A Young Man's Year

"And he's just devoted to her," said Mrs. Lisle. "Oh, yes, he is, Anna dear! He told us that at first he had scruples about marrying, as he was a priest, but he felt that this great feeling must have been given him for a purpose, and so his conscience became quite reconciled."

"I don't think he would ever have cared for anybody who wasn't interested in his work and couldn't help him in it," Anna added.

"I'd have betted he'd reconcile his conscience all right," smiled Arthur.

"My dear boy, you mustn't be flippant," said his mother in gentle reproof. "I'm very very happy," she went on, "to have Anna settled with a man she can love and trust, before I'm called away; and I'm not nearly as strong as I was. Last winter tried me very much."

"Her cough gets so bad sometimes," said Anna. "But I shall be only across the road, and able to look after her just as well when we're married. Go and get ready for dinner, Arthur. It's been put back till eight o'clock on your account, and Ronald is coming."

Ronald came but, owing to its being a Friday, ate no meat; his betrothed followed his example; bodily weakness excused, on Mrs. Lisle's part, a slice of the white meat of a chicken, both of whose legs were dedicated to Arthur's healthy appetite. Ronald was not a bad-looking fellow, tall, thin, and muscular; he was decidedly ecclesiastical in demeanour and bearing – as well as, of course, in apparel – and this betrayed him sometimes into a sort of ex cathedra attitude which his office might justify but his youth certainly did not. Remembering him as an untidy urchin full of tricks only a few years ago, Arthur became a little impatient of it.

At last Mrs. Lisle bethought her of Hilsey. "And how did you leave the poor people?" she asked gently. "You needn't mind speaking before Ronald; he's one of the family now."

"Oh, really, they're – er – bearing up pretty well, mother. It's a bad job, of course, a great shock, and all that, but – well, things'll settle down, I suppose."

"Has anything been heard of the unfortunate woman?" Mrs. Lisle went on.

Arthur did not like the phrase; he flushed a little. "They're abroad, mother. She'll naturally stay there, I should think, till matters are adjusted."

"Adjusted, Arthur?" Anna's request for an interpretation sounded a note of surprise.

"Till after the divorce, I mean."

"Does your cousin intend to apply for a divorce?" asked the happy suitor.

"Bernadette wants one, and he's ready to do anything she wishes."

A long pause fell upon the company – evidently a hostile pause.

"And will the other man go through a form of marriage with her?" asked Ronald.

"Of course he'll marry her. To do Oliver Wyse justice, we needn't be afraid about that."

"Afraid!" Anna exclaimed very low. Mrs. Lisle shook her grey head sadly. "Unhappy creature!" she murmured.

Arthur had been bred in this atmosphere, but coming back to it now he found it strange and unfamiliar. Different from the air of London, profoundly different from the air of Hilsey itself! There they had never thought of Bernadette as an unfortunate woman or an unhappy creature. Their attitude towards her had been quite different. As for his own part in the transaction – well, it was almost amusing to think what would happen at home if the truth of it were told. He had a mischievous impulse to tell Ronald – but, no, he must not risk its getting to his mother's ears.

"And they're abroad together!" mused Mrs. Lisle.

"They're on his yacht – so the lawyers said – somewhere in the Mediterranean."

"How can they?" Anna speculated.

"Unfortunately we must remember that people are capable of a great many things which we cannot understand," said Ronald.

"Her conscience can give the poor thing no peace, I should think." Again Mrs. Lisle shook her head sadly.

"You mustn't think hardly of Bernadette, mother. It – it wasn't altogether her fault that she and Godfrey didn't hit it off. He knows that, I think, himself. I'm sure he'd say so. She had her difficulties and – er – trials."

"Most married women have, my dear, but that's no reason for deserting their husbands and children, and committing the sin that she has committed – and is committing."

"If this unhappy person – " Ronald began.

Arthur might stand it from his mother; he could not from Ronald Slingsby. "If you've nothing pleasant to call people, Slingsby, you might just call them by their names. Bernadette has been a dear good friend to me, and I don't like the phrase you choose to describe her. And I must say, mother, that if you knew the circumstances as well as I do, you'd be more charitable."

"I'm as sorry – as bitterly sorry – as I can be, dear, but – "

"It's more a question of justice than of sorrow."

"Well, how have we been unjust, Arthur?" This question of Anna's was plainly hostile.

"You don't allow for circumstances and – and temptations, and – " He broke off impatiently. "It's really not much good trying to explain."

"I'm inclined to be sorry I ever persuaded you to make their acquaintance," sighed Mrs. Lisle.

Anna's hostility and Ronald Slingsby's prim commiseration annoyed Arthur exceedingly. His mother's attitude towards him touched him more deeply, and to a half-amused yet sincere remorse. It grew more marked with every day of his visit. She showed an affectionate but rather reproachful anxiety about him – about his life, his doings, and his ways of thought. She seemed to fear – indeed she hinted – that his association with the Lisles (which meant, of course, with Bernadette, and for which she persisted in shouldering a responsibility not really belonging to her) might have sapped his morals and induced a laxity in his principles and perhaps – if only she knew all – in his conduct. She evinced a gentle yet persistent curiosity about his work, about his companions and his pursuits in London. She abounded in references to the hopes and anxieties entertained about him by his father; she would add that she knew, understood, and allowed for the temptations of young men; there was the more need to seek strength where alone strength could be found.

Arthur tried hard to banish the element of amusement from his remorse. Although his behaviour in London might stand comparison pretty well with that of many young men of his age and class, yet he was really guilty on all counts of the indictment, and had so found himself by his own verdict before now. He had neglected his work, squandered his money, and declared himself the lover of his cousin's wife. He was as great a sinner, then, as the unfortunate woman herself! It was a bad record, thus baldly summarised. But what, in the end, had that bald summary to do with the true facts of the case, with the way in which things had been induced and had come about? In what conceivable relation, in how remote a degree of verisimilitude, did it stand towards the actual history of those London and Hilsey days? Accept condemnation as he might, his mind pleaded at least for understanding. And the dear frail old woman said she understood!

Moreover – and it is an unlucky thing for weak human nature – moral causes and spiritual appeals are apt, by force of accident or circumstances, to get identified with and, as it were, embodied in personalities which are not sympathetic; they pay the penalty. His mother's anxious affection would have fared better, had Anna not stood so uncompromisingly for propriety of conduct, and Ronald Slingsby for the sanctity of the marriage bond. The pair – to Arthur they seemed already one mind, though not yet one flesh, and he secretly charged Ronald with setting his sister against him – were to him, in plain language, prigs; they applied their principles without the modifications demanded by common sense, and their formulas without allowance for facts; they passed the same sentence on all offenders of whatever degree of guilt. And yet, after all, as soon as Ronald wanted to marry, he had "reconciled his conscience" without much apparent difficulty! Lack of charity in them bred the like in him. When they cried "Sinners!" he retorted "Pharisees!" and stiffened his neck even against what was true in their accusation.

But in the end his mother's love, and perhaps still more her weakness, won its way with him. He achieved, in some degree at least, the difficult task of looking through her eyes, of realising all the years of care and devotion, all the burden of hopes and fears, which had gone towards setting his feet upon the path of life; all that had been put into the making of him, and had rendered it possible for him to complete the work himself. He could not be as she, in her fond heart, would have him, a child still and always, unspotted from the world, nay, untouched, unformed by it; but he could be something worth being; he could make a return, albeit not the return she asked for. He renewed to her the promises he had made to himself; he would work, he would be prudent, he would order his ways. He took her small thin hand in his and patted it reassuringly, as he sat on a stool by the side of her arm-chair. "I'll be all I haven't been, mother! Still I believe I've learnt a thing or two."

Hardest thing of all, he opened his heart a little – not all the way – about the sinner, about Bernadette.

"If you had known her, mother! It was cruel bad luck for her! She just had to have just what poor old Godfrey hasn't got. Oh, I know all you say but it is much harder for some people than for others. Now isn't it? And to me I can't tell you what she was. If she wants me, I've always got to be a friend to her."

"You were very fond of her, poor boy?"

"Yes, mother. She was so full of kindness, and life, and gaiety, and so beautiful."

"Poor boy!" she said again very softly. She understood something of his adoration; it was as much as it was well for her to know. "We must pray that God, in His good time, will turn her gifts to good uses. Tell me about the others – poor Godfrey, and the little girl, and Judith Arden."

She listened gladly while he told her of Hilsey and how he loved the place, how they all liked him to be there, and of his hope that peace, if not joy, might now be the portion of that house.

"It will be another home to you, and you'll need one soon, I think." He pressed her hand again. "No, my dear, I'm ready. I used to think Anna would make her home with you in London when I was gone, but that won't be now." She sighed. "Better not perhaps! She's at home here, and it mightn't have worked." Another sigh marked her resigned sorrow at the strange differences there were between children. "And her home here – well, it won't be quite the same as home to you, will it?"

Most decidedly not – Ronald Slingsby's house! Arthur could reply only by another squeeze of her hand and a ruefully deprecating smile.

"And some day you'll have a wife and a home of your own." Her mind travelled back to his earlier letters. "What's become of that nice girl you told me about – Miss Sarradet?"

"I've just heard that she's engaged to be married. She didn't wait for me, mother!"

"Oh, well, they were very nice people, I know, but hardly – "

"Not quite up to the Lisles of Hilsey, you mean?" he asked, laughing. "Worldly pride!"

"Anyhow, since she's engaged – " Mrs. Lisle was evidently a little relieved. How near the peril once had been Arthur did not tell her.

"Work now – not wives!" he said gaily. "I want to show you a whacking big brief, before many months are over. Still, don't expect it too confidently."

"Keep friends with your sister. Keep friends with Ronald," she enjoined him. "I don't think he'll rise to distinction in the Church, but he's a good man, Arthur."

"When I'm Lord Chancellor, mother, I'll give him a fat living!"

"You've grown into a fine man, Arthur. You're handsomer than your father was." The gentle voice had grown drowsy and low. He saw that she was falling into a doze – perhaps with a vision of her own youth before her eyes. He did not disengage his hand from hers until she slept.

Thus he came nearer to his mother, and for the sake and remembrance of that blessed his visit home. But to Anna and her future husband any approach was far more difficult. There he seemed met by an obstinate incompatibility. Ronald's outlook, which now governed and bounded Anna's, was entirely professional – with one subject excepted. He was an enthusiast about football. He had been a great player, and Arthur a good one. They fought old battles over again, or recited to one another the deeds of heroes. There are men who, when they meet, always talk about the same subject, because it is the only thing they have in common, and it acts as a bridge between them. Whenever a topic became dangerous, Arthur changed it for football. Football saved the situation between them a hundred times.

"I really never knew how tremendously Ronald was interested in it, till you came this time, Arthur," Anna remarked innocently. "I suppose he thought I wasn't worth talking to about it."

"Of course you weren't, my dear," said Arthur. "What woman is?" He smiled slyly over his successful diplomacy.

But though football may be a useful buffer against collisions of faith and morals, and may even draw hearts together for a season in common humanity, it can hardly form the cement of a home. His mother was right. When once she was gone – and none dared hope long life for her – there would be no home for him in the place of his youth. As he walked over the hills, on the day before he was to return to London, he looked on the prospect with the eye of one who takes farewell. His life henceforth lay elsewhere. The chapter of boyhood and adolescence drew to its close. The last tie that bound him to those days grew slack and would soon give way. He had no more part or lot in this place.

Save for the love of that weak hand which would fain have detained him, but for his own sake beckoned him to go, he was eager to depart. He craved again the fulness of life and activity. He wanted to be at work – to try again and make a better job of it.

"I suppose I shall make an ass of myself again and again, but at any rate I'll work," he said, and put behind him the mocking memory of Henry encountering the Law Reports in full career. Retro Satanas! He would work – even though the farce succeeded!

CHAPTER XXVI

RATHER ROMANTIC!

Marie Sarradet's decision had been hastened by a train of events and circumstances which might have been devised expressly to precipitate the issue. The chain started with a letter from Mrs. Veltheim, in which the good lady announced her intention of paying her brother a visit. Mr. Sarradet was nothing loth; he was still poorly, and thought his sister's company and conversation would cheer him up. Marie took a radically opposite view. She knew Aunt Louisa! A persevering bloodhound she was! Once her nose was on the trail, she never gave up. Her nose had scented Arthur Lisle's attentions; she would want to know what had become of them and of him – when, and why, and whither they had taken themselves off. The question arose then – how to evade Aunt Louisa?

It was answered pat – fortune favours the brave, and Sidney Barslow was, both in love and in war, audacious – by a letter from that gentleman. For ten days he and Raymond had walked hard from place to place. Now they proposed to make their headquarters at Bettws-y-Coed for the rest of the trip. "It's done Raymond simply no end of good. He'll be another man by the time we come back. You must want a change too! Why not come down and join us for ten days, and see if Amabel won't come with you? I believe she would. We'd have a rare time – Snowdon, and Beddgelert, and the Hound, and all the rest of it. This is a very romantic spot, with a picturesque stream and surrounded by luxuriantly wooded cliffs and hills – "

Hullo! That was odd from Sidney Barslow, and must have cost him no small effort!

Marie smiled over the effusion. "Oh, he got it out of the guide-book!" she reflected. But it was very significant of what Sidney thought appropriate to his situation.

She mentioned the plan to the old man. He was eager in its favour. The more his own vigour waned, the more he held out his arms to the strong man who had saved his son and who seemed sent by heaven to save his business. To him he would give his daughter with joy and confidence. That the great end of marriages was to help family fortunes was an idea no less deeply enrooted in his bourgeois blood than in the august veins of the House of Austria itself. In favouring a match with Arthur Lisle he had not departed from it; at that time the only thing the family had seemed to lack was gentility – which Arthur would supply. But what was gentility beside solvency? He had been compelled to sell securities! He was all for a man of business now.

"Go, my dear, and take Amabel with you, if she'll go. I'll stand treat for both of you."

In spite of those vanished securities! "Pops is keen!" thought Marie, smiling to herself.

And naturally Miss Amabel, though she was careful to convey that the jaunt committed her to nothing, was not going to refuse a free holiday combined with a situation of some romantic interest: not too many of either came her way in life!

Off the girls went, full of glee, and a fine time they had. They found the young men bronzed to a masculine comeliness, teeming with masculine vigour, pleasantly arrogant over the physical strength of the male animal. Little Raymond strutted like a bantam cock. Where was the trembling nerveless creature whom Sidney Barslow had brought back to Regent's Park? Sidney himself was magnificent – like a hunter in prime condition; his flesh all turned to muscle, and his bold eager eyes clear as a child's. What a leader of their expeditions! "Take the train up Snowdon? Not much! I'll carry anybody who gets tired!" he laughed, and in very truth he could have done it. A mighty fellow, glorying in the strong life within him!

He seemed splendid to Amabel. How should he not? Here was a man worthy of her dearly admired Marie. Raymond was privy to his hopes and favoured them, first from admiration and gratitude, next because he knew his father's purpose, and had his own pride to save. He was not to be left in charge of the business. To be postponed to a stranger in blood would be a slur on him in the eyes of his friends and of the staff. But to a brother-in-law, his senior in age and experience – that would not be half so bad! Besides he honestly wished to keep his preserver at hand in case of need, ready to save him again on occasion; and he was shrewd enough to discern why Sidney had taken so much pains over his salvation. Father, friend, and brother were all of one mind. A chorus of joy and congratulation, of praises for her wisdom, awaited Marie's decision, if it were the right one. In the other event, the best to be hoped for was that affection should hide, more or less completely, a bitter disappointment, an unuttered charge of indifference to the wishes and the interests of those she loved.

Here were valuable allies for Sidney, for in Marie too the sense of family solidarity was strong. The Welsh trip came as an added godsend to him, showing him to the greatest advantage, setting her being astir and shaking her out of her staidness. But in the end he owed most to his resolution and his confidence, to the very simplicity of his view of the matter. How could a fine girl like her refuse a fine man like him? When it came to the point – as soon it should – surely she couldn't do it! She smiled, she was amused, she teased him; but her secret visions were always of surrender and acceptance and, following on them, of a great peace, a transfer of all her cares and troubles to shoulders infinitely powerful.

He thought her romantic; he chose for his moment a moonlight evening, for his scene the old bridge – the Pont-y-Pair. He led her there after dinner, two nights before they were to go back to London. She guessed his purpose; his air was one of determination. She stood looking down into the water, intensely conscious of his presence, though for some minutes he smoked in silence. Indeed the whole place seemed full of his masterful personality; she grew a little afraid. He knocked out his pipe on the parapet of the bridge; some glowing ashes twinkled down to the water and were quenched. She felt her heart beat quick as he put the pipe in his pocket.

"Marie!"

"Yes."

"Come, won't you even look at me?"

She had no power to disobey; she turned her face slowly towards his, though otherwise she did not move.

"Do you like me?"

"Of course I like you, Sidney. You know that."

"Anything more?" Her hands were clasped in front of her, resting on the parapet. He put out his great right hand and covered them. "I love you, Marie. I want you to be my wife."

She turned her face away again; she was trembling, not with fear, but with excitement. She felt his arm about her waist. Then she heard his voice in a low exultant whisper, "You love me, Marie!" It was not a question. She leant back against the strong arm that encircled her. Then his kiss was on her lips.

"But I've never even said 'yes,'" she protested, trembling and laughing.

"I'm saying it for you," he answered in jovial triumph.

"Take me back to the hotel, please, Sidney," she whispered.

"Not a walk first?" He was disappointed.

"As much as you like to-morrow!"

He yielded and took her back. There she fled from him to her own room, but came back in half-an-hour, serene and smiling, to receive praise and embraces from brother and friend. She had thrown herself on her bed and lain there, on her back, very still save for her quick breathing, her eyes very bright – like a captured animal awaiting what treatment it knows not. Only by degrees did she recover calm; with it came the peace of her visions – the sense of the strong right arm encircling and shielding her. The idea that she could ever of her own will, aye, or of her own strength, thrust it away seemed now impossible. If ever woman in the world had a fate foreordained, hers was here!

But Sidney had no thought of fate. By his own right hand and his powerful arm he had gained the victory.

"If you'd told me three or four months ago that I should bring this off, I'd never have believed you," he told Raymond as they rejoiced together over whisky-and-soda, the first they had allowed themselves since they started on the trip. "Never say die! That's the moral. I thought I was done once, though." He screwed up his mouth over the recollection of that quarrel at the tennis courts. "But I got back again all right. It just shows!"

He forgot wherein he was most indebted to fortune, as his present companion might have reminded him. But strong men treat fortune as they treat their fellow-creatures; they use her to their best advantage and take to themselves the credit. The admiring world is content to have it so, and Raymond Sarradet was well content.

"I did think she had a bit of a fancy for that chap Arthur Lisle once," he remarked.

"Well, I thought so too. But, looking back, I don't believe it." He smiled the smile of knowledge and experience. "The best of girls have their little tricks, Raymond, my boy! I don't believe she had, but I fancy she didn't mind my thinking that she had. Do you twig what I mean, old fellow?"

This reading of the past in the light of the present commended itself to both of them.

"Oh, they want tackling, that's what they want!" Sidney told his admiring young companion.

The girls shared a room, and upstairs Amabel was chirping round Marie's bed, perching on it, hopping off it, twittering like an excited canary. What would everybody say – Mr. Sarradet, Mildred, Joe Halliday? The event was calculated to stir even the Olympian melancholy of Claud Beverley! Here too there was an echo of the past – "And Mr. Arthur Lisle can put it in his pipe and smoke it!" she ended, rather viciously. Her loyalty to Marie had never forgiven Arthur for his back-sliding.

"You silly!" said Marie in indulgent reproof. "As if Mr. Lisle would care! He thinks of nobody but his cousin – Mrs. Godfrey Lisle, I mean, you know."

"He did think about somebody else once," nodded Amabel. "Oh, you can't tell me, Marie! But I suppose Mrs. Lisle has turned his head. Well, she is sweetly pretty, and very nice."

"I expect he's quite as fond of her as he ought to be, at all events," smiled Marie.

"Rather romantic, isn't it? Like Paolo! Don't you remember how lovely Paolo was?"