The Triumph of Jill Part 21

"Dear Mrs St. John,--

"I cannot, I fear, convey to you my heartfelt sorrow at the indiscretion I was guilty of last Tuesday. I have been reproaching myself for my folly ever since. The fault was mine, as is also the loss. I made a mistake. Try to forgive me and to forget. I go abroad next week indefinitely. Goodbye."

Jill offered it to her husband when she had finished reading, but St.

John put her hand aside, and shook his head decisively.

"You know that that isn't necessary between you and me," he said reproachfully.

"I think he would like you to see it," she answered.

He took it then and read it through; when he had done so he handed it back again with a grave half-troubled smile.

"Considering how I, myself, was mistaken," he said, "I don't think that I have the right to censure him at all."

Jill tore the note up slowly, watching the fragments intently as they fluttered from her fingers. The knowledge that her husband had misjudged her was the bitterest part of all. And yet in her heart she did not blame him; she even found excuses for him, but the pain was none the less acute because she refused to admit its reason, though no doubt it was easier borne, and would be more readily forgotten.

"I am very much afraid," she said gently, with a slight hesitation of tone and manner, "that I, also, must have been at fault to cause two men to make the same mistake. I don't suppose that I have any right to blame him either. I think the wisest course would be to do as he suggests--forgive everything, and forget."

And as St. John was of the same opinion the matter ended there, and if not entirely forgotten was at least never referred to between them again.

CHAPTER NINETEEN.

It was just two years after Jill's baby had been born that a very wonderful thing occurred; Mr St. John senior visited Thompkins and Co.

for no less a purpose than calling upon his son's wife. He did not come unexpectedly; he wrote a week beforehand apprising them of the fact, and duly on the appointed date he pushed open the outer door and entered the mean little shop, standing in it, as it were, protestingly, his hat off, his shoulders slightly bowed; tall, and cross, and dignified--frowning at his son. St. John came forward quickly. He was expecting his father but pride forbade his making any preparation. He had been in the studio during the early part of the afternoon and was still in his working clothes though Jill had suggested to him the propriety of changing, but he had chosen to ignore the suggestion, arguing that that which was good enough for his wife should be good enough for his father too; and so he came forward as he was and stood in front of the visitor just as he might have done had he been any ordinary customer. The old man's glance travelled slowly from the strong face with its proud smile to the shabby suit of clothes, the stains upon them testifying to the nature of the wearer's work, and his carelessness as an operator. As he looked he smiled also. It was not a pleasant smile, and the younger man silently resented it.

"Photography does not appear a very lucrative employment," he observed.

"No," answered St. John. "At least I do not find it so."

"Ah! Well, no doubt that a.s.sists you to realise the mistake you made."

"I made no mistake," the other interrupted shortly. "If you refer to my marriage that is the one thing I have never--and shall never regret."

"Yet it has been the means of reducing you to your present strait."

"Pardon me," retorted the younger man, "want of a profession, and not my marriage, has been the means of my poverty. If I failed in my duty to you as a son remember that you in the first place failed in your duty to me."

The grey brows drew together over the high-bridged nose, and the old eyes glared angrily into the young, indignant ones.

"I brought you up to the profession of a gentleman," Mr St. John remarked.

"If by the 'profession of a gentleman' you mean a dependent beggar--a parasite--a less than menial," rejoined the son, "you did. And until I met Jill I was not man enough to feel the degradation of it."

"Until you met Jill you were not a fool," snapped his father.

"We won't discuss that point further," St. John rejoined; "it is one on which we are never likely to agree. You wanted, your note said, to see Jill. I can't imagine why, but if you still wish to see her we will go upstairs at once."

Mr St. John having intimated that a two minutes' uncomfortable conversation with his son had not altered his intention in coming, the latter turned impatiently upon his heel and led the way to the sitting-room where Jill was waiting with her little boy, striving, in her efforts to amuse him, to stifle her own nervousness and vague misgivings.

The child was simply and daintily dressed in white, and had grown from a puny infant into a st.u.r.dy, healthy little man, with more than an ordinary share of good looks and good spirits, and a very charming and lovable disposition. Jill idolised him, but she was wise in her love, and the spoiling--if spoiling it could be called--was of a very judicious kind, tending chiefly to bring out the best qualities in the impressionable baby-nature, so that surrounded, as this baby was, with love and care and tenderness, he bade fair to turn out a generous, affectionate, happy little fellow; and if he were not as well off as some babies, at least he had been born without the silver spoon, and so was not likely to feel the deprivation.

Jill had been playing with him on the floor, doing her best to keep him good-tempered before his grandfather's arrival; for with her mother-instinct she a.s.sociated this visit with the child, and was naturally anxious that he should appear at his best. When she heard their steps upon the stairs she scrambled hastily to a more dignified position, and stood with bright eyes, and flushed cheeks waiting to receive her former enemy. She had not forgotten his first and only other visit to her; she was not likely to forget it, nor to forgive him the pain he made her suffer then, and the insult which he had offered her. But she was content to ignore the past for her husband's sake more than her own, and equally ready to treat her father-in-law with a politeness and consideration that he had no right to expect at her hands. Doubtless he remembered the incident also; he certainly did not antic.i.p.ate a welcome, for he returned her cool little bow with equal distance--indeed hardly appeared to notice her at all. It was evident that if she had not forgiven him neither had he forgiven her; to her he owed the upsetting of all his plans, and his present lonely, childless condition, and he was not the sort of man who easily forgot an injury, nor readily pardoned the offender. His supercilious gaze rested for an instant on the mother's face, and then wandered away to the child's, taking in every detail of the baby-features from the wide, curious eyes, so absurdly like Jill's both in expression and colouring, to the pretty curved lips, and rounded chin which even then gave promise of being as square and obstinate as his father's. What he saw apparently pleased him; his features relaxed a little, Jill even fancied that he smiled back when the child in his friendly, confiding fashion smiled up at him, though if such were the case, which was doubtful, he made no further advance. He had never cared for children, and he did not now pretend to feel any interest in this one more than another. He had not come to see his grandson, but merely to make a proposal concerning him, and this proposal he forthwith expounded to the baby's parents to their no small astonishment and dismay. His offer--and it was a good one from a worldly point of view--was to adopt the child altogether; to take him at the age of seven from his present surroundings and bring him up as he had brought up the father, bequeathing, at his death, his entire fortune to him unconditionally. He made no stipulation against the child seeing his parents as often as the latter wished, but he was not to live with them, nor to stay beneath their roof for any length of time.

When he had finished speaking he looked towards his son, but St. John shook his head decisively, and turned abruptly away; he could not answer such a question; he felt that he had not the right to do so.

"Ask his mother," was all he said.

"Petticoat government, eh?" sneered the old man. "I appealed to you because I hoped that you would have profited by your own experience and been glad of the opportunity of giving your son a chance. With women it is different; they are so beastly selfish in their love; they always want the object of their affection near them."

"Ask his mother," St. John repeated in a hard voice. "A mother has more right than anyone else to decide the future of her child."

Jill, who had remained till now impa.s.sive, listening open-eyed to all she heard, came forward as her husband finished speaking and stood between the old man and the baby on the floor as though she would protect the child from his grandfather's designs. She was quite calm and collected; St. John wondered rather at her evident self-control.

"It is very good of you, Mr St. John," she said, "to make Baby such a handsome offer. But you are wrong in thinking that a mother's love is selfish; it is not where it is real; and it is entirely in my baby's interests that I am going to regard your proposal."

"Going to refuse it you mean," he snapped.

Jill smiled.

"Going to refuse it if you like to put it that way," she said. "Of course it would be splendid for Baby in one sense, but I don't think it would be kind. I have never approved of bringing children up in a different position to their parents. My boy, no matter how good-hearted he turned out, would grow to look down upon his father, and the poor little shop with its poorer photographs, and upon the kind old man who stood G.o.dfather to him, and drops his h's, but loves the child almost as though he were his own. I have heard of such things before. Children who are exalted to very different positions to their parents learn to despise them, and feel ashamed of them, and then, of course, they despise themselves for doing so; and altogether it is very hopeless, and rather cruel, I think.

"Don't fancy me ungrateful; it is not that. It isn't that I wouldn't spare my boy if I considered it all for the best; but I don't I think he will be a much happier, and a better little boy if he is brought up just as well as we can manage, with no more brilliant prospect than the knowledge that he has to make his own way in the world as his father did before him."

"So you are going to make an independent beggar of him as you did of his father, eh? Well, I would have made him an independent gentleman. But no matter. You possess the right unfortunately of ruining both their futures. Perhaps one day you will remember my offer with regret, but understand, please that I shall not renew it; neither will you or yours benefit from me in any way."

"I had never expected that we should," Jill answered with proud simplicity. "I have not been accustomed to luxury and so don't feel the need of it. It is harder for my husband than for me, harder for him than it will be for the boy; but I don't fancy that Jack minds it much."

"Jack is a fool," his father answered bitterly. "He could have been anything almost if he had followed out my wishes."

St. John smiled faintly. He did not resent the slighting epithet applied to himself; he understood in a way, the old man's keen disappointment, and felt more sorry than chagrined at his unrelenting harshness.

"Don't think too much about it, sir," he said; "I should have been bound to fail you somehow. I was never one of those brainy ambitious fellows, you know; it takes more than money to make a great career."

"It takes a _man_," Mr St. John answered sententiously. He had not sat down throughout the brief interview, although his son had placed a chair for him, and now he turned to go with less ceremony than when he entered. He even omitted the courtesy of bowing to Jill; he simply walked out without looking at her. St. John followed him and opened the shop door for him to pa.s.s through.

"Good-bye," he said earnestly. "I regret the breach between us with all my heart--though that will hardly bridge it over, will it? If at any time you want me you have only to command."

"You have always obeyed my commands so readily, eh?" retorted his father. "I am not likely to trouble you again. By the way you need not consider it necessary in future to make a kind of family Bible of me for the chronicling of domestic events. Our intercourse is at an end from this date. I neither wish to hear of, nor to see you again."

CHAPTER TWENTY.

When St. John had closed the door after his father he walked into the studio and busied himself unnecessarily shifting back scenes and rearranging everything in order to work off the depression the recent interview had left behind. He thoroughly understood that this was the final break with his father, and the realisation cost him more than one pang of bitter regret. He felt that to a certain extent he had been wanting in duty, and yet he knew that he could not have acted otherwise; the whole thing was as deplorable as it was inevitable; and it might have been so different had it not been for the obstinate pride of one ambitious old man.

In the midst of his sad reflections he forgot Jill altogether. Sorrow inclines one to be selfish, and St. John just then was dwelling so much upon his own wounded feelings that he had no room for any other thought.

That Jill, too, might be hurt, and that very possibly she was worrying on his account did not occur to him or he would have gone to her at once, instead he seated himself on a little rustic bench that had so often served to pose a difficult subject, and leaned his head dejectedly upon his open palm. And thus Jill found him later when, having left her baby in his G.o.dfather's charge, she came in search of him wondering at his continued absence. The sight brought the tears to her eyes, and she drew back with the half-formed resolve of going away unseen, but changing her mind almost immediately she dropped the shabby curtain which formed the exit behind her, and running forward put both her arms about his neck.

"Oh! my saint, my dear old saint, don't take it to heart so," she cried imploringly.

And at the sound of her voice, the voice that was dearer to him than any other in all the world, he lifted his head and smiled up at her, a loving, rea.s.suring smile.