Poor Relations Part 27

"Confound your impudence," John spluttered.

"Yes, that's much better than talking about thinking out a course of action in solitude," Hugh approved. "But don't run away with the idea that I'm trying to annoy you. I'm not. I've every reason to encourage the romantic side of you, because finally it will be the romantic side of you that will shudder to behold your youngest brother in the dock. In fact, I'm going the limit on your romance. At the same time I don't like to see you laying it on too thick. I'll give you your fine feelings and all that. I'll grant you your natural mortification, etcetera, etcetera.

But try to see my point of view as well as your own. When you're thinking out a course of action in solitude, you'll light a cigar with a good old paunch on it, and you'll put your legs up on the mantelpiece, unless you've grown old-maidish and afraid of scratching the furniture, and you'll pat your pa.s.sbook, which is probably suffering from fatty degeneration. That's a good phrase, Aubrey?"

"Devilish good," the accomplice allowed. "But, look here, Hugh, steady--the mater gets rather bored if we keep the servants out of the dining-room too long, and I think your brother is anxious to have the story. So fire ahead, there's a good fellow."

Hugh looked hurt at the lack of appreciation which greeted the subtler shades of his discourse, but, observing that John looked still more hurt at being kept waiting, he made haste to begin without further reference to style.

"Well, you see, Johnnie, I've always been unlucky."

John made a gesture of impatience; but Hugh raised a sedative hand.

"I know there's nothing that riles lucky people so much as when unlucky people claim the prerogatives of their bad luck. I'm perfectly willing to admit that I'm lazier than you. But remember that energy is a gift, not an attainment. And I was born tired. The first stunning blow I had was when the old man died. You remember he always regarded me as a bit of an infant prodigy? So I was from his point of view, for he was over sixty when he begot me, and he used to look at me just as some people look at the silver cups they've won for races. But when he died, all the advantages of being the youngest son died with him, and I realized that I was an enc.u.mbrance. I'm willing to grant that I was a nuisance, too, but ... however, it's no use raking up old scores.... I'm equally willing to admit that you've always treated me very decently and that I've always behaved very rottenly. I'll admit also that my taste in clothes was beyond my powers of gratification; that I liked wine and women--or to put a nicer point upon it--whisky and waitresses. I did.

And what of it? You'll observe that I'm not going to try to justify myself. Have another gla.s.s of port? No? Right-o; well, I will. I repeat I'm not going to attempt to justify myself, even if I couldn't, which I can, but in vino veritas, which I think you'll admit is Latin. Latin, I said. Precisely. Where was I?"

"Hugh, old boy, buck up," his friend prompted, anxiously.

"Come, sir," John said, trembling visibly with indignation. "Get on with your story while you can. I don't want to waste my time listening to the meanderings of a drunkard."

Hugh's eyes were glazing over like a puddle in frost, but he knitted his brows and regarded his brother with intense concentration.

"Don't try to take any literary advantage of me, Johnnie. You can dig out the longest word in the dictionary, but I've got a longer.

Metempsychosis! Hear that? I'm willing to admit that I don't like having to say it, but you find me another man who can say it at all after George's port. Metempsychosis! And it's not a disease. No, no, no, no, don't you run away with the idea that it's a disease. Not at all. It's a religion. And for three years I've been wasting valuable knowledge like that on an architect's office. Do you think Stevie wants to hear about metempsychosis--that's the third time I've cleared it--of course he doesn't. Stephen Crutchley is a Goth. What am I? I'm a Palladian. There you have it. Am I right, Aubrey?"

"Quite right, old boy, only come to the point."

"That's all right, Aubrey, don't you be afraid. I'm nursing her along by the rails. You can lay a hundred pounds to a box of George's cigars bar one. And that one's me. Where was I? Ah, yes. Well, I'm not going to say a word against Stephen, Johnnie. He's a friend of yours. He's my boss.

He's one of England's leading ecclesiastical architects. But that doesn't help me when I find myself in a Somersetshire village seven miles from the nearest station arguing with a deaf parson about the restoration of his moldy church. Does it? Of course not. It doesn't help me when I find myself sleeping in damp sheets and woken up at seven o'clock by a cross between a gardener and a charwoman for early service.

Does it? Of course not. Architecture like everything else is a good job when you're waving the flag on top of the tower; but when you're digging the foundations it's rotten. Stevie and I have had our little differences, but when he's sober--I mean when I'm sober--he'll tell you that there's not one of his juniors he thinks better of than me. I'm against Gothic. I consider Gothic the muddle-headed expression of a muddle-headed period. But I've been loyal to Stevie, only...."

Hugh paused solemnly, while his friend regarded him with nervous solicitude.

"Only," Hugh repeated in a loud voice. "Metempsychosis," he murmured, and drinking two more gla.s.ses of wine, he sat back in his chair and shook his head in mute despair of human speech.

Aubrey took John aside.

"I'm afraid Hugh's too far gone to explain all the details to-night," he whispered. "But it's really very serious. You see he found an old check book of Mr. Crutchley's, and more from a joke than anything else he tried to see if it was difficult to cash a check. It wasn't. He succeeded. But he's suspected. I helped him indirectly, but of course I don't come into the business except as an accessory. Only, if you take my advice, you'll call on Mr. Crutchley as soon as you can, and I'm sure you'll be able to square things up. You'll know how to manage him; but Hugh has a way of exasperating him."

All the bland, the almost infantine simplicity of Aubrey Fenton's demeanor did not avail to propitiate John's rage; and when the maid came in with a message from his hostess to ask if it would soon be convenient to allow the table to be cleared, he announced that he should not remain another minute in the house.

"But can Hugh count on your support?" Aubrey persisted. He spoke like an election agent who is growing rapidly doubtful of his candidate's prospects.

"He can count on nothing," said John, violently. "He can count on nothing at all. On absolutely nothing at all."

Anybody who had seen Hugh's condition at this moment would have agreed with John. His eyes had already lost even as much life as might have been discerned in the slow freezing of a puddle, and had now a.s.sumed the gla.s.sy fixity and perfect roundness of two bottle-stoppers.

"He can count on nothing," John a.s.severated.

"I see," said Aubrey, tactfully. "I'll try and get that across to him.

Must you really be going?"

"Immediately."

"You'll trot in and say ta-ta to the mater?"

John had no wish ever again to meet this crystallized lady, but his politeness rose superior to his indignation, and he followed the son of the house into the drawing-room. His last glimpse of Hugh was of a mechanical figure, the only gesture of which was awkwardly to rescue every gla.s.s in turn that the maid endeavored to include in her clearance of the table.

"It's scandalous," muttered John. "It's--it's abominable! Mrs. Fenton,"

he said with a courtly bow for her hospitality, "I regret that your son has encouraged my brother to impose himself upon your good-nature. I shall take steps to insure that he shall do so no longer. I beg your pardon, Mrs. Fenton, I apologize. Good-night."

"I've always spoilt Aubrey," she said. "And he always had a mania for dangerous toys which he never could learn to work properly. Never!" she repeated, pa.s.sionately.

For an instant the musty sugar in which she was inclosed cracked and allowed John a glimpse of the feminine humanity underneath; but in the same instant the crystallization was more complete than ever, and when John released her hand he nearly took out his handkerchief to wipe away the stickiness.

"I say, what steps _are_ you going to take to-morrow?" Aubrey asked.

"Never mind," John growled. Inasmuch as he himself had no more idea of what he intended to do than Aubrey, the reply was a good one.

Where Carlington Road flows into Hammersmith Road John waited for a pa.s.sing taxi, apostrophizing meanwhile the befogged stars in the London sky.

"I shall not forget to-night. No, I certainly sha'n't. I doubt if any dramatist ever spent such another. A glimpse at all the animals of the globe, a lunch that would have made a jackal vomit, a search for two lost children, an interview with a fatuous brother, a loan of over thirty pounds, a winking landlady, a narrow escape from being bored to death by a Major, a dinner that gave me the sensation of being slowly buried alive, a gla.s.s of George's port, and for climax the news that my brother has committed a forgery. How can I think about Joan of Arc? A few more days like this and I shall never be able to think or write again--however, please G.o.d, there'll always be the cinema."

Whirring home to Hampstead John fell asleep, and when he had supplemented that amount of repose in the taxi by eight hours in his own bed, he woke next morning with his mind made up to square matters with Stephen Crutchley, to withdraw Hugh from architecture, to intern him until Christmas at Ambles, and in the New Year to transport him to British Honduras as a mahogany-planter. He had met on board the _Murmania_ a mahogany-planter who was visiting England for the first time in thirteen years: the profession must be an enthralling one.

It was only when John reached the offices of Stephen Crutchley in Staple Inn that he discovered it was Sunday, which meant another whole day's idleness and suspense, and he almost fell to wishing that he was in church again with Bertram and Viola. But there was a sweet sadness in this old paved court, where a few sparrows chirped their plaintive monotone from an overarching tree, the branches of which fretted a sky of pearly blue, and where several dreary men were sitting upon the benches regarding their frayed boots. John could not remain unsusceptible to the antique charm of the scene, and finding an unoccupied bench he rested there in the timid sunlight.

"What a place to choose for a forgery," he murmured, reproachfully, and tried to change the direction of his thoughts by remembering that Dr.

Johnson had lived here for a time. He had no sooner concentrated upon fancies of that great man than he began to wonder if he was not mistaken in supposing that he had lived here, and he looked round for some one who could inform him. The dreary men with frayed boots were only counting the slow minutes of divine service before the public-houses could open: they knew nothing of the lexicographer. But the subject of forgery was not to be driven away by memories of Dr. Johnson, because his friend, Dr. Dodd, suddenly jumped into the train of thought, and it was impossible not to conjure up that poor and learned gentleman's last journey to Tyburn nor to reflect how the latticed dormers on the Holborn side of the Inn were the same now as then and had actually seen Dr. Dodd go jolting past. John had often thought how incomprehensible it was that scarcely a century ago people should have been hanged for such crimes as forgery; but not it seemed rather more comprehensible. Of course, he should not like to know that his brother was going to be hanged; but for the sake of his future it would be an excellent thing to revive capital punishment for minor crimes. He should like when all this dreadful business was settled to say to his brother, "Oh, by the way, Hugh, I hear they've just pa.s.sed a bill making forgery a capital offense once more. I think you'll like mahogany-planting."

But would the fear of death act as a deterrent upon such an one as Hugh, who after committing so dishonorable a crime had lacked even the grace to make his confession of it soberly? It was doubtful: Hugh was without shame. From boyhood his career had been undistinguished by a single decent action; but on the contrary it had been steadily marred by vice and folly from the time when he had stolen an unused set of British North Borneo stamps from the locker of his best friend at school to this monstrous climax. Forgery! Great heavens, had he ever yet envisaged Hugh listening abjectly (or worse impudently) to the strictures of a scornful judge? Had he yet imagined the headlines in the press? _Brother of distinguished dramatist sent to penal servitude. Judge's scathing comments._ Mr. Touchwood breaks down in court. _Miss Janet Bond's production indefinitely postponed._ Surely Stephen would not proceed to extreme measures, but for the sake of their lifelong sympathy spare his old friend this humiliation; yet even as John reached this conclusion the c.h.i.n.k-c.h.i.n.k of the sparrows in the plane-tree sounded upon the air like the c.h.i.n.k-c.h.i.n.k of the picks on Dartmoor. Hugh a convict! It might well befall thus, if his jaunty demeanor hardened Stephen's heart.

Suppose that Stephen should be seized with one of those moral crises that can only be relieved by making an example of somebody? Would it not be as well to go down at once to his place in the country and try to square matters, unembarra.s.sed by Hugh's brazen impenitence? Or was it already too late? John could not bring himself to believe that his old friend would call in the police without warning him. Stephen had always had a generous disposition, and it might well be that rather than wound John's pride by the revelation of his brother's disgrace he had made up his mind to say nothing and to give Hugh another chance: that would be like Stephen. No, he should not intrude upon his week-end; though how he was going to pa.s.s the long Sunday unless he occupied himself with something more cheerful than his own thoughts he did not know. Should he visit James and Beatrice, and take them out to lunch with a Symphony Concert to follow? No, he should never be able to keep the secret of Hugh's crime, and James would inevitably wind up the discussion by making it seem as if it were entirely his own fault. Should he visit George and warn him that the less intercourse he had with Hugh the better, yes, and incidentally observe to George that he resented his impersonation of himself at Mrs. Fenton's? No, George's company would be as intolerable as his port. And the children? No, no, let them dress up with minds still untainted by their Uncle Hugh's shame; let them enact Robinson Crusoe and if they liked burn Halma House to the ground. What was unpremeditated arson compared with deliberate forgery? But if there was a genuine criminal streak in the Touchwoods, how was he ever again to feel secure of his relations' honor? To-morrow he might learn that James had murdered Beatrice because she had slept through the opening chapters of _Lord Ormont and his Aminta_. To-morrow he might learn that George was a defaulting bookmaker, that Hilda had embezzled the whole of Laurence's board, and that Harold was about to be prosecuted by the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Why, even his mother might have taken to gin-drinking in the small hours of the morning!

"G.o.d forgive me," said John. "I am losing my faith in humanity and my respect for my mother. Yet some imbeciles prate about the romance of crime."

John felt that if he continued to sit here brooding upon his relations he should be in danger of taking some violent step such as joining the Salvation Army: he remembered how an actor in _The Fall of Babylon_ had brooded upon his inability to say his lines with just the emphasis he as author had required, until on the night before the opening he had left the theater and become a Salvationist. One of the loafers in the court shuffled up to John and begged him for a match; when John complied he asked for something to use it on, and John was so much distressed by the faint likeness he bore to his eldest brother that he gave him a cigar.

"Without me that is what they would all be by now, every one of them, James, George, and Hugh," he thought "But if I hadn't been lucky, so might I," he added, reprovingly, to himself, "though at any rate I should have tried to join a workhouse and not wasted my time cadging for matches in Staple Inn."

John was not quite clear about workhouses; he had abandoned realistic writing before he dealt with workhouse life as it really is.

"However, I can't sit here depressing myself all day; besides, this bench is damp. What fools those sparrows are to stay chirping in that tree when they might be hopping about in Hampshire--out of reach of Harold's air-gun of course--and what a fool I am! But it's no use for me to go home and work at Joan of Arc. The English archers will only be shooting broad arrows all the time. I'll walk slowly to the Garrick, I think, and have an early lunch."

Perversely enough the club did not seem to contain one sympathetic acquaintance, let alone a friend, that Sunday; and after lunch John was reduced to looking at the portraits of famous dead players, who bored him nearly as much as one or two of the live ones who were lounging in the smoking-room.

"This is getting unendurable," he moaned, and there seemed nothing for it but to sally forth and walk the hollow-sounding city. From Long Acre he turned into St. Martin's Lane, shook off the temptation to bore himself still more hopelessly by a visit to the National Gallery, and reached c.o.c.kspur Street. Three or four Sabbath loiterers were staring at a window, and John saw that it was the office of the Cunard Line and that the attraction was a model of the _S.S. Murmania_.

"What a fool I am!" John murmured much more emphatically than in Staple Inn. He was just going to call a taxi to drive him to Chelsea, when he experienced from yesterday a revulsion against taxis. Yesterday had been a nightmare of taxis, between driving to the Zoo and driving to the police station and driving home after that interview with the forger--by this time John had discarded Hugh as a relation--not to mention Mrs.

Worfolk in a taxi, and the children in a taxi, and their luggage buzzing backward and forward between Earl's Court and Hampstead in a taxi. No, he should walk to Chelsea: a brisk walk with an objective would do him good. 83 Camera Square. It was indeed rather a tribute to his memory, he flattered himself, that he could remember her address without referring to her card. He should walk along the Embankment; it was only half-past two now.