We left him still raving, as the nurse called it, but to my thinking happier and nearer his right mind than he had been for many a long year.
And the other wedding?
For that, I must go back a little into time. I told you about old Mrs. Wynne's efforts to find Drusilla a husband among the eligible young men of Ludlow and district. In vain. But a capricious chance can do on its head, as Dollie would say, that which not all the old ladies in Shropshire can compass with bell, book, and candle.
Drusilla, her visit ended, returned to London with a glad heart. She took her place in the express at Shrewsbury, in a third-class compartment with three other persons in it, and settled down to her novel, on excellent terms with herself and the world. She had done her duty and might now do something pleasant—a perfect foundation for peace of mind.
At Wolverhampton two of the three other passengers left, and no other coming in, Drusilla found herself sitting opposite a clean-shaven, grey-eyed young man of determined but agreeable aspect, who was reading The British Medical Journal.
Being merely a man, and not obviously a male reformer, this creature naturally had no possible interest for Drusilla, or should not have had; but our little Drusilla, although still veneered with Purpose and Campaign and all the rest of it, was yet akin to the old Eve too; and, after all, his eyes really were very clear and direct, and his mouth was at once firm and tender, and his hands looked strong and capable and were not wholly shapeless either. There had been worse hands at the Slade, where hands were supposed to mean so much.
It was easy to observe these, for they were holding up The British Medical Journal before his face.
Drusilla's thoughts left her novel.
It is a pity that Socialists have such indifferent tailors.
Why should they?
Surely it is possible to be interested in the higher ideals, and also go to a good barber and keep one's knees from bagging?
At any rate, every one knows that there are exceptions to every rule.
No one would read The British Medical Journal unless he had some kind of intellect, even if one of the papers on the seat beside him was rather violently pink.
At Leamington the unexpected happened. A Japanese spaniel fell down between the train and the platform just before they stopped, and had a paw crushed by the wheel of Drusilla's carriage. She uttered a cry of anguish as she learned of the accident, and her companion leaped out and, extricating the little animal, examined the wound and comforted its owner.
Drusilla loved dogs, and the incident led to conversation. He was a doctor at Thomas's. They talked all the way to London.
Where and when Drusilla met her doctor again I do not know, but she lost no time in doing so on our return from Venice, and electrified the family one evening very shortly after by announcing that she was giving up art and intended to be a hospital nurse.
It is an ordeal which many families have to undergo, and it brings forth in most the same blend of resignation, admiration, impatience, and satire. Naomi, who suspected nothing, defended and supported her sister; Alderley was vexed, in part, I think, at the conventionality of the decision from such an independent girl as his second daughter, and in part at the sacrifice of her painting lessons; Mrs. Wynne took it as it came, and hoped for the best, liking moreover the old-fashionedness of a step that seemed to involve a little drudgery and self-sacrifice; while Lionel said something about the uniform—"Not quite so fetching perhaps as the Salvation Army bonnet, but a jolly sight prettier than dingy Slade greens and browns."
All innocently I put my foot into it by saying that I hoped that her Hospital would be Bart's, because I had an uncle who used to be on the staff there, and the circumstance had given me a kind of proprietary interest in the place; but Drusilla declared for Thomas's, and Thomas's alone, so emphatically as almost to give away her secret.
Lionel, who, for a thoughtless youth, has diabolical luck in his sharpshooting, went on to remark that girls who wished to be hospital nurses had always marked down their doctor first. Naomi told him not to be unkind; but Drusilla's cheeks confessed his accuracy.
As it happened, however, Drusilla never donned the uniform. There was no need.
By an odd chance I was the first person to whom she confided her secret. I say odd chance, because, although we have been happy enough together, I am not exactly a favourite with her. But young women in love when they want a thing done can make exceptions; and, as it happened, I was in the way of being useful to her conquering Adonis.
It seemed that suddenly, out of a clear sky, had dropped the offer of a medical post in Buenos Ayres, at a high salary, the condition being that it was accepted at once. To me, therefore, as an old Argentinian, came Drusilla to ask if I advised it, and what was the hospital like, and would I give introductions if it was accepted—speaking vaguely of some one she was interested in, a friend of a friend, and so on: mystifications so time-worn as to wear every sign-manual of truth.
I disguised my divination of her secret and advised in favour of her friend's friend accepting the appointment, and promised to write any number of letters of introduction if she would tell me what name to call him by.
She blushed and was silent for a minute, and then she told me all and expressed their intention, contingent apparently upon my opinion being favourable, of being married at once, as she had resolved to bear him company to the new post as his wife.
"Very well," I said, "but kindly let me know when the bomb is to be exploded in the family circle, and I will be careful to dine elsewhere."
If I smiled a little as she told her story, Heaven forgive me, for I would not willingly wound a young and ardent heart; but to have Drusilla's altruistic zeal to be a hospital nurse so suddenly laid bare was more than flesh and blood—at any rate the flesh and blood of my tell-tale lips—could stand. She took it very well, though, as we can take things when we are preoccupied or they make us happy.
Mrs. Duckie came in just as I was ready for Drusilla's wedding, and looked me over approvingly.
"It will be a nicer wedding than ours the other day," she said a little wistfully. "I can't forget those comic men. The idea of comicalities at a wedding! But there, one never knows what the world's coming to! I shan't get my peace of mind back till Be-trice goes off. No comicalities then, I promise you. I mean to write to Canon Lyme to ask him as a great favour to oblige. His wedding sermons are beautiful. Not a dry eye."
The good woman, she is quite right. Weddings are for tears: only those guests who can cry really enjoy them.
I did not myself cry at Drusilla's,—at least I produced no tears,—but it was a melancholy occasion. Such was the haste that the two families had had no time to become acquainted, and we seemed to be engaged rather in some ceremony of hostility than of fusion. We fell naturally into sides, Montagus, almost, and Capulets.
To add to the difficulty, the father and mother of the bridegroom were so much like several other members of their party that slights were of constant occurrence; but this is a common experience at weddings, where the newness of clothes cancels personality.
However, even weddings come to an end, and by four o'clock we were cheering a departing brougham on its way to Waterloo for Southhampton and South America. There was no singing of "Mr. Right," but I felt very little uneasiness as to Drusilla's future. None the less, the more I revolved the matter that evening the more did I wonder that affectionate parents can ever give their consent to their children's marriage at all. I can understand a father having no particular objection to his son's wife, and a mother to her daughter's husband; but how a father can ever even tolerate his daughter's husband or a mother the wife of her son, that is beyond my imagination. And that night as I watched Alderley's gallant efforts to be gay at dinner I realised my perplexity more than ever. Life can be very hard on parents.
CHAPTER XXVI
MR. DABNEY AGAIN SUFFERS, AND THE YOUNGER GENERATION DOES NOT KNOCK AT THE DOOR, BUT WALKS RIGHT IN AND TALKS EXTRAORDINARY STRANGE TALK
Old Mrs. Wynne, who in spite of the failure of her own plans, persists in considering this match her own making, and who came all the way from Ludlow to attend the wedding, paid us a call the next morning, to my great surprise.
While she was sitting in my best chair, who should dash in but Mr. Dabney on his way downstairs. On catching sight of Mrs. Wynne, he was for a swift retreat; but the old lady stopped him and compelled him to sit down and be courteous if not courtly.
As they conversed, her eye, by malignant chance, alighted upon my copy of the Pickwick Papers, and she asked me to hand it to her.
"Ah, yes," she said, "Pickwick!—what a wonderful book! You, Mr. Dabney," she continued, "being a literary man, will be interested in hearing that I once met the author of this work."
Mr. Dabney shot me a tragic look.
"Did you indeed?" he said, adding quickly, "but, of course, you told me about it when I had the pleasure of meeting you at dinner in Queen Anne's Gate."
"I don't think so," said Mrs. Wynne. "I don't remember it."
"Assuredly," said Mr. Dabney, "I remember it very vividly."
"Very strange that I should not," replied the old lady; "but it happened in this way. I was at Manchester with me dear husband some time in the sixties. I forget the exact year. Me husband was there on business, and it happened that Mr. Dickens was giving one of his inimitable readings. We all stayed in the same hotel, and Mr. Dickens breakfasted at the same table as ourselves. The toast was not good, and I remember that Mr. Dickens..."
At this point I stole gently from the room, for Mr. Dabney, I felt, must be rescued at any cost. Hastily scribbling a note I gave it to Ern, who was bending himself into a hoop on the landing, and telling him to count ten and then bring it to my room, I returned.
Mrs. Wynne had just reached Mr. Thackeray. "It was," she was saying, "at a conversazione at the Royal Society. Me dear husband and I were leaving at the same time as the great man..."
Here came a rap at the door.
"A letter for Mr. Dabney," said Em, "marked urgent."
"Excuse me a moment," said Mr. Dabney, and took it. He read it gravely, cast me a glance of intense gratitude, and murmuring something about a very important matter, bade Mrs. Wynne a cordial farewell and hurried away.
I heard a jingling of coins outside, and as Ern immediately afterwards descended the stairs four at a time, I guessed that for the moment bulls' eyes superseded contortions.
"A nice man," says Mrs. Wynne, "but not a good listener. His thoughts seem inclined to wander. I hope he is clever in proportion. Did you say he wrote novels? I must read one."
The next day Mrs. Wynne returned to Ludlow, taking the Queen Anne's Gate family, with the exception of Lionel, with her. I was left alone.
It was the first time that Naomi had not been within call ever since I returned to England; and I was lost.
I found that I had nothing to do. Even London withdrew its fascination. I went down to Norfolk to see our old home, and hurried back plunged in melancholy. I drove to Paddington early one morning, intending to go to Ludlow and stay at The Feathers; but at the station I thought better of it, and returned.
In a kind of despair I became a clubman again, and with the utmost regularity for a few days sat in arm-chairs and read papers and novels and permitted cowed waiters to approach me and supply my needs. I am no clubman by nature, but my father having years and years ago paid my entrance fee to a Pall Mall monastery, I had felt it a pious duty to keep up the subscriptions.
Poor little Drusilla, I thought, how much more efficacious than fines or imprisonment it would be if the magistrates had sentenced the suffrage revolutionaries to spend a few hours observing through a grill the daily routine of a club life! Never would they revolt again. Such a hopelessness would settle on their hearts and brains as would crush out every emotion save despair. Woman's chance in England will come only when she has destroyed the Club.
The evening before the Wynnes returned I went home desperately tired. There had been a heavy thundercloud over London most of the day, and the city was without air. I could easily have slept on an Embankment seat, I was so weary.
On lighting my lamp I had a shock; for in my chair was sitting a young man. Perfectly silent he sat, with an ease of manner, a quiet suggestion of possession, that I resented intensely. He wore a loose tweed suit, and held a pipe in his hand. I could not see his face.
As he gave no sign of observing my entrance I coughed, and then asked if he were waiting for me, and what could I do for him. He replied that he was waiting for me, but that whether or not I could do anything for him remained to be seen. His voice sounded strangely familiar too, but still he did not move his head, which was a young head with plenty of brown hair not too orderly.
I had a feeling of fear. It seemed uncanny. I advanced nearer, wondering what to do next, when he got up lazily, stretched himself, yawned, and looked round.
I saw his face for the first time, and held to the table or I should have fallen.
"Don't you know me?" he asked.
Know him? Of course I did. It was myself.
Not myself as I am to-day, but myself of twenty-one. I now remembered the suit perfectly too.
I continued to hold on to the table and I felt a little sick. I hate and dread the supernatural. But he soon put me at my ease, or thereabouts.
"How are you?" he said. "I can see it is time I called. Let me look at your face. Yes," he said, after a long scrutiny, "selfish. You think too much of your comfort. You don't believe in anything: there is a self-satisfied superior hardness in your eyes. You have not cried for years. You profess to feel sorry for people, but your philosophy is stronger than your pity. When did you last do an impulsive thing?"
"Impulse," I said, "is largely a matter of inexperience. I have seen a deal of the world." (At the same time I felt that he was doing me a vile injustice. I really was, I remember thinking, a very kind man.)
"Also," he added, "you're getting fat."
"No," I said, "not fat. That's merely the solidity of age. Remember, I'm getting on."
"Remember," he said bitterly. "How can I forget it? That is why I'm here."
"What do you mean?" I asked him.
"Mean! My dear fellow, I have been watching you for years—ever since you dropped me, in fact, and I've longed to get a good straight talk with you; but I wasn't allowed. Nothing can happen till it is time."
"And why," I asked, trembling and chilling a little, "is it time to-night?" (But I knew why.)
"I can't say," he replied, "but here I am. Let's see, how old exactly are you?"
"Fifty-five."
"Is it so long? How do you spend your time? What do you do?"
"Oh," I said, "I've retired. I read a good deal. I visit my friends. I walk about and talk to people. What should I do?"
"Do you ever get drunk?" he asked.
"Certainly not," I said.
"No, I thought not," he replied, with a sneer. "Nothing so enterprising. You keep on the safe side. But don't forget your old views as to the value of the occasional lapse—let me see, what were the words?—'the humanising influence of the orgy.' You've grown out of all that, I suppose."
"One's health does not admit it at my age," I said.
"Health!" he echoed. "Of course. I had forgotten that. Or rather, I have laughed at it so long. But tell me, don't you remember me at all? We were very happy, weren't we?"
"Fairly," I said.
"Have you gone back on everything?" he continued. "All those old schemes over the red wine in Soho? We were to do such things! We were to be so keen for the best, and the best only. The best work and the best emotions. We were to help so frankly. We were to do so much to break down the bad barriers between men and women; and now, tell me, what have you to show for it all?"
I didn't feel very comfortable.
"What have you ever done for any one?"
How can one answer questions like that? I had not been so utterly unhelpful, I knew, but I could not begin a catalogue of my beneficences; it was too ridiculous.
"What have you done for any one to-day?" he went on.
I said nothing.
"Where did you dine to-night?"
"To-night I dined at my club."
"What did you do after?"
"I smoked a cigar, read the papers and skimmed a novel, and then came back."
"Did you speak to any one?"
"No one, except a waiter."
"What did you do all day?"
"I was at my tailor's this morning; after lunch I went to Lord's."
"And you call that life?"
"Well, it passed the time."
"With all the world at your feet?"
"I have been busy enough in my day."
"Yes, in a Buenos Ayres counting-house. Did you make money?"
"I have enough."
"Enough for what?"
"For security; for my simple needs, and a little over."
"Your simple needs! Heavens, man, you make me furious. How dare you speak to me of your simple needs and your scrubby little club routine—me, with the old abundant programme still on my lips! Can't you put yourself in my place for a moment and think what it means to see every fine generous resolve gone wrong? How do you suppose it can strike me—yourself at twenty-one, remember—to see such a miscarriage of idealism as you! You, who began so well, and promised to rise so high above the petty ruck; you, who were famous for your fearlessness as a critic of conventions and shams. And now, how do I find you?—an old, timid, selfish clubman, poring over the papers in a cold sweat for fear of losing any of the dirty little dividends that give you the hogwash you call comfort and security. Security! To think that I should ever hear you use such a word. It was not in your dictionary in my day.
"Oh yes," he hurried on, "I know you're a gentleman, and all that; but that's what's wrong. You weren't going to be a sterile gentleman, you were going to be a real man; you were going to help put things right. And now what do I find you doing?"
He paused for a moment. Then he continued his catechism. "Why didn't you come home now and then from Buenos Ayres?"
"I couldn't, there was no one else to take my place."
"Why didn't you throw it up, then?"
"One does not throw things up."
"No, one does not. One clings to one's little pettifogging habits and one's little mean salary, even in a foreign land, while all that is most real and beautiful and best worth doing is beckoning one away. Prudence dictates the course, expediency controls. And so you turned your back on England and your home for over thirty years. Friends and relations died; it was nothing to you."
"It was everything to me."
"And yet you did not come home. You went on languidly and happily driving some one else's quill in that state of apathetic indolence which denationalisation seems to carry with it, and quietly allowed all that was best in life to slip from you. I know, because I was there."
"Then why didn't you stop me!" I cried.
"Ah! I have touched you," he said; "you have admitted all. I did not stop you because those are the things we have to do without help. I am here to-night not on your account in the least, you have passed beyond my interest, but on account of some one else. Why aren't you married?" he said swiftly.
I began to see what was coming.
"Why?" he repeated. "Have you never loved?"
"Not sufficiently, I suppose."
"Don't you love any one now?"
"How dare you?"
"I am here to dare; remember, I've never grown up; daring is natural enough to me. I don't ask for security. Do you love any one now?"
I said nothing.
"You love Naomi," he said.
I said nothing.
"You love her," he repeated, "and—God knows why—she loves you."
"Say that again!" I said.
"She loves you."
"How do you know?"
"I know."
I felt horribly giddy again.
"Now listen," he said, and his voice had become kinder. "This is your last chance. Be a man; give up this amiable idling and do something decisive. Marry her; she's the best woman you'll ever meet, and she'll make you work. Marry her, old chap; ask her to-morrow, and begin to live again. You've been dead too long."
"Does she really love me?" I asked him; but he had disappeared.
When I woke up I found I was still in my clothes on the sitting-room floor. I crept to bed in a daze.
CHAPTER XXVII
MISS GOLD SHOWS ME THE WAY
I need hardly say that I did not sleep more that night. I had two matters of the gravest importance to ponder upon: the shock to my complacency, and the state of my heart.
As to the charges of wasted time, I was bound to admit their general truth; and I did so not only by temperament, for it is my natural tendency to believe in the soundness of an adversary's case, being usually more ready to admit the error than to repulse the accusation,—a poor retrograde frame of mind enough, you will say, but my own,—but also after thought on the subject. I had, there was no doubt, vegetated rather than lived.
But it was not too late to begin; and with that brave piece of optimism for a halter, I gently led the first part of the indictment into the background and left it there.
But then?
Look where I would I saw nothing but the sweet face of Naomi.
That I was never happy away from her, I had proved; that I thought of her continually, I knew; that if she were to go away, or, worse, marry another, I should live in a world of darkness, I knew. But did this give me the right to ask her to marry me, and would she say yes? How did that young devil know that she loved me?
The whole thing was an absurd dream, realistic enough, but as ridiculous as other dreams.
Having reached this point I began all over again.
At six I got up and walked to Covent Garden and drifted about among the flowers and vegetables. Then I had a Turkish bath, and after breakfast I took a train to Esher. The only person in the world to comfort my wounded spirit and perplexed brain was Miss Gold.
I began with the young man's ultimatum upon myself. I told her everything that had been said on both sides; and I had no difficulty in doing so, for the memory was burnt into my brain. Can it have been a dream? It seemed too real.
"My dear Kent," she said, "why are you so incorrigibly hard on yourself? Don't you see that you are merely the victim of the eternal impatience and illogical cruelty of youth? As far as I can understand, the charge was that you at fifty-five or so no longer act up to the ideals you had at twenty-one. Is it not so? Well, why on earth should you? You would indeed cut a rather absurd figure if you did. What are years for?"
"Ah, yes," I said, "that is the case right enough, broadly speaking; but of course he had a lot of right on his side. There are many ideals of a young man which it were better not to forget."
"Maybe a few, but the world is a great leveller, and every year brings with it certain modifying influences. I like a man to be his age. Twenty-one is not an age I am very partial to: it is omniscient and exorbitant and cruel; but I like a youth of twenty-one none the less. Forty makes better company: when a man knows how little he knows, and how little life holds for him, and is yet unsubdued.
"My dear Kent," she went on, "do you suppose there is a living creature who would not be vulnerable to the reproaches of his dead selves—even the busiest and most philanthropical of us?"
"Ah," I said, "but my theory is that I should not feel so bad about it if there was not a deal of truth. I am lazy—no one can deny that. I do nothing for any one."
"Not consciously, perhaps," said the dear comforting lady, "but unconsciously, yes. You don't lose your temper. You have pleasant words for those you meet. You write kind letters. You pay cheering calls. You make no one unhappy."
"Oh, that," I said, "that is all natural, and besides it pleases me to be like that."
"And why not?" she answered. "You are not a saint, I know, and you never will be; you will never make any great sacrifice; but that isn't because you would shrink from it if you had to, but because it is not given to your kind to hear such calls. You are not a saint; but neither are you a humbug. It is not lovely to believe in nothing, but it is far less unlovely than to pretend to believe in something or to make money out of religion. You set an example of intellectual honesty that I personally would put in the balance against a good deal of violent charity and the higher busy-bodiness."
"My dear Agnes," I said, "I did not come here to be flattered, but to arrive at the truth. You are making me as uncomfortable on this side as that young man in my dream made me on the other. I want to hit the middle way."
But I knew what she was driving at; I knew that she knew that I had to be on good terms with myself if I was to unbosom without reserve. Hence her over-kindness.
"Is that all he said to you?" she asked after a while.
"Practically all," I said.
"Nothing in the nature of advice in so many words?"
"It was all advice and scolding," I said.
"Yes," she persisted, "but did he say anything about—about marrying, for example?" She shot a keen glance at me.
I smiled acquiescence.
"Well?" she said.
"Well," said I.
"And why not?" said she; adding sweetly, "My poor Kent, will you never learn not to be tender-hearted? Will you never give up your bad habit of being sorrier for others than they are for themselves? Let me tell you something: you have never mentioned marriage or love to me because you thought it would be cruel—because you thought that having lost all that, I cannot bear to consider it. My dear Kent, you don't know much about men, but you know nothing about women. Women aren't like that. Women have not that kind of selfishness."
I kissed her poor thin hand, so white and frail.
"Kent, dear," she said, "Kent, dear, how much do you love her?"
"I don't know," I said, or tried to say.
"Enough to..."
"I don't know," I said. "I only know that I think of nothing else. But look at the difference in age," I added, for I have never learned to have mercy on myself.
"Now," she answered, drawing her hand away, "now you are talking rubbish. Naomi's years may be only twenty-nine, but she is quite as old as you in many ways, and you are quite as young as she in others."
"But," I said, "I am such a dull, unenterprising..."
"Oh, Kent, Kent!" she cried, "when will you learn sense? You are all alike, you men. Your vanity has got to be satisfied. You must assure your own judgment of your own merits. When will you learn that women don't analyse and appraise; women love. That is enough for them—they love. You may want to know the why and wherefore of your feeling for her, and make catalogues of her merits and beauties, and apply the right adjectives in order to find out and support your line of action and prove your good taste; but all the while you are doing that, the woman is loving. She doesn't love you because of anything—she loves. She doesn't care whether you are handsome or ugly, or old or young, or cruel or kind, or strong or weak, or conceited Or humble, whether you drop your h's, or have nothing in the bank—those things are beside the mark, because she loves.
"And to think that you," she continued, "you, moving in the world as you have done, Kent, should come to an old bedridden woman to find out this patent secret! Oh, I'm ashamed of you!"
"Perhaps I was not quite so ignorant as all that," I said, "but there are certain things that one knows and yet that one's humility won't let one know. But do you mean," I continued, "that men cannot really love at all?"
"Not as women can," she replied. "They can desire, they can possess, they can admire, they can serve; but it is not the same thing."
"Then——" I began.
"Oh no," she hurried on, "not that. It is all as it should be. There is nothing wrong really. Men think they are loving, and therefore it's all right. But they're all householders and slavedrivers at heart. It's a law of life."
"I too?" I asked.
"Yes, you too, although you're more of a mixture than most. But it doesn't matter; that is the thing you must understand. It is all in the scheme.
"Listen, Kent," she went on. "I am glad this dream came to you. It was time. It would be well if such a dream could come to every man. But you must not be unhappy about it, because it refers to the past, and the fault was not yours. It is given to some persons to develop, to grow up, very slowly. Their youth is stretched out to its utmost length, and perhaps it never ends at all; not always through their own natural immaturity, but by the accidental absence of any crisis in their lives, any event grave enough to pull them together. It has been so with you. You have escaped the grand emotions. I could see directly you came in for the first time in the spring that you had not grown up. You knew a good deal. You had observed closely, but you had felt nothing. You had been waiting. Well, you can't help that: no harm is done; but great harm will be done if you don't behave now. You grew up last night: now live."
"I think if you don't mind I'll go into the garden for a little," I said.
I walked about for some time, and then I came back. She was lying exactly as I had left—more or less as she had been lying for thirty years. What a life! She smiled at me very beautifully.
"But you said one day," I reminded her, "that Naomi and Trist ought to be brought together."
"True," she answered. "But that was my guile. I wanted to sting you into doing something."
"Well, you have," I replied.
CHAPTER XXVIII
REACHING A POINT WHERE MY HISTORY BEGINS TO BE WORTH RECORDING, I CEASE TO NARRATE IT
"Naomi," I said, that evening. "Dear Naomi, shall we go into partnership?"
She gave me her hand.