is not all we want in husband or wife. These good husbands—heaven help their wives!—break as many hearts as those who are labelled by the world with the black ticket.
“Then I may tell Arthur that you will help him?” said Mrs. Agar, with a sudden access of practical energy.
“You may tell him that he has my good wishes, and that I will point out to Dora the advantages of—acceding to his desire. There are, of course, advantages on both sides, we know that.”
As usual, Mrs. Agar overdid things. The airiness of her indifference might have deceived a child of eight, provided that its intellect was not de première force.
“Ye-es,” she murmured, “I suppose Dora would bring her little—eh—subscription towards the household expenses. Sister Cecilia gave me to understand that there was a little something coming to her under her mother's marriage settlement.”
Mrs. Agar was not clever enough to see that she had made a mistake. The mention of Sister Cecilia's name acted on the Rector like a mental douche. He was just beginning to give way to expansiveness—probably under the suave influence of the brown sherry—and the name of Sister Cecilia pulled him together with a jerk. The jerk extended to his features; but Mrs. Agar was one of those cunning women whom no man need fear. She was so cunning that she deceived herself into seeing that which she wished to see, and nothing else.
“All that,” said the Rector gravely, “can be discussed when Arthur has persuaded Dora to say Yes.”
He was in the position of an unfortunate person who, having come into controversy with the police, is warned that every word he says may be used in evidence against him. He had been reminded that every detail of the present conversation would be repeated to Sister Cecilia, with embellishments or subtractions as might please the narrator's fancy or suit her purpose.
“A dangerous woman” he called Sister Cecilia in his most gloomy voice, and a parson must perforce fear dangerous women. That is one of the trials of the ministry.
Mrs. Agar laughed in a forced manner.
“Of course,” she said—she had a habit of beginning her remarks with these two words—“of course, we need not think of such questions yet. I am sure all I want is the happiness of the dear children.”
“Umph!” ejaculated Mr. Glynde, who was not always a model of politeness.
“That, I am sure,” continued Mrs. Agar, with a dabbing pocket-handkerchief, “is the dearest wish of us all.”
“When does the boy come home?” inquired the Rector.
“Oh, in a week. I am so longing for him to come. He has to go to town to get some clothes, which will delay his return by one night.”
“Is he doing any good this term?”
Mrs. Agar looked slightly hurt.
“Well, he always works very hard, I am only afraid that he should overdo it. You know, I suppose, that he did not get through his examination this term. Of course it is no good my saying anything, but I am quite convinced that they are not dealing fairly by him. I have seen some of those examination papers, and some of the questions are simply spiteful. They do it on purpose, I know. And Sister Cecilia tells me that that does happen sometimes. For some reason or other—because they have been snubbed, or something like that—the masters, the examiners, or whatever they are called, make a dead set at some men, and simply keep them back. They don't give them the marks that they ought to have. Why should Arthur always fail? Of course the thing is unfair.”
This theory was not quite new to the Rector. He had given up arguing about it, and usually took refuge in flight. He did so on this occasion. But as he walked home across the park, smoking a cigarette, he reflected that to the owner of Stagholme such a small matter as a college career was, after all, of no importance. These broad acres, the stately forests, the grand old house, raised Arthur Agar above such considerations, indeed above most considerations. And Mr. Glynde made up his mind to put it very strongly to Dora.
CHAPTER XXI. ALONE
The name of the slough was Despond.
When Dora returned to Stagholme a fortnight later she was relieved to find that Arthur had not yet come down from Cambridge.
It is a strange thing that in the spring-time those who are happy—pro tempore, of course, we know all that—are happier, while those who carry something with them find the burden heavier. Stagholme in the spring came as a sort of shock to Dora. There were certain adjuncts to the growth of things which gave her actual pain. After dinner, the first night, she walked across the garden to the beechwood, but before long she came back again. There is a scent in beech forests in the spring which is like no other scent on earth, and Dora found that she could not stand it.
Her father and mother were sitting in the drawing-room with open windows, for it was a warm May that year. She came in through the falling curtains, and something warned her to keep her face averted from the furtive glance of her mother's eyes. She had learnt something of the world during her brief season in town, and one of the lessons had been that the world sees more than is often credited to it.
“The worst,” she said cheerfully, “of a season in town is that it makes one feel aged and experienced. Middle age came upon me suddenly, just now, in the garden.”
Mr. Glynde was looking at her almost critically over his newspaper.
“How old are you?” he asked curtly.
“Twenty-five.”
In some indefinite way the question jarred horribly. Dora was conscious of a faint doubt in the infallibility of her father's judgment. She knew that in a worldly sense he was more experienced, more thoughtful, cleverer than her mother, but in some ways she inclined towards the maternal opinion on questions connected with herself.
At this moment Mrs. Glynde was called from the room, and went reluctantly, feeling that the time was unpropitious.
Mr. Glynde's life had been eminently uneventful. Prosperous, happy in a half-hearted, almost negative, way, somewhat selfish, he had never known hardship, had never faced adversity. It is such men as this who love what they call a serious talk, summoning the subject thereof with exaggerated gravity to a study, making a point of the mise en scène, and finally saying nothing that could not have been spoken in course of ordinary conversation.
Dora detected the odour of a serious talk in the atmosphere, and she found that something had taken away the awe which such conversations had hitherto inspired. It may have been the season in town, but it was more probably that confidence which comes from the knowledge of the world. There were things in life of which she consciously knew more than her father, and one of these was sorrow. There is nothing that gives so much confidence as the knowledge that the worst possible has happened. It raises one above the petty worries of daily existence.
Dora knew that her acquaintance with sorrow was more intimate, more thorough, than that of her father, who sat looking as if the hangman were at the door. She awaited the serious talk with some apprehension, but none of that almost paralysing awe which she had known in childhood.
“I am getting an old man,” he said, with supreme egotism, “and you cannot expect to have me with you much longer.”
“But I do expect it,” replied Dora cheerfully. “I am sorry to disappoint you, papa, but I do expect it most decidedly.”
This rather spoilt the lugubrious gravity of the situation.
“Well, thank Heaven! I am a hearty man yet,” admitted the Rector rather more hopefully; “but still you cannot expect to have your parents with you all your life, you know.”
“I think it is wiser not to look too far into the future,” replied Dora, warding off.
“I should look much more happily into the future,” replied the Rector, with the deliberation of the domestic autocrat, “if I knew that you had a good husband to take care of you.”
In a flash of thought Dora traced it all back to Arthur, through Mrs. Agar; and her would-be lover fell still further in her estimation. He seemed to be fated to show himself at every turn the very antitype to her ideal.
“Ah,” she laughed, “but suppose I got a bad one? You are always saying that marriage is a lottery, and I don't believe the remark is original. Suppose I drew a blank; fancy being married to a blank! Or I might do worse. I might draw minus something—minus brains, for instance. They are in the lottery, for I have seen them, nicely done up in faultless linen—both blanks and worse.”
She turned away towards the window, and the moment her face was averted it changed suddenly. The face that looked out towards the beech-wood, where the shadows were creeping from the darkening east, was piteous, terror-stricken, driven.
It is an ever-living question why people—honest, well-meaning parents and others—should be set to ride rough-shod over all that is best and purest in the human mind.
The Rector went on, in his calmly self-satisfied voice, with a fatuous ignorance of what he was doing which must have made the very angels wince.
“A great many girls,” he said, “have thrown away a chance of happiness merely to serve a passing fancy. Mind you don't do that.”
She gave a little laugh, quite natural and easy, but her face was grave, and more.
“I do not think there is any fear of that,” she replied lightly. “You must confess, papa, that I have always displayed a remarkable capacity for the management of my own affairs—with the assistance of Sister Cecilia, bien entendu.”
This was rather a forlorn hope, but Dora was driven into a corner. The Rector was in the habit of preaching a good methodical sermon, and usually finished up somewhere in the neighbourhood of the text from whence he started. He allowed himself to deviate, but he never turned his back upon his text and went for a vague ramble through scriptural meadows, as some have been heard to do. He deviated on this occasion for a moment, but never lost sight of the main question.
“Sister Cecilia,” he said, “is a busybody, and, like all busybodies, a fool. It is always people who cannot manage their own affairs who are so anxious to help their neighbours. I have no doubt that you are as capable of looking after yourself as any girl; but, child, you must remember that experience goes a long way in the world, and in the nature of things I must know better than you.”
“Of course you do, papa dear. I know that.”
But she did not know it, and he knew that she did not. This knowledge is certain to come, sooner or later, to men and women who have lived for themselves and in themselves alone. They are mental hermits, whose opinion of things connected with the lives of others cannot well be of value because they have only studied their own existences.
The Rector of Stagholme suddenly became aware of this. He suddenly found that his advice was no longer law. There are plenty of us ready to confess that we cannot play billiards or whist or polo, but no man likes it to be known that he cannot play the game of life. Mr. Glynde did not like this subtle feeling of incompetency. He prided himself on being a man of the world, and frequently applied the vague term to himself. We are all men of a world, but it depends upon the size of that world as to what value our citizenship may be. Mr. Glynde's world had always been the Reverend Thomas Glynde. He knew nothing of Dora's world, and lost his way as soon as he set his foot therein. But rather than make inquiries he thought to support paternal dignity by going further.
“It is,” he said, with inevitable egotism, “unnecessary for me to tell you that I have only your interests at heart.”
“Quite, papa dear. But do not let us talk about these horrid things. I am quite happy at home, and I do not want to go away from it. There is nowhere in the world where I should sooner be than here, even taking into consideration the fact that you are sometimes the most dismal old gentleman on the face of the earth.”
“Well,” he answered, with a grim smile, “I am sure I have enough to make me dismal. I am thankful to say that there will be no difficulty about money. You will be well enough off to have all that you might desire. But wealth is not all that a woman wants. She cannot turn it to the same account as a man. She wants position, a household, a husband. Otherwise the world only makes use of her; she is a prey to charity humbugs and bad people who do good works badly. I am not speaking as a parson, but as a man of the world.”
“Then,” she said, “as a parson, tell me if it would not be wrong to marry a man for whom one did not care, just for the sake of these things—a household and a husband.”
“Of course it would,” answered Mr. Glynde. “And that is a wrong which is usually punished in this life. But there are cases where it is difficult to say whether there be love or not. Unless you actually despise or hate a man, you may come to care for him.”
“And in the meantime the position and the advantages mentioned are worth seizing?”
“So says the world,” admitted Mr. Glynde.
“And what says the parson?”
She went to him and laid her two arms upon his broad chest, standing behind him as he sat in his arm-chair and looking down affectionately upon his averted face.
“And what says the parson?” she repeated, with a loving tap of her fingers on his breast.
“Nothing,” was the reply. “A better parson than I says that what is natural is right.”
“Yes, and that means follow the dictates of your own heart?”
“I suppose so,” admitted the Hector, taking her two hands in his.
“And the dictates of my heart are all for staying at home and looking after my ancient parents and worrying them. Am I to be sent away? Not yet, old gentleman, not yet.”
The Reverend Thomas Glynde laughed, somewhat as if a weight had been lifted from his heart. In his way he was a conscientious man. It was his honest conviction that Dora would do well to marry Arthur, who was a gentleman and essentially harmless. In persuading her to do so covertly, as he had thought well to do, he was honestly performing that which he thought to be his duty towards her. Presently Mrs. Glynde came back, and shortly afterwards Dora left the room. The Rector was not reading the book he held open on his knee, but gazed instead absently at the pattern of the hearthrug.
A change had come in this quiet household. Dora had gone away a child. She had come back a woman, with that consciousness of life which comes somewhere between twenty and thirty years of age—a consciousness which is partly made up of the knowledge that life is, after all, given to each one of us individually to make the best of as well as we may; and no one knows what that best is except ourselves. What is happiness for one is misery for another, and while human beings vary as the clouds of heaven, no life can be lived by set rule.
Over these things the Rector pondered. He felt the difference in Dora. She was still his daughter, but no longer a child. Her existence was still his chief care, but he could only stand by and help a little here and there; for the dependency of childhood was left behind, and her evident intention was to work out her own life in her own way. So do those who are dependent by nature upon the advice and sympathy of others learn to lean only upon their own strength.
In the room overhead, standing by the window with weary eyes, Dora was murmuring: “I wonder—I wonder if I shall be able to hold out against them all.”
CHAPTER XXII. ACROSS THE YEARS
Across the years you seem to come.
“That is just what I can't do. I cannot afford to wait.”
Arthur Agar drew in his neatly-shod little feet, and leant back in the deep chair which was always set aside as his in the Stagholme drawing-room.
Mother and son were alone in the vast, somewhat gloomy apartment. Arthur had been home six hours, and the subject of their conversation was, of course, Dora.
Sister Cecilia was absent, only in obedience to a very unmistakable hint in one of Arthur's recent letters to his mother.
“Only a little while,” pleaded Mrs. Agar. “Of course, dear, it will all come right. I feel convinced of that. Only you see, dear, girls do not like to be hurried in such an important step. I am quite sure she cares for you; only you must give her a little time.”
“But I can't, I can't,” he repeated anxiously. And his face wore that strangely accentuated look of trouble which almost amounted to dread—dread of something in life which had not come yet.
“Why not?” inquired Mrs. Agar. “You are both young enough, I am sure.”
“Oh, yes, we are young enough.”
He stirred his tea with an effeminate appreciation of fine Coalport and a dainty Norwegian spoon.
“Then why should you not wait?”
Arthur was silent; he looked very small and frail, almost childlike, in his silk-faced evening coat. Spoilt boy was writ large all over his person. “Arthur,” said Mrs. Agar, “you are keeping something from me.”
He shook his feeble head feebly.
“You are, I know you are. What is it?”
This was the only person in all the world who had stirred the heart of Anna Agar to something like a lasting affection. Once—years before—she had loved Seymour Michael with a sudden volcanic passion which had as suddenly turned to hatred. But under no circumstances could such a love have endured. Consistency, constancy, singleness of purpose were quite lacking in this woman's composition. It is rare, but when a woman does fail in this respect, her failure is more complete, more miserable than the failure of men, inconstant as they are.
Her affection for Arthur, coupled with that suspicion which always goes with a cheap cunning, had put her on the right scent.
“Tell me,” she said, “I insist on knowing.”
Still he held his peace, with the obstinate silence of the weak.
“Well, then,” she cried, “don't ask me to help you to win Dora, that is all!”
There was a pause; in the silence of the great house the wind moaned softly. It always moaned in the drawing-room, whether in calm or storm, from some undiscovered draught in the high ventilated ceiling.
“I sometimes think,” said Arthur at length, in an awestruck voice, “that Jem may not be dead.”
“Not dead! Arthur, how can you be so stupid?”
She was not at all awestruck. Her denser, more sordid nature was proof against the silence or the humming wind. The greed of gain has power to kill superstition.
His face puzzled her. Suddenly he cast himself back and hid his face in his hands.
“Oh!” he muttered, “I can't do it, I can't do it!”
In an instant his mother was standing over him.
“Arthur,” she hissed, “you know something?”
“Yes,” he confessed in a whisper at length.
“Jem is not dead?” she hissed again. Her voice was hoarse.
“He was not killed in the disaster,” admitted Arthur. In his heart he was still clinging to the other hope subtly held out by Seymour Michael—the hope that in his simple intrepidity Jem had gone to his death.
“Then where is he—where is he, Arthur? Tell me quickly!”
Mrs. Agar was white and breathless. It was as if she had bartered her soul, and after payment, had been tricked out of her share of the bargain. She trembled with a fear which seemed to fill her world and extend to the other world to come.
“He escaped from that action,” said Arthur, who, now that the truth was out, grew voluble like a child making a confession, “by being sent on in front with a few men. They escaped notice, while the larger body was attacked and massacred.”
“Who told you this?”
“I do not know. I cannot tell you his name.”
“Arthur!” exclaimed Mrs. Agar nervously, “are you going mad? Do you know what you are saying?”
In reply he gave a little laugh like a sob.
“Oh yes,” he replied, “it is all right. I know what I am saying, though sometimes I scarcely believe it myself. If it was a hundred years ago one might believe it easily enough, but now it seems unreal.”
“Then where is Jem? Was he taken prisoner? Those men are savages, aren't they? They kill—people when they take them prisoners.”
“No, he was not taken prisoner,” said Arthur. Sometimes he lost patience in a snappy, feminine way with his mother.
“Oh! tell me, tell me, Arthur dear! You are killing me!”
“I will, if you will let me. It appears that Jem had made himself a name out there for knowing the country and the people, which is useful to the Government, because Russia and England both want the country, or something like that; I don't quite understand it.”
“Oh, never mind! Go on!” interrupted Mrs. Agar, with characteristic impatience.
“And at any rate the men on the other side—the Russians or some one, I don't know who—were in the habit of watching Jem so as to prevent his going up into this unexplored country. Well, when the report of his death was put in the newspapers it was left uncontradicted, so that these men should think he was dead, and not be on the look-out for him. Do you understand?”
Mrs. Agar had raised her head, with listening, attentive eyes. It seemed as if a voice had come to her across the years from the distant past. A voice telling an old story, which had never been forgotten, but merely laid aside in the memory among those things that never are forgotten.
Finding Arthur's troubled gaze upon her, she seemed to recollect herself with a little gesture of her hand to her breast as if breathing were difficult.
“That does not sound like a thing Jem would do,” she said, with one of those flashes of shrewd observation which sometimes come to inconsequent people, and make it difficult for those around them to be sure how much they see and how much passes unobserved.
“It was not Jem, it was this other man.”
“Which other man?” Mrs. Agar gave a little gasp, as if she had found something she feared to find.
“The man who told me—he was Jem's superior officer.”
“When did he tell you—where?”
“He came to see me at Cambridge, and brought those things of Jem's,” replied Arthur. So far from feeling guilty at thus revealing all that he had promised to keep secret, he was now beginning to experience some pangs of conscience at the recollection of a concealment which, by a supreme effort, had been made to extend to four months.
There was a sly gleam in Mrs. Agar's eyes. A close observer knowing her well could have seen the cunning written on her face, for it was cheap and obvious.
“Oh!” she said indifferently, “and what sort of man was he?”
Arthur pondered with a deliberation that almost maddened her.
“Oh!” he replied at length, “a small man, dark, with a sunburnt face; a Jew, I should think. He was rather well dressed—in the military style, of course.”
“Yes,” muttered Mrs. Agar. “Yes.”
There was a long silence, during which Mrs. Agar reflected, as deeply, perhaps, as she had ever reflected in her life.
Then she discovered something for herself which had of necessity been pointed out to her son—a subtle divergence of character.
“But,” she said, “of course Jem may never come back from this expedition. It must be very dangerous.”
“It is very dangerous.”
Mrs. Agar's sigh of relief was quite audible. It is thus that nature sometimes betrays human nature.
“Did he say that? Did he think that of it?”
Seymour Michael's opinion still had value in her eyes.
“Yes,” the reply came slowly; “he said that we might almost look upon Jem as a dead man.”
Mother and son looked at each other and said nothing. Heredity is a strange thing, and one alternately aggrandised and slighted. Blood is a very powerful force, but the little lessons taught in childhood's years bear a wondrous crop of good or evil fruit in later days.
Left alone, Arthur Agar's natural tendency was towards good. Probably because he was timid, and goodness seems the safer course. There are many who have not the courage to forsake goodness, even for a moment. But under the influence of a stronger will—that is to say, under the influence of four out of every five persons crossing his path—Arthur was liable to be led in any direction. He would rather have sinned in company than have cultivated virtue in the solitude usually accorded to that state.
Somehow, in his mother's presence it did not seem so very wrong to keep back the truth respecting Jem and to turn it to his own ends. It did not seem either mean or cowardly to take advantage of a rival's absence and gain his object, by deception. So, perhaps, it was in the beginning, when the world was young. In those days also a mother and son helped each other in deception, and so since then have many thousands of mothers (incompetent or vicious) led their children to ruin.
“Of course,” said Mrs. Agar, “if Jem goes and does things of that description he must take the consequences.”
Arthur said nothing in reply to this. The thought had been his for some months, but he had never put it into shape.
“We are perfectly justified,” she went on, “in acting as if Jem were dead until he deigns to advise us to the contrary.”
This also was putting a long-cherished thought into form.
Arthur knew that he ought to have told his mother then and there that Jem had taken every step in his power to advise him as soon as possible of the falseness of the news transmitted to the newspapers. But something held him silent, some taint of hereditary untruthfulness.
“I do not see,” she said, “that this news can, therefore, make much difference. There is no reason to alter any of our plans. To begin with, I am certain that he is dead. We must have heard by this time if he had been living.”
Arthur gave a little nod of acquiescence.
“And also,” pursued Mrs. Agar, with characteristic inconsistency, “he evidently does not care about us or our feelings.”
Arthur knew what she meant, and he descended as low in the moral scale as ever he went during his life.
“But,” he said, “there is, all the same, no time to lose.”
He passed his hand over his sleek, lifeless hair with a weary look.
“Well, dear,” said his mother soothingly, “I will see Ellen Glynde to-morrow, and try to make her say something to Dora. A girl's mother has always more influence than her father.”
This idiotic axiom seemed to satisfy Arthur, probably because he knew no better, and he rose to take his bedroom candlestick.
Mrs. Agar was a person utterly incapable of harbouring two thoughts at the same moment. She never even got so far as to place two sides of a question upon an equal footing in her mind. All her questions had but one side. She was not thinking of Arthur when she went to her room. She was not thinking of him when she lay staring at the daylight, which had crept up into the sky before she closed her eyes.
She tossed and turned and moaned aloud with a childish impatience. Her mind could find no rest; it could not throw off the deadly knowledge that Seymour Michael had come back into her life. And somehow she was no longer Anna Agar, but Anna Hethbridge. She was no longer the fond mother whose whole world was filled by thoughts of her son—a miserable, thoughtless, haphazard world it was—but again she was the wronged woman, moved by the one great passion that had stirred her sordid soul, a fearsome hatred for Seymour Michael.
She was not an analytical woman; she had never thought about her own thoughts; she was as superficial as human nature can well be. That is to say, she was little more than an animal with the gift of speech, added to one or two small items of knowledge which divide men from beasts. But she knew that this was not the end. She never doubted for a moment that it was merely a beginning, that Seymour Michael was coming back into her life.
Like a child she tossed and tumbled in her bed, muttering half-consciously, “Oh, what shall I do? What shall I do?”