Masterman and Son Part 33

And yet, all the time, Masterman's mind was slowly recovering its poise. His anger still burned, but it was now with smouldering rather than with active flame. His boastfulness declined. There were moments, not only of humility, but of extreme gentleness, like the gentleness of a sick child. They were but moments, often followed by gusts of bitter speech. In the bitter moments Arthur was to him the prodigal son who had deserted him; in the tender moments the only human creature on whose love he might repose. It was Arthur's lot to listen in silence to a hundred hurting comments on his conduct, uttered with sardonic scorn, and all the talent for invective which a disordered brain and wounded heart could contrive. And then, just when he was goaded almost beyond endurance, the mood would change, the black squall of rage would pa.s.s, and an inimitable softness, like the softness of a rain-washed sky, succeed it.

"I begin to think I'm a fool," he said once, after one of these explosions. "Well, you must forgive me. I'm a new kind of Job, and, like Job, I speak foolishly. I never could make out why they called Job patient. The thing I admire in Job is that he wasn't patient. He let himself rip. He cursed himself tired. Well, that's like me. I've got to do it, or burst."

"But Job trusted G.o.d through it all, father. Can't you?"

"Did he? Well, if he did at first, he didn't in the middle, any way.

And I'm in the middle of the mess. And, besides, I don't see what G.o.d's got to do with it. As I understand it, a man's got to go through with things to the end, and the only satisfaction he'll get out of it is that he hasn't squealed."

It was a poor enough philosophy no doubt, but there was no denying the tonic virtue in it. And perhaps it was the only kind of medicine for this mind diseased, as Arthur came to see. For a nature of such stubborn fibre the commonplaces of religion had no efficacy. And with that stubbornness there was allied a certain indomitable honesty, which perceived their essential falsity. Let it stand to Masterman's credit that he was unwilling to blame G.o.d for his own misdoings, or to ask for a release to which he knew he had no right. He would bear his own burden, simply because, in the long run, that was what all men had to do, religion notwithstanding. And, whereas the attempt to shift his burden upon G.o.d would have fed his weakness, the very effort to bear it alone increased his strength.

One evening, when the gentler mood was on him, he drew from Arthur his story of his own doings since the day he left London. Up to this time he had not manifested the least interest; it was a subject he had purposely avoided. When Arthur described the life upon the ranch, he had many questions to ask.

"Then you worked with your hands, did you?"

"Of course, father. No day labourer ever worked harder."

"And you liked it?"

"Yes, I liked it. It was hard enough at first; but I soon got used to that, and I liked it."

"Well, I wouldn't have believed it if you hadn't told me. It seems sort of queer when you come to think about it."

"What's queer about it?"

"Why, this. I never meant that you should do anything of that kind, schemed to avoid it--sent you to Oxford, made a gentleman of you, as the saying is; and why did I do it? Because I'd had a hard life, and didn't want you to have it. And here you go and do just what I did at your age--work like a common labourer. Seems a kind of destiny in it, as if it had to be."

"Then destiny has been kind, father, for I have never been so truly happy as at Kootenay. I would a thousand times rather work with my hands, and eat the fruit of my labour, than get the softest job a city could offer me."

"Don't you get thinking that living in a city is a soft job, for it isn't. But I know what you mean. There's a kind of satisfaction in working out of doors with your hands; that's what you mean, isn't it?

Well, I used to feel that way--once. I can mind how I used to whistle at my work, and had a jest for my mates, and got more real pleasure out of a pot of ale and a plate of bread-and-cheese than I've ever had since, in fine living.... I don't know but what that was the happiest time of my life, after all; though of course I didn't think so then. I can mind the little house I lived in, and the patch of garden. I'd be working in that garden by five o'clock on a summer morning, and again late at night, after work. Seems to me, as I look back, that in those days I hadn't got a real care. It's a queer thing to think about.

Makes you feel as if life had fooled you after all. But I reckon that's about what life is for most of us--kind of game of blind hookey.

Well, I've lost the game, that's evident; and it seems as if you'd won it."

It was a curious confession from such a man. Arthur recollected that Bundy had said much the same thing. He also had spoken of a little house with mignonette under the window, with its unforgetable memories of content and peace, and had summed up his life in one little bit of dearly bought wisdom--"We don't know what we want, and, with all our trying, get the wrong thing after all." Had his father also made that sad discovery, and made it too late?

All that evening Masterman was very quiet and subdued. He talked at intervals, and in s.n.a.t.c.hes, of various things in his own past life, speaking of them with ironic sad composure, as of things which lay a long way off, in which he had ceased to be interested. And yet there appeared to be some method in this vague reminiscent talk, some point toward which his thoughts were working, something that he found it difficult to say.

At last he reached his point. "When you and me parted--" He stopped, as though swallowing something bitter, and began again. "When you went away, do you remember you said something to me? You said I was dishonest. You didn't ought to have said that."

"O father! don't speak of that!"

"I reckon it's got to be spoke of. I want to know what you think of me now."

"Father, you have no need to defend yourself to me."

"Haven't I? Well, I suppose that's kindly meant, and I ought to be grateful. Only I'm not; and I'll tell you why. Do you know why I'm sitting in this empty house, feeding on the pig's swill that old lady in the kitchen calls food? Perhaps you think I like it? Well, I don't. Do you know why there's no furniture in the rooms? Do you know why I'm a beggar? Do you know why the men I knew in the city turn their faces away when I pa.s.s, why the men I used to lunch with won't speak to me and are too busy to see me when I call? Well, I'll tell you. It's just because I've been too honest. I had no call to give my fortune to the creditors of the Amalgamated. They hadn't a pretence of right to it. It was mine, every penny of it. But I did it, just because I was honest, and proud of my honesty. There's not half a dozen men in the city would have done that. Those jeering scoundrels who pa.s.s me in the street as if I was dirt, and laugh and whisper to one another, 'That's poor old Masterman, poor old bankrupt Masterman; and lucky he ain't in gaol'--there's not one of them as would have done it. But bankrupt Masterman did it, and he knew he had no call to do it. He was too proud to let any man call him a thief. If he hadn't done it, he'd be riding in his carriage now, and folk would ha' said, 'Mighty smart man, that Masterman,' and they'd have thought the better of me. Well, that's what I want you to remember. No, I don't want you to answer me. I'm not concerned to know what you think about it. I know I'm down, but I've got my pride still, and I don't care what people think about me. I've been robbed of almost everything, and I needn't have been but for this--that I'm honest!"

He spoke with extraordinary heat, striding up and down the room, his face dark and harsh. He was again the Masterman of the old days, full of fierce pa.s.sion, proud, strong, not to be contradicted. But amid all the harshness of that strong face there shone something new, something never seen there before, like light flashed fitfully through dark clouds--an element of dignity that was almost n.o.bleness. Arthur gazed upon that spectacle in a sort of silent wonder. And once more the sense of elemental bigness in his father came to him with vivid force.

Here was a nature that overtopped his own at all points. It was great even in its faultiness, and who could estimate its crude astounding virtues?

There was no return of this mood. The next day Masterman spent several hours out of doors, coming home late at night, weary and silent.

On the morning following, Arthur heard him moving up and down a little-visited garret of the house.

He was there a long time. Presently he called, "Arthur!"

Arthur obeyed eagerly, his ever-active fear that his father might be tempted to some dreadful act giving wings to his feet.

He found his father kneeling beside a common deal box, the contents of which were flung upon the floor. These contents appeared to consist of old discarded clothing, among which were discernible a blue cloth cap, a rough jacket, and a pair of stained corduroy trousers.

"Do you know what these are, Arthur?"

"No. What are they, father?"

"They're the clothes I used to wear when I was a workman. I've always kept them by me--sort of souvenir, you know. Well, I'm going to wear them again."

"But, father, I don't understand,"

"Don't you?" he said grimly. "Well, I'll tell you. I'm going to work again. Going back to what I was forty years ago. It's as good as a story, isn't it?"

"But you're not going to be a common workman. You surely don't mean that, father."

"That's just what I do mean. You can work with your hands, and so can I. I reckon it's our destiny. Grimes has given me a job--you remember Grimes, don't you? He's a bit of a builder at Tottenham nowadays, and calls himself a contractor. Well, he's given me a job, sort of foreman, at two quid a week, and good pay, too. It's a sight more than I'd have done for an old bankrupt fellow, close on sixty. I'm going to work for Grimes. I begin to-morrow, and you'll have to put up with the fact the best way you can that your father's no longer Archibold Masterman, Esq., as might have been Sir Archibold, but just a common workman."

XXII

MRS. BUNDY PHILOSOPHISES

"I can't see what your father wanted to do it for. He had no call to do it. It's a most extraordinary piece of perversity."

The speaker was Bundy, and the scene was his new house in Kensington.

After his many wanderings and adventures, Bundy appeared to have found permanent anchorage at last. His final apotheosis had begun, and a prophetic eye perceived that it was likely to include all the elements of eminent British respectability. He had begun to collect pictures again, was planning a library, drove daily in the park, was already known as a generous patron of many well-intentioned charities, and had even lectured in a parish-room on the wonders of the Yukon. There was ground to believe that in course of time he might even become a churchwarden, and it was only a total fluidity of opinion on local politics which denied him a seat upon the Borough Council.

Even the boys had suffered a transformation into something rare and strange. They no longer la.s.soed dogs upon the plains of Texas in the back-garden, and their interest in Indians had declined. They wore white collars which were fresh every morning, practised a difficult propriety, and walked gravely to church on Sundays, top-hatted and circ.u.mspectly clothed. There could be no manner of doubt that the short-lived glory of irresponsible poverty was fast fading into the light of common day, and that shades of respectability were closing round these growing minds.

And as for Mrs. Bundy--dear, slovenly, warm-hearted Mrs. Bundy--the historian relates with sadness that even she was tamed. Her force of speech remained, her sincerity, her lovableness; to the end of her days she would remain the sort of woman who addresses angry umbrella-emphasised allocutions to drivers who flog their horses, who gives hospitality to stray dogs, and opens her impulsive heart to the sorry fabrications of every histrionic beggar. But she had returned to unoccupied woman's first love, which is dress. Exiled from her kitchen, she had plunged recklessly into the study of fashion-papers.

To hear her disputing with dressmakers, upholsterers, and house-decorators, to follow her in her many animated controversies with servants and a long succession of nefarious butlers, gave a.s.surance that the wonted fires still burned ardently in her veins. But she was tamed. Wealth had riveted upon her golden fetters. She submitted to them, not without reluctance. Perhaps, if the entire truth was told, she was much happier as the mistress of the kitchen in the old house in Lion Row than as the mistress of a mansion in Kensington.

It was in the library of this house at Kensington that Arthur sat discussing the situation with his old friends. It was a s.p.a.cious room, furnished after a plan which a celebrated firm had described as mediaeval. The mediaevalness of the room appeared to consist mainly in an imitation stucco ceiling, and in modern oak-panelling which declared its newness by uncanny loud explosions, as the wood cracked under the influence of heat. Before the open hearth Bundy stood oracular, with his hands behind him spread out to the warmth; and Mrs. Bundy sat at the table, mending socks--an example of the survival of primeval instincts.

"No, I don't see it at all," said Bundy. "Your father's wasting himself. There are plenty of men who would have helped him to recover his position. I would have given him anything he liked to ask, and been glad of the chance."

"I know you would," said Arthur. "And he knows it too."

"Then, why won't he let me?"