Fraternity

Then suddenly she conceived a thought which made her blood run positively cold. What if it were a matter of heredity? What if Thyme had inherited her grandfather’s single-mindedness? Martin was giving proof of it. Things, she knew, often skipped a generation and then set in again. Surely, surely, it could not have done that! With longing, yet with dread, she waited for the sound of Stephen’s latchkey. It came at its appointed time.

Even in her agitation Cecilia did not forget to spare him, all she could. She began by giving him a kiss, and then said casually: “Thyme has got a whim into her head.”

“What whim?”

“It’s rather what you might expect,” faltered Cecilia, “from her going about so much with Martin.”

Stephen’s face assumed at once an air of dry derision; there was no love lost between him and his young nephew-in-law.

“The Sanitist?” he said; “ah! Well?”

“She has gone off to do work-some place in the Euston Road. I’ve had a telegram. Oh, and I found this, Stephen.”

She held out to him half-heartedly the two bits of paper, one pinkish-brown, the other blue. Stephen saw that she was trembling. He took them from her, read them, and looked at her again. He had a real affection for his wife, and the tradition of consideration for other people’s feelings was bred in him, so that at this moment, so vitally disturbing, the first thing he did was to put his hand on her shoulder and give it a reassuring squeeze. But there was also in Stephen a certain primitive virility, pickled, it is true, at Cambridge, and in the Law Courts dried, but still preserving something of its possessive and assertive quality, and the second thing he did was to say, “No, I’m damned!”

In that little sentence lay the whole psychology of his attitude towards this situation and all the difference between two classes of the population. Mr. Purcey would undoubtedly have said: “Well, I’m damned!” Stephen, by saying “No, I’m damned!” betrayed that before he could be damned he had been obliged to wrestle and contend with something, and Cecilia, who was always wrestling too, knew this something to be that queer new thing, a Social Conscience, the dim bogey stalking pale about the houses of those who, through the accidents of leisure or of culture, had once left the door open to the suspicion: Is it possible that there is a class of people besides my own, or am I dreaming? Happy the millions, poor or rich, not yet condemned to watch the wistful visiting or hear the husky mutter of that ghost, happy in their homes, blessed by a less disquieting god. Such were Cecilia’s inner feelings.

Even now she did not quite plumb the depths of Stephen’s; she felt his struggle with the ghost; she felt and admired his victory. What she did not, could not, perhaps, realise, was the precise nature of the outrage inflicted on him by Thyme’s action. With her – being a woman – the matter was more practical; she did not grasp, had never grasped, the architectural nature of Stephen’s mind – how really hurt he was by what did not seem to him in due and proper order.

He spoke: “Why on earth, if she felt like that, couldn’t she have gone to work in the ordinary way? She could have put herself in connection with some proper charitable society – I should never have objected to that. It’s all that young Sanitary idiot!”

“I believe,” Cecilia faltered, “that Martin’s is a society. It’s a kind of medical Socialism, or something of that sort. He has tremendous faith in it.”

Stephen’s lip curled.

“He may have as much faith as he likes,” he said, with the restraint that was one of his best qualities, “so long as he doesn’t infect my daughter with it.”

Cecilia said suddenly: “Oh! what are we to do, Stephen? Shall I go over there to-night?”

As one may see a shadow pass down on a cornfield, so came the cloud on Stephen’s face. It was as though he had not realised till then the full extent of what this meant. For a minute he was silent. “Better wait for her letter,” he said at last. “He’s her cousin, after all, and Mrs. Grundy’s dead – in the Euston Road, at all events.”

So, trying to spare each other all they could of anxiety, and careful to abstain from any hint of trouble before the servants, they dined and went to bed.

At that hour between the night and morning, when man’s vitality is lowest, and the tremors of his spirit, like birds of ill omen, fly round and round him, beating their long plumes against his cheeks, Stephen woke.

It was very still. A bar of pearly-grey dawn showed between the filmy curtains, which stirred with a regular, faint movement, like the puffing of a sleeper’s lips. The tide of the wind, woven in Mr. Stone’s fancy of the souls of men, was at low ebb. Feebly it fanned the houses and hovels where the myriad forms of men lay sleeping, unconscious of its breath; so faint life’s pulse, that men and shadows seemed for that brief moment mingled in the town’s sleep. Over the million varied roofs, over the hundred million little different shapes of men and things, the wind’s quiet, visiting wand had stilled all into the wonder state of nothingness, when life is passing into death, death into new life, and self is at its feeblest.

And Stephen’s self, feeling the magnetic currents of that ebb-tide drawing it down into murmurous slumber, out beyond the sand-bars of individuality and class, threw up its little hands and began to cry for help. The purple sea of self-forgetfulness, under the dim, impersonal sky, seemed to him so cold and terrible. It had no limit that he could see, no rules but such as hung too far away, written in the hieroglyphics of paling stars. He could feel no order in the lift and lap of the wan waters round his limbs. Where would those waters carry him? To what depth of still green silence? Was his own little daughter to go down into this sea that knew no creed but that of self-forgetfulness, that respected neither class nor person – this sea where a few wandering streaks seemed all the evidence of the precious differences between mankind? God forbid it!

And, turning on his elbow, he looked at her who had given him this daughter. In the mystery of his wife’s sleeping face – the face of her most near and dear to him – he tried hard not to see a likeness to Mr. Stone. He fell back somewhat comforted with the thought: ‘That old chap has his one idea – his Universal Brotherhood. He’s absolutely absorbed in it. I don’t see it in Cis’s face a bit. Quite the contrary.’

But suddenly a flash of clear, hard cynicism amounting to inspiration utterly disturbed him: The old chap, indeed, was so wrapped up in himself and his precious book as to be quite unconscious that anyone else was alive. Could one be everybody’s brother if one were blind to their existence? But this freak of Thyme’s was an actual try to be everybody’s sister. For that, he supposed, one must forget oneself. Why, it was really even a worse case than that of Mr. Stone! And to Stephen there was something awful in this thought.

The first small bird of morning, close to the open window, uttered a feeble chirrup. Into Stephen’s mind there leaped without reason recollection of the morning after his first term at school, when, awakened by the birds, he had started up and fished out from under his pillow his catapult and the box of shot he had brought home and taken to sleep with him. He seemed to see again those leaden shot with their bluish sheen, and to feel them, round, and soft, and heavy, rolling about his palm. He seemed to hear Hilary’s surprised voice saying: “Hallo, Stevie! you awake?”

No one had ever had a better brother than old Hilary. His only fault was that he had always been too kind. It was his kindness that had done for him, and made his married life a failure. He had never asserted himself enough with that woman, his wife. Stephen turned over on his other side. ‘All this confounded business,’ he thought, ‘comes from over-sympathising. That’s what’s the matter with Thyme, too.’ Long he lay thus, while the light grew stronger, listening to Cecilia’s gentle breathing, disturbed to his very marrow by these thoughts.

The first post brought no letter from Thyme, and the announcement soon after, that Mr. Hilary had come to breakfast, was received by both Stephen and Cecilia with a welcome such as the anxious give to anything which shows promise of distracting them.

Stephen made haste down. Hilary, with a very grave and harassed face, was in the dining-room. It was he, however, who, after one look at Stephen, said:

“What’s the matter, Stevie?”

Stephen took up the Standard. In spite of his self-control, his hand shook a little.

“It’s a ridiculous business,” he said. “That precious young Sanitist has so worked his confounded theories into Thyme that she has gone off to the Euston Road to put them into practice, of all things!”

At the half-concerned amusement on Hilary’s face his quick and rather narrow eyes glinted.

“It’s not exactly for you to laugh, Hilary,” he said. “It’s all of a piece with your cursed sentimentality about those Hughs, and that girl. I knew it would end in a mess.”

Hilary answered this unjust and unexpected outburst by a look, and Stephen, with the strange feeling of inferiority which would come to him in Hilary’s presence against his better judgment, lowered his own glance.

“My dear boy,” said Hilary, “if any bit of my character has crept into Thyme, I’m truly sorry.”

Stephen took his brother’s hand and gave it a good grip; and, Cecilia coming in, they all sat down.

Cecilia at once noted what Stephen in his preoccupation had not – that Hilary had come to tell them something. But she did not like to ask him what it was, though she knew that in the presence of their trouble Hilary was too delicate to obtrude his own. She did not like, either, to talk of her trouble in the presence of his. They all talked, therefore, of indifferent things – what music they had heard, what plays they had seen – eating but little, and drinking tea. In the middle of a remark about the opera, Stephen, looking up, saw Martin himself standing in the doorway. The young Sanitist looked pale, dusty, and dishevelled. He advanced towards Cecilia, and said with his usual cool determination:

“I’ve brought her back, Aunt Cis.”

At that moment, fraught with such relief, such pure joy, such desire to say a thousand things, Cecilia could only murmur: “Oh, Martin!”

Stephen, who had jumped up, asked: “Where is she?”

“Gone to her room.”

“Then perhaps,” said Stephen, regaining at once his dry composure, “you will give us some explanation of this folly.”

“She’s no use to us at present.”

“Indeed!”

“None.”

“Then,” said Stephen, “kindly understand that we have no use for you in future, or any of your sort.”

Martin looked round the table, resting his eyes on each in turn.

“You’re right,” he said. “Good-bye!”

Hilary and Cecilia had risen, too. There was silence. Stephen crossed to the door.

“You seem to me,” he said suddenly, in his driest voice, “with your new manners and ideas, quite a pernicious youth.”

Cecilia stretched her hands out towards Martin, and there was a faint tinkling as of chains.

“You must know, dear,” she said, “how anxious we’ve all been. Of course, your uncle doesn’t mean that.”

The same scornful tenderness with which he was wont to look at Thyme passed into Martin’s face.

“All right, Aunt Cis,” he said; “if Stephen doesn’t mean it, he ought to. To mean things is what matters.” He stooped and kissed her forehead. “Give that to Thyme for me,” he said. “I shan’t see her for a bit.”

“You’ll never see her, sir,” said Stephen dryly, “if I can help it! The liquor of your Sanitism is too bright and effervescent.”

Martin’s smile broadened. “For old bottles,” he said, and with another slow look round went out.

Stephen’s mouth assumed its driest twist. “Bumptious young devil!” he said. “If that is the new young man, defend us!”

Over the cool dining-room, with its faint scent of pinks, of melon, and of ham, came silence. Suddenly Cecilia glided from the room. Her light footsteps were heard hurrying, now that she was not visible, up to Thyme.

Hilary, too, had moved towards the door. In spite of his preoccupation, Stephen could not help noticing how very worn his brother looked.

“You look quite seedy, old boy,” he said. “Will you have some brandy?”

Hilary shook his head.

“Now that you’ve got Thyme back,” he said, “I’d better let you know my news. I’m going abroad to-morrow. I don’t know whether I shall come back again to live with B.”

Stephen gave a low whistle; then, pressing Hilary’s arm, he said: “Anything you decide, old man, I’ll always back you in, but – ”

“I’m going alone.”

In his relief Stephen violated the laws of reticence.

“Thank Heaven for that! I was afraid you were beginning to lose your head about that girl.”

“I’m not quite fool enough,” said Hilary, “to imagine that such a liaison would be anything but misery in the long-run. If I took the child I should have to stick to her; but I’m not proud of leaving her in the lurch, Stevie.”

The tone of his voice was so bitter that Stephen seized his hand.

“My dear old man, you’re too kind. Why, she’s no hold on you – not the smallest in the world!”

“Except the hold of this devotion I’ve roused in her, God knows how, and her destitution.”

“You let these people haunt you,” said Stephen. “It’s quite a mistake – it really is.”

“I had forgotten to mention that I am not an iceberg,” muttered Hilary.

Stephen looked into his face without speaking, then with the utmost earnestness he said:

“However much you may be attracted, it’s simply unthinkable for a man like you to go outside his class.”

“Class! Yes!” muttered Hilary: “Good-bye!”

And with a long grip of his brother’s hand he went away.

Stephen turned to the window. For all the care and contrivance bestowed on the view, far away to the left the back courts of an alley could be seen; and as though some gadfly had planted in him its small poisonous sting, he moved back from the sight at once. ‘Confusion!’ he thought. ‘Are we never to get rid of these infernal people?’

His eyes lighted on the melon. A single slice lay by itself on a blue-green dish. Leaning over a plate, with a desperation quite unlike himself, he took an enormous bite. Again and again he bit the slice, then almost threw it from him, and dipped his fingers in a bowl.

‘Thank God!’ he thought, ‘that’s over! What an escape!’

Whether he meant Hilary’s escape or Thyme’s was doubtful, but there came on him a longing to rush up to his little daughter’s room, and hug her. He suppressed it, and sat down at the bureau; he was suddenly experiencing a sensation such as he had sometimes felt on a perfect day, or after physical danger, of too much benefit, of something that he would like to return thanks for, yet knew not how. His hand stole to the inner pocket of his black coat. It stole out again; there was a cheque-book in it. Before his mind’s eye, starting up one after the other, he saw the names of the societies he supported, or meant sometime, if he could afford it, to support. He reached his hand out for a pen. The still, small noise of the nib travelling across the cheques mingled with the buzzing of a single fly.

These sounds Cecilia heard, when, from the open door, she saw the thin back of her husband’s neck, with its softly graduated hair, bent forward above the bureau. She stole over to him, and pressed herself against his arm.

Stephen, staying the progress of his pen, looked up at her. Their eyes met, and, bending down, Cecilia put her cheek to his.

CHAPTER XXXVII

THE FLOWERING OF THE ALOE

This same day, returning through Kensington Gardens, from his preparations for departure, Hilary came suddenly on Bianca standing by the shores of the Round Pond.

To the eyes of the frequenters of these Elysian fields, where so many men and shadows daily steal recreation, to the eyes of all drinking in those green gardens their honeyed draught of peace, this husband and wife appeared merely a distinguished-looking couple, animated by a leisured harmony. For the time was not yet when men were one, and could tell by instinct what was passing in each other’s hearts.

In truth, there were not too many people in London who, in their situation, would have behaved with such seemliness – not too many so civilised as they!

Estranged, and soon to part, they retained the manner of accord up to the last. Not for them the matrimonial brawl, the solemn accusation and recrimination, the pathetic protestations of proprietary rights. For them no sacred view that at all costs they must make each other miserable – not even the belief that they had the right to do so. No, there was no relief for their sore hearts. They walked side by side, treating each other’s feelings with respect, as if there had been no terrible heart-turnings throughout the eighteen years in which they had first loved, then, through mysterious disharmony, drifted apart; as if there were now between them no question of this girl.

Presently Hilary said:

“I’ve been into town and made my preparations; I’m starting tomorrow for the mountains. There will be no necessity for you to leave your father.”

“Are you taking her?”

It was beautifully uttered, without a trace of bias or curiosity, with an unforced accent, neither indifferent nor too interested – no one could have told whether it was meant for generosity or malice. Hilary took it for the former.

“Thank you,” he said; “but that comedy is finished.”

Close to the edge of the Round Pond a swanlike cutter was putting out to sea; in the wake of this fair creature a tiny scooped-out bit of wood, with three feathers for masts, bobbed and trembled; and the two small ragged boys who owned that little galley were stretching bits of branch out towards her over the bright waters.

Bianca looked, without seeing, at this proof of man’s pride in his own property. A thin gold chain hung round her neck; suddenly she thrust it into the bosom of her dress. It had broken into two, between her fingers.

They reached home without another word.

At the door of Hilary’s study sat Miranda. The little person answered his caress by a shiver of her sleek skin, then curled herself down again on the spot she had already warmed.

“Aren’t you coming in with me?” he said.

Miranda did not move.

The reason for her refusal was apparent when Hilary had entered. Close to the long bookcase, behind the bust of Socrates, stood the little model. Very still, as if fearing to betray itself by sound or movement, was her figure in its blue-green frock, and a brimless toque of brown straw, with two purplish roses squashed together into a band of darker velvet. Beside those roses a tiny peacock’s feather had been slipped in – unholy little visitor, slanting backward, trying, as it were, to draw all eyes, yet to escape notice. And, wedged between the grim white bust and the dark bookcase, the girl herself was like some unlawful spirit which had slid in there, and stood trembling and vibrating, ready to be shuttered out.

Before this apparition Hilary recoiled towards the door, hesitated, and returned.

“You should not have come here,” he muttered, “after what we said to you yesterday.”

The little model answered quickly: “But I’ve seen Hughs, Mr. Dallison. He’s found out where I live. Oh, he does look dreadful; he frightens me. I can’t ever stay there now.”

She had come a little out of her hiding-place, and stood fidgeting her hands and looking down.

‘She’s not speaking the truth,’ thought Hilary.

The little model gave him a furtive glance. “I did see him,” she said. “I must go right away now; it wouldn’t be safe, would it?” Again she gave him that swift look.

Hilary thought suddenly: ‘She is using my own weapon against me. If she has seen the man, he didn’t frighten her. It serves me right!’ With a dry laugh, he turned his back.

There was a rustling round. The little model had moved out of her retreat, and stood between him and the door. At this stealthy action, Hilary felt once more the tremor which had come over him when he sat beside her in the Broad Walk after the baby’s funeral. Outside in the garden a pigeon was pouring forth a continuous love song; Hilary heard nothing of it, conscious only of the figure of the girl behind him – that young figure which had twined itself about his senses.

“Well, what is it you want?” he said at last.

The little model answered by another question.

“Are you really going away, Mr. Dallison?”

“I am.”

She raised her hands to the level of her breast, as though she meant to clasp them together; without doing so, however, she dropped them to her sides. They were cased in very worn suede gloves, and in this dire moment of embarrassment Hilary’s eyes fastened themselves on those slim hands moving against her skirt.

The little model tried at once to slip them away behind her. Suddenly she said in her matter-of-fact voice: “I only wanted to ask – Can’t I come too?”

At this question, whose simplicity might have made an angel smile, Hilary experienced a sensation as if his bones had been turned to water. It was strange – delicious – as though he had been suddenly offered all that he wanted of her, without all those things that he did not want. He stood regarding her silently. Her cheeks and neck were red; there was a red tinge, too, in her eyelids, deepening the “chicory-flower” colour of her eyes. She began to speak, repeating a lesson evidently learned by heart.

“I wouldn’t be in your way. I wouldn’t cost much. I could do everything you wanted. I could learn typewriting. I needn’t live too near, or that; if you didn’t want me, because of people talking; I’m used to being alone. Oh, Mr. Dallison, I could do everything for you. I wouldn’t mind anything, and I’m not like some girls; I do know what I’m talking about.”

“Do you?”

The little model put her hands up, and, covering her face, said:

“If you’d try and see!”

Hilary’s sensuous feeling almost vanished; a lump rose in his throat instead.

“My child,” he said, “you are too generous!”

The little model seemed to know instinctively that by touching his spirit she had lost ground. Uncovering her face, she spoke breathlessly, growing very pale:

“Oh no, I’m not. I want to be let come; I don’t want to stay here. I know I’ll get into mischief if you don’t take me – oh, I know I will!”

“If I were to let you come with me,” said Hilary, “what then? What sort of companion should I be to you, or you to me? You know very well. Only one sort. It’s no use pretending, child, that we’ve any interests in common.”

The little model came closer.

“I know what I am,” she said, “and I don’t want to be anything else. I can do what you tell me to, and I shan’t ever complain. I’m not worth any more!”

“You’re worth more,” muttered Hilary, “than I can ever give you, and I’m worth more than you can ever give me.”

The little model tried to answer, but her words would not pass her throat; she threw her head back trying to free them, and stood, swaying. Seeing her like this before him, white as a sheet, with her eyes closed and her lips parted, as though about to faint, Hilary seized her by the shoulders. At the touch of those soft shoulders, his face became suffused with blood, his lips trembled. Suddenly her eyes opened ever so little between their lids, and looked at him. And the perception that she was not really going to faint, that it was a little desperate wile of this child Delilah, made him wrench away his hands. The moment she felt that grasp relax she sank down and clasped his knees, pressing them to her bosom so that he could not stir. Closer and closer she pressed them to her, till it seemed as though she must be bruising her flesh. Her breath came in sobs; her eyes were closed; her lips quivered upwards. In the clutch of her clinging body there seemed suddenly the whole of woman’s power of self-abandonment. It was just that, which, at this moment, so horribly painful to him, prevented Hilary from seizing her in his arms just that queer seeming self-effacement, as though she were lost to knowledge of what she did. It seemed too brutal, too like taking advantage of a child.

From calm is born the wind, the ripple from the still pool, self out of nothingness – so all passes imperceptibly, no man knows how. The little model’s moment of self-oblivion passed, and into her wet eyes her plain, twisting spirit suddenly writhed up again, for all the world as if she had said: ‘I won’t let you go; I’ll keep you – I’ll keep you.’