Masterman and Son Part 2

"Yes, that is all."

"Well, now listen to me. The facts about the Orchard Green Church are all right. I admit them.

They wanted everything as cheap as could be; they wanted me cheap; so I gave them cheap work just to balance matters. Don't think that's an apology, for it isn't. As for Clark, I don't object to his saying anything he likes about the business, but I do object to his saying it from a pulpit. He wants to injure me, and so he can't complain if I get back at him. But there's two ways of fighting a man--one's face to face, and the other's by hitting him behind. I'm going to fight honest. And do you know, Scales, much as I dislike Clark, I really think I like him better than I like you, after all."

"I fail to understand----" Scales began.

"Oh no, you don't; you're much too clever for that.

But if you do really want a little light, I'd have you remember this--that Archibold Masterman was never frightened yet by threats, and when he fights he fights fair."

III

THE BIG STRONG BEAST

The next morning Masterman wrote a letter to the overjoyed trustees of the Orchard Green Church, offering to make good without cost all defects of workmanship in the building which might be justly charged to him. He was careful to explain that while they had no legal claim on him, he regarded this work as a debt of honour.

He had just finished the letter when Arthur came into the office.

Arthur's manner was constrained and almost timid. Masterman, on the contrary, was in his most jovial mood. He had just performed an act which was not only good in itself, but wise and politic; for, of course, he knew that his action toward the Orchard Green trustees would become public, and would be quoted to his credit.

"Well," he began, "getting a bit tired of doing nothing? Not that I grudge you your liberty, you know. I promised you a year to look around, before you settle to your life-work, and I shall stick to my bargain. But I confess it will be a glad day for me when I write 'Masterman & Son' over my doors."

"I'm very far from doing nothing, sir," he answered. "Oxford is one world, and London quite another. I am learning every day a lot of things Oxford never taught me."

"Of course you are. London's a big world, and the things it has to teach are the things that count. Not that Oxford isn't worth while too. It gives a man a start in life nothing else can give. That's why I sent you there, you know."

"Yes, I know, father, and I am grateful to you."

"Nothing to be grateful for, my boy. I owed it to you." His face softened with a musing look very unusual with him. "I got no kind of start myself, you know," he continued. "At fifteen I was working in a brickfield. When I went home at night, my father used to beat me. I don't think I ever hated any one as I hated my father. One day I struck back, and ran away from home. Queer thing--I was always sorry for that blow. I used to lie awake at nights for weeks after, wondering if I really hurt the old man. From that day to this I never saw him any more. But I'm still sorry for that blow. Sons shouldn't hit their parents, anyway. I ought to have let him go on beating me; he'd got the habit, and I could have stood it all right. Well, well, it's such a long time ago that I can hardly believe it ever happened."

He stopped suddenly, with a lift of the shoulders, as if he shook off the burden of that squalid past. But the rude words had left the son inexpressibly touched. A swift picture pa.s.sed before his mind of a gaunt boy toiling over heavy tasks, ill-paid, cruelly used, wandering out into the world lonely and unguided, and a strong pa.s.sion of pity and of wonder shook his heart. Above all, those artless words, "Sons shouldn't hit their fathers, anyway," fell upon him with the weight of a reproach. Had he not already condemned his father in his thoughts?

He had known very well to whom Clark alluded in his sermon, and yet he had approved. He had entered the office that morning with the fixed intent of endorsing Clark's tacit accusation of his father. And now he found himself suddenly disarmed. That old sense of something big about his father came back to him with redoubled force. To start like that, shovelling clay in a brickyard for twelve hours a day, and to become what he was--oh! it needed a big man to do that, an Esau who was scarcely to be judged by the standards of smooth-skinned, home-staying Jacobs.

"I didn't know you had suffered all that, father. You never told me that before."

"There's a sight of things I've suffered that I wouldn't like you to know. But they were all in the day's work, and I don't complain. And that's one thing I want to say to you, and I may as well say it now.

You've got a start I never had, and you won't suffer what I suffered, but I want you to know that the world's a pretty hard place to live in anyway. You can't go through it without being badly hurt somewhere.

You've got to take what you want, or you won't get it. Talking isn't going to mend things: life's a big strong beast, and it isn't words but a bit and bridle and a whip a man needs who is going to succeed. Now you're at the talking stage, and I don't complain. You admire talkers like Clark, and you think they are doing no end of good, don't you?

Well, you'll learn better presently. You'll find that the world goes on much the same as it ever did, in spite of the talkers. I want you to digest that fact just as soon as you can, and then you'll be ready to step down into the thick of life where I am, and help me do the things I want to do."

"But, father, is what Clark said concerning you true?"

"Do you want to discuss it with me?"

"No; I have no right to ask that."

"Yes, you have. I want you to join in the business when you're ready, and you've a right to know what kind of business it is, and, if you like to put it so, what kind of person your partner is."

"He is my father, and I love him. That is enough," said Arthur proudly.

"No, it isn't enough. I had a father, and I didn't love him. But as to this business of Clark's. He found out something against me, and instead of coming to me about it, he preached a sermon on it, and for that I don't forgive him. Well, what was it he found out? No more than this--that ten years ago I had to do a cheap job, and I did it cheaply. My work has held together ten years, which is about all that could be expected at the price. Now I'll tell you what I've done.

I've agreed to do the work over again for nothing. There's the letter which I've just written. You had better read it."

Arthur took the letter, and read it slowly. His father had risen from his desk, and stood watching him narrowly. Perhaps until that moment he had never quite realised how much his heart was set on having his son in the business with him. And he wanted above all things to win the son's approval. Perhaps there was some underlying thought of this kind in his mind when he wrote the letter. Not that he meant to alter all the methods of his business to suit his son. Once in the business, Arthur would learn what these were by imperceptible degrees, and would grow accustomed to them. But just now the father's heart was wholly set upon concession and conciliation. He remembered, with a rush of tenderness, how he had long ago taught the boy to swim. He could still see the slight, childish form shivering on the rock above the swimming-pool. He had begun with threats, but had soon found them useless. Then he had used persuasion and cajolery, until at last the boy had slipt into the pool, and in a week was swimming with the best of them. Well, it was like that now. If he could but cajole him into the deep stream of life, that was enough; when the deep water heaved beneath his feet, he would have to do what the others did in pure self-defence.

"Well?" he said at last.

Arthur laid down the letter and turned a shining face upon his father.

"It is a n.o.ble letter, father. Forgive me that I misjudged you."

"That's all right, then."

"You have taught me a lesson. I shall not forget it."

"Oh! don't take it too seriously, my boy. It is only a small affair, after all."

But each knew that it was not a small affair. In that moment these two opposite natures were nearer together than they had ever been before, and, although neither knew it, nearer than they would ever be again.

Arthur left his father with a strong sense of exaltation. The cloud of misgiving concerning his father's methods of business had miraculously dissolved. In the quick rebound of feeling he was inclined to judge himself intolerant and unjust, and his father's image glowed before his mind, endued with heroic virtues. He shuddered when he thought of his father's youth, with its dreadful disabilities; he kindled with admiring ardour when the thought of his father's triumph over a weight of circ.u.mstance which would have crushed a weaker man. If some of the mire of the pit yet clung to him, if in many things he was crude, violent, narrow, it was not surprising; the marvel was that his faults were not more numerous and more unpardonable. As Arthur went to his room, he caught a vision of himself in the mirror of his wardrobe--a slight figure admirably clothed, a face fresh and unlined, with white forehead and close curling hair, the picture of youth delicately nurtured, upon whom the winds of life had not blown roughly--and he was filled with compunction at the contrast afforded by that other picture of a poor drudging boy toiling in a brickfield and beaten by a drunken parent. In spite of all his superficial superiorities, he seemed a creature of small significance beside this t.i.tanic father of his.

It was an exquisite spring morning, one of those mornings when London draws her first fresh, unimpeded breath after the long, choking fogs of winter. The lawn lay green beneath the window, presided over by a busy thrush, who flirted his wings in the strong sunlight, and stopped at intervals to address a long mellow note of rapture to the blue sky; the j.a.ponica had hung the garden wall with crimson blossoms; the poplars took the light upon their slender spires, till each burned with yellow flame. Nature, unconquered by the gross antipathy of man, was invading the brick Babylon, flinging brocades of light upon the beaten ways, and filling them with the music of the pipes of Pan. Arthur could not resist the call.

He felt a need of solitude. He had many thoughts that cried aloud for readjustment. He stepped out in the blither air, and took his way to Hampstead Heath. Soon the narrow streets were left behind, the long hill rose above him, and his feet trod the furze-clad slopes, little altered since the day when Roman legions camped upon their crests, and eighteenth-century highwaymen concealed themselves among their hollows.

He walked far and fast, meditating much on life. It seemed a wonderful thing to be alive, where so many generations of men had fought and perished, to be for a little time sole possessor of a world that had cast off such myriads of tenants; and there came to him, with an almost painful wonder, the sense of the richness of his opportunity. He would make his own life something worthy. It was true, as his father had said, that he started at a point of vantage not given to every one. By so much that he started higher, he must soar higher, go farther. But in the midst of all his exultant thoughts there intruded his father's terse picture of life as a big strong beast only to be mastered by bit and whip and bridle. And at that thought the tide of exaltation began to leave him. He walked more slowly, became listless, was conscious of weariness. It no longer seemed an easy and a rapturous thing to live; life rose before him as a menace.

In the early afternoon he came to the Spaniards' Inn, and entered it.

Coming from the brilliant air into the dim room of the inn, he did not at first recognise a man already seated there, finishing a frugal meal of bread and cheese and ale. The man was tall, with somewhat stooping shoulders; his face was long and bearded, his forehead high, with thin dark hair, his eyes dark and penetrating. He wore a flannel shirt with a silk tie of some indeterminate colour akin to dull crimson. He held a book in one hand, and read as he ate.

As Arthur entered the room he looked up.

"You don't know me, I suppose," he said genially. "But I know you by sight at least. My name is Hilary Vickars."

So this was Hilary Vickars, of whom he had heard Scales speaking at the deacon's tea. Now that he looked at him more closely he recognised him at once. Among the crowd of ordinary faces in the church, that face had stood out with a singular distinctness. It was a face at once grave and composed, sad and humorous; the face of a man who had striven much and suffered much, but had retained through all a certain vivacity, which was distinct from gaiety while including it. And all these qualities seemed to rest upon a deeper quality of composure, so that the final impression was of a man who through suffering had won his way to some secret knowledge which gave him an air of gentle authority.

"I have often wished to know you," said Arthur.

"And I you."

"Why should you wish to know me?"

"Oh! a fancy of mine. It is my business to study people. And you do not look like the run of folk in Highbourne Gardens. Most of the folk in Highbourne Gardens are dear, good, comfortable folk, but stodgy.

They are as alike as peas. I could tell you their exact method of life, even to what they have for breakfast. They are products of manufacture, all turned out just alike to the last hair, and all doing just the same things every day, without the least variation. That is what stodginess means."

"And I am not stodgy?" Arthur laughed.

"No; you are fluid. You have not hardened into shape yet. You are a problem."