At The Relton Arms Part 11

"Tell me what it is that is sad," she asked, shading her eyes with her hand.

"What you have been saying, that there isn't anybody," he said, and boldly moved the hand, and held it fast, and looked into her eyes.

"No more there is,--except you," she answered recklessly, and looked back at him for a moment.

Something surged up to his lips in the silence of the next few minutes, and he held his breath and tightened his grasp on the cold fingers before he said it. Then she pulled away her hand almost roughly, and spoke quickly.

"Do you know it is nearly eleven? Norah had a bad night with the baby last night, and you look awfully tired too. Hadn't you better be moving?"

So he did not say it after all.

"You have not told me what you think yet. I suppose you are only laughing at me," she said, when he bade her good-bye.

He found himself smiling in a conventional manner; he could not have said why.

"Oh, no, why should I? I think it is very wise of you," he said, opening the door to go out; "and when I tell Norah she will say 'Just like Joan!' Good-night."

And she answered down the stairs after him, "Good-night, and mind you tell Norah all about it!"

"I'll be hanged if I do," thought the musician, as he walked down the drive; and he congratulated himself all the way back on not having made a fool of himself.

"I'm sure I hope he won't," added Lady Joan to herself out loud, as the front-door banged. Then she walked unsteadily into her boudoir, and made up the fire, and sat down on the sofa, and looked dully into the flames.

And presently she turned and hid her face in the cushions, and burst into tears.

CHAPTER IX.

Lady Joan went up to her town house at the end of the summer, but her philanthropic campaign was not a success. The field of philanthropy was overcrowded just then with people like herself, who had too little wealth and too much energy to be of any practical use to the great organizers of charity, who never wanted anything from their devotees but subscriptions and obedience; a reformer does not want to be interfered with by a penniless n.o.body who has independent views concerning his method of reform. And Lady Joan soon found that she was not in a set that troubled itself much about the suffering poor. The people she met in Digby's studio were mostly theoretical Socialists, who complained that the cause of Socialism was being ruined by the enthusiasts who tried to make it work before its principles had been properly disseminated among the people; and amongst her other friends were some who had a small and private charity of their own, but were so jealous of it when they had that she found it impossible to work with them; or else they were quite willing to use her house and her carriage and her time, if she would meekly give them all these without being allowed a voice in the arrangements or a particle of credit for what she did. And she found that as much sweating went on in the administration of charity as its administrators were in the habit of exposing in the slums; she met jaded gentlewomen in the employ of philanthropists, who spent their lives in addressing envelopes at something less than the market price, and footsore secretaries who walked the slums to verify the abuses which their chiefs were to denounce in the newspapers. She had never had a high opinion of philanthropy, but it was considerably lowered by her new experiences of it. She humbly offered to sing a ballad at a people's concert in the East End; but her offer was politely refused on the ground that several of the leading singers of the day had offered their services free for the same concert; and she was asked if she would dance the skirt dance instead, at a t.i.tled lady's 'At Home' for another charitable object. Sundry hard-working clergy came to hear of her estimable intentions, and wrote to ask her for subscriptions and to offer her district-visiting in their parishes; but as it was the aesthetic side of philanthropy alone that had attracted her, she declined their offers promptly and with a shudder.

Once, in an impetuous mood, she joined a Ladies' League for the supply of soup and bread to a select company of the deserving poor in a West End parish. There were more ladies altogether than there were afterwards recipients of their charity; and they all met weekly in one another's houses to organize their system of relief during the cold weather. The cold weather came along before the preliminaries were arranged. There were no gentlemen at these meetings until after the business had been transacted, when afternoon tea was brought in, and a _recherche_ reception followed. But the frost continued, and there seemed no prospect of the sufferers ever receiving their bread and their soup.

Just before Christmas, it came to Lady Joan's turn to hold the meeting in her house. It took place in a dingy old library that day, and there was no reception afterwards, and no afternoon tea. Lady Joan herself moved three resolutions at the opening of the sitting: the first was that there should be no more meetings; the second, that all future business should be transacted by a committee of gentlemen only; and the third, that the charity, if given at all, should be administered to all sufferers, irrespective of character. All three motions were thrown out indignantly, and their proposer sent in her resignation the next day.

"Philanthropy is the selfish pastime of the great, and I was an owl to meddle with it," she said gloomily to Sir Marcus, who happened to be lunching with her one day about that time. Sir Marcus always came to see her whenever he came to town, and told her of his last letter to the papers, or his last effort to improve the condition of the working-man;--she had loved his boy, and she always listened without laughing at him; these were the two ideas he vaguely connected with her in his mind. Another man, a less easily impressed one, might have been killed by the suddenness of Jack's death; but Sir Marcus, although his infatuation for his scapegrace son had been the deepest attachment he had ever felt for any one, had been really more affected by the tragedy of his end than by his actual death; and so it came about that he was considerably aged by the shock, and yet was able to return again to his books and his hobbies.

"Philanthropy in town is all a mistake, my dear," he answered her, hotly; "it's nothing but a trumped-up job among the swells, that's what it is, of course. In my time, you know, before there were such a lot of them in the nursery, and when I was pitching my thousands right and left,--_that_ was philanthropy if you like! But now philanthropists are merely commercial contractors,--you mark my words, my dear, commercial contractors running the whole concern for profit; and what good can come out of that, eh? Ah, you must come down into the country for morals; Londoners are the biggest thieves in existence."

"Not so bad as that, Sir Marcus," she remonstrated; "I don't think philanthropists are commercial contractors exactly, at least not the ones I've met. They are mostly egoists and mostly unbusinesslike, but not thieves, no."

"Isn't that what I said?" said Sir Marcus, testily. It was not; but she did not wish to risk her reputation with him, and she listened patiently while he poured out his own schemes for the education of the country laborer, or rather of the Murville laborer, until she repeated her first remark to herself with a yawn, and wrote round to Digby, after Sir Marcus had left, to come and tell her what to do next.

She had seen a good deal of Digby lately; he knew all about her ambitious schemes and her failure to carry them out, and he was eager to sympathize with her whenever she would allow him; while she accepted his sympathy as one who did not want it particularly, but liked to command it at will. And during the growth of his baby's teeth, which rendered both conversation and work difficult in the flat in Victoria Street, the musician often found his way to Lady Joan's house in Pont Street in the hours that he would otherwise have spent in writing music. It is true that he honestly tried for some time to write cla.s.sical lullabies to his daughter in the pantry, that being the corner in the flat furthest removed from the nursery, while his wife sang her to sleep in the cradle to the homely ditty of "Hush-a-by-baby," and that he always nursed her when he was asked, and did not swear when he made her cry and was blamed for his clumsiness but after a time he made no objection when his wife sent him round to take her excuses and to dine alone with Lady Joan, until it became no uncommon thing for him to spend his evenings with her, while Norah stayed at home and nursed the baby. They were all three totally regardless of public opinion in the matter, though it might well have come to their ears that Norah was being very generally pitied by the musician's lady friends, not for her loneliness, but for her neglect of the treasure she seemed so unconscious of possessing, and that the musician was allowed to go scathless as he always was, and that Lady Joan was hated without exception. But the musician, who had done what he liked since his infancy, meant to go on doing it now in defiance of all the scandals that were about; and Lady Joan, for her part, always went out of her way to add to them if she could; while Norah only ignored them altogether, and smiled to herself, and so deceived every one who knew her, including her husband.

"Yes?" she said to Mrs. Reginald Routh, when that lady remarked one day, during a short call, that Mr. Digby always seemed to be in Pont Street, "it is very unfortunate he should miss you so often; but Joan has wanted him a good deal lately, and I have been only too glad, when baby has been fretful, to send him round to see her. There is such a platonic friendship between them, you know."

"Platonic, do you call it, Mrs. Digby?" said her visitor, with her accustomed smile. "Do you know, my dear Mrs. Digby, that from what _I_ know of Plato,--and I attended all Mr. Digby's lectures on Plato and Schopenhauer, and their relation to music and Socialism, which was before you knew him, of course,--I don't _fancy_ he would have countenanced such goings on in his ideal Republic? Of course you know best, and I should not dream of interfering between a wife and a husband; but I should certainly say myself, if I were asked, that that young woman's behavior in Pont Street is more fit for the Old Testament than for Plato. Perhaps you have not read any Plato, though?"

"No; only the Old Testament; and that I was obliged to do for myself, you see, because there were no lectures upon it," rejoined Norah, gravely; and she bore the swift scrutiny of Mrs. Reginald Routh without flinching. Mrs. Reginald changed the subject; it was the only thing left her to do, and she did it well.

"Of course I should not speak so strongly, dear Mrs. Digby, if I had not known your husband so well and so intimately before he met you at all.

And perhaps if I had had your good fortune," here she glanced in a telling manner at the baby on Norah's knee, "and could have had a small soul to develop, I, too, should have become a womanly woman, with no desire for intellectual improvement. Ah, Mrs. Digby, you have in your child what we childless wives have failed to find in our search after wisdom. I frankly own that you are to be envied."

And she had her revenge, for Norah believed her.

Digby came in when she had gone.

"Joan has sent round for me to help her out of a difficulty. Any message, childie? I shall be back to dinner. And have you seen my warm gloves?"

"I mended them and put them in your drawer, dear. That's just like a man to be surprised at finding them in the right place! Oh, I wish you would write about the bath-room pipe--"

"d.a.m.n," said Digby, audibly.

"Don't, Digby. It really is important, because the wall is getting damp, and--"

"That doesn't matter, does it? I've moved the piano."

"But it is coming through into the nursery, Digby."

"Oh, all right. I'll do it when I come in."

"Mrs. Reginald has been here."

"I know; that's why I haven't. What did she say?"

"She seemed to think that you and Joan were enacting an Old Testament episode without the sanction of inspiration."

"What awful cheek!"

"Oh, she only meant to be friendly, I think. She seemed to admire baby."

"Deuced clever woman, Mrs. Reginald. I'll write about the pipe when I come in."

He was with Lady Joan for about two hours, and it was quite dark when he left her house. They had reached that stage in their intercourse when conversation is rather difficult, but companionship is a matter of course. They did not discuss the arts now, nor the ethics of Socialism, nor the position of woman. None of these things seemed to matter half so much to them as his prospects of getting fresh pupils, or her choice of a dining-room paper. And sometimes they did not speak at all, though their silence was never an embarra.s.sed one. This afternoon there had been more than usual to talk about, for she had resolved to give up her visions of philanthropy and was thinking of going abroad, and he had been trying to dissuade her, purely in his character of adviser, without letting her see that he hoped she would remain in London. He was beginning to realize how much he liked coming to see her, and how great a relief it was to escape from the people who had claims upon him, and for whose bath-room pipes he was legally responsible, to some one who had no claim upon him, and whose bath-room pipes were in consequence so much pleasanter to superintend. And he walked down the doorsteps slowly, with a feeling that he had not persuaded her to remain, and that he was a fool not to have used the only methods of persuasion that he would like to have used, and that might have gained his point. There was a weary vista before him of endless letters to the plumber, of endless commonplace conversations with his wife, of endless unfulfilled ambitions, everything that chokes the energy of the artistic enthusiast who has been married long enough to lose his first illusions, and not long enough to learn to do without them. He was in the mood to be exasperated by a triviality, and he swore beneath his breath when a man with a beard stumbled against him in the portico.

"Digby!" shouted the man with the beard, in a voice that made the pa.s.sers-by stop and look.

The musician recoiled, and stammered something. He said afterwards that the fateful truth flashed upon him in a second of time, but in reality he stood there for some moments while the existence of the man before him slowly worked its way to his brain. And with the realization of Jack's existence came the realization of something he had been trying for six months to hide from himself. Jack's return from the dead meant--good heavens! what did it not mean to him now?

And to Joan also?

"You--you must not go into her suddenly like this; it might kill her, the shock, don't you know," he found himself saying, in a kind of dream, when the first hurried and incoherent words of greeting had pa.s.sed between them. Joan was all he was thinking of just then, Joan and the last six months of uninterrupted friendship. Yet Digby was not a bad man, nor a malicious one exactly; but his old affection for his brother, which had always depended more on habit than on natural affinity, had been rudely broken by his supposed death, and it was not easy to revive it again now, nor was it made easier by a concurrence of circ.u.mstances which seemed to demand that he should rather have stayed away altogether. Why had Jack chosen this moment to come back? A few years back the musician would have found an occasion for moralizing in the strange conflict of feelings within him.

"I--I feel quite queer myself," he said, making an effort to grasp his brother's hand more warmly; "why on earth didn't you let us know that the wrong man--that the other man was killed? You always did imagine that we knew all about you without your troubling to write to us, Jack.

Never was so surprised in my life,--delighted, I should say. But what does it all mean?"

"Eh, what? Why, don't you see, I thought it was all bally rot to write and explain that they had cabled my name instead of Jack Rackstraw's, because I meant to come over that next mail. And then, when I got another berth offered me with an elegant screw, I reckoned I 'd take it and go on being dead for a s.p.a.ce, rather a scheme, don't you twig? And besides, I thought if I lay low till next fall Joan might find out she cared for me a bit more than she calculated, eh? Hasn't it been hard work, though, just sitting tight and not hearing from her! Now, fire yourself, Digby, and let me freeze on to that bell."