Delphi Complete Works of Jerome K. Jerome (Illustrated) (Series Four) (73 page)

Casting about for some reason of excuse to myself for my liking of him, I hit upon the expedient of regarding him as a modern Robin Hood, whom we are taught to admire without shame, a Robin Hood up to date, adapted to the changed conditions of modern environment; making his living relieving the rich; taking pleasure relieving the poor.

“What will you do?” asked my mother.

“I shall have to give up the office,” answered my father. “Without him there’s not enough to keep it going. He was quite good-tempered about the matter — offered to divide the work, letting me retain the straightforward portion for whatever that might be worth. But I declined. Now I know, I feel I would rather have nothing more to do with him.”

“I think you were quite right,” agreed my mother.

“What I blame myself for,” said my father, “is that I didn’t see through him before. Of course he has been making a mere tool of me from the beginning. I ought to have seen through him. Why didn’t I?”

They discussed the future, or, rather, my father discussed, my mother listening in silence, stealing a puzzled look at him from time to time, as though there were something she could not understand.

He would take a situation in the City. One had been offered him. It might sound poor, but it would be a steady income on which we must contrive to live. The little money he had saved must be kept for investments — nothing speculative — judicious “dealings,” by means of which a cool, clear-headed man could soon accumulate capital. Here the training acquired by working for old Hasluck would serve him well. One man my father knew — quite a dull, commonplace man — starting a few years ago with only a few hundreds, was now worth tens of thousands. Foresight was the necessary qualification. You watched the “tendency” of things. So often had my father said to himself: “This is going to be a big thing. That other, it is no good,” and in every instance his prognostications had been verified. He had “felt it;” some men had that gift. Now was the time to use it for practical purposes.

“Here,” said my father, breaking off, and casting an approving eye upon the surrounding scenery, “would be a pleasant place to end one’s days. The house you had was very pretty and you liked it. We might enlarge it, the drawing-room might be thrown out — perhaps another wing.” I felt that our good fortune as from this day was at last established.

But my mother had been listening with growing impatience, her puzzled glances giving place gradually to flashes of anger; and now she turned her face full upon him, her question written plainly thereon, demanding answer.

Some idea of it I had even then, watching her; and since I have come to read it word for word: “But that woman — that woman that loves you, that you love. Ah, I know — why do you play with me? She is rich. With her your life will be smooth. And the boy — it will be better far for him. Cannot you three wait a little longer? What more can I do? Cannot you see that I am surely dying — dying as quickly as I can — dying as that poor creature your friend once told us of; knowing it was the only thing she could do for those she loved. Be honest with me: I am no longer jealous. All that is past: a man is ever younger than a woman, and a man changes. I do not blame you. It is for the best. She and I have talked; it is far better so. Only be honest with me, or at least silent. Will you not honour me enough for even that?”

My father did not answer, having that to speak of that put my mother’s question out of her mind for all time; so that until the end no word concerning that other woman passed again between them. Twenty years later, nearly, I myself happened to meet her, and then long physical suffering had chased the wantonness away for ever from the pain-worn mouth; but in that hour of waning voices, as some trouble of the fretful day when evening falls, so she faded from their life; and if even the remembrance of her returned at times to either of them, I think it must have been in those moments when, for no seeming reason, shyly their hands sought one another.

So the truth of the sad ado — how far my mother’s suspicions wronged my father; for the eye of jealousy (and what loving woman ever lived that was not jealous?) has its optic nerve terminating not in the brain but in the heart, which was not constructed for the reception of true vision — I never knew. Later, long after the curtain of green earth had been rolled down upon the players, I spoke once on the matter with Doctor Hal, who must have seen something of the play and with more understanding eyes than mine, and who thereupon delivered to me a short lecture on life in general, a performance at which he excelled.

“Flee from temptation and pray that you may be delivered from evil,” shouted the Doctor — (his was not the Socratic method)—”but remember this: that as sure as the sparks fly upward there will come a time when, however fast you run, you will be overtaken — cornered — no one to deliver you but yourself — the gods sitting round interested. It is a grim fight, for the Thing, you may be sure, has chosen its right moment. And every woman in the world will sympathise with you and be just to you, not even despising you should you be overcome; for however they may talk, every woman in the world knows that male and female cannot be judged by the same standard. To woman, Nature and the Law speak with one voice: ‘Sin not, lest you be cursed of your sex!’ It is no law of man: it is the law of creation. When the woman sins, she sins not only against her conscience, but against her every instinct. But to the man Nature whispers: ‘Yield.’ It is the Law alone that holds him back. Therefore every woman in the world, knowing this, will be just to you — every woman in the world but one — the woman that loves you. From her, hope for no sympathy, hope for no justice.”

“Then you think—” I began.

“I think,” said the Doctor, “that your father loved your mother devotedly; but he was one of those fighters that for the first half-dozen rounds or so cause their backers much anxiety. It is a dangerous method.”

“Then you think my mother—”

“I think your mother was a good woman, Paul; and the good woman will never be satisfied with man till the Lord lets her take him to pieces and put him together herself.”

My father had been pacing to and fro the tiny platform. Now he came to a halt opposite my mother, placing his hands upon her shoulders.

“I want you to help me, Maggie — help me to be brave. I have only a year or two longer to live, and there’s a lot to be done in that time.”

Slowly the anger died out of my mother’s face.

“You remember that fall I had when the cage broke,” my father went on. “Andrews, as you know, feared from the first it might lead to that. But I always laughed at him.”

“How long have you known?” my mother asked.

“Oh, about six months. I felt it at the beginning of the year, but I didn’t say anything to Washburn till a month later. I thought it might be only fancy.”

“And he is sure?”

My father nodded.

“But why have you never told me?”

“Because,” replied my father, with a laugh, “I didn’t want you to know. If I could have done without you, I should not have told you now.”

And at this there came a light into my mother’s face that never altogether left it until the end.

She drew him down beside her on the seat. I had come nearer; and my father, stretching out his hand, would have had me with them. But my mother, putting her arms about him, held him close to her, as though in that moment she would have had him to herself alone.

CHAPTER VIII.

HOW THE MAN IN GREY MADE READY FOR HIS GOING.

The eighteen months that followed — for the end came sooner than we had expected — were, I think, the happiest days my father and mother had ever known; or if happy be not altogether the right word, let me say the most beautiful, and most nearly perfect. To them it was as though God in His sweet thoughtfulness had sent death to knock lightly at the door, saying: “Not yet. You have still a little longer to be together. In a little while.” In those last days all things false and meaningless they laid aside. Nothing was of real importance to them but that they should love each other, comforting each other, learning to understand each other. Again we lived poorly; but there was now no pitiful straining to keep up appearances, no haunting terror of what the neighbours might think. The petty cares and worries concerning matters not worth a moment’s thought, the mean desires and fears with which we disfigure ourselves, fell from them. There came to them broader thought, a wider charity, a deeper pity. Their love grew greater even than their needs, overflowing towards at things. Sometimes, recalling these months, it has seemed to me that we make a mistake seeking to keep Death, God’s go-between, ever from our thoughts. Is it not closing the door to a friend who would help us would we let him (for who knows life so well), whispering to us: “In a little while. Only a little longer that you have to be together. Is it worth taking so much thought for self? Is it worth while being unkind?”

From them a graciousness emanated pervading all around. Even my aunt Fan decided for the second time in her career to give amiability a trial. This intention she announced publicly to my mother and myself one afternoon soon after our return from Devonshire.

“I’m a beast of an old woman,” said my aunt, suddenly.

“Don’t say that, Fan,” urged my mother.

“What’s the good of saying ‘Don’t say it’ when I’ve just said it,” snapped back my aunt.

“It’s your manner,” explained my mother; “people sometimes think you disagreeable.”

“They’d be daft if they didn’t,” interrupted my aunt. “Of course you don’t really mean it,” continued my mother.

“Stuff and nonsense,” snorted my aunt; “does she think I’m a fool. I like being disagreeable. I like to see ’em squirming.”

My mother laughed.

“I can be agreeable,” continued my aunt, “if I choose. Nobody more so.”

“Then why not choose?” suggested my mother. “I tried it once,” said my aunt, “and it fell flat. Nothing could have fallen flatter.”

“It may not have attracted much attention,” replied my mother, with a smile, “but one should not be agreeable merely to attract attention.”

“It wasn’t only that,” returned my aunt, “it was that it gave no satisfaction to anybody. It didn’t suit me. A disagreeable person is at their best when they are disagreeable.”

“I can hardly agree with you there,” answered my mother.

“I could do it again,” communed my aunt to herself. There was a suggestion of vindictiveness in her tones. “It’s easy enough. Look at the sort of fools that are agreeable.”

“I’m sure you could be if you tried,” urged my mother.

“Let ’em have it,” continued my aunt, still to herself; “that’s the way to teach ’em sense. Let ’em have it.”

And strange though it may seem, my aunt was right and my mother altogether wrong. My father was the first to notice the change.

“Nothing the matter with poor old Fan, is there?” he asked. It was one evening a day or two after my aunt had carried her threat into effect. “Nothing happened, has there?”

“No,” answered my mother, “nothing that I know of.”

“Her manner is so strange,” explained my father, “so — so weird.”

My mother smiled. “Don’t say anything to her. She’s trying to be agreeable.”

My father laughed and then looked wistful. “I almost wish she wouldn’t,” he remarked; “we were used to it, and she was rather amusing.”

But my aunt, being a woman of will, kept her way; and about the same time that occurred tending to confirm her in her new departure. This was the introduction into our small circle of James Wellington Gadley. Properly speaking, it should have been Wellington James, that being the order in which he had been christened in the year 1815. But in course of time, and particularly during his school career, it had been borne in upon him that Wellington is a burdensome name for a commonplace mortal to bear, and very wisely he had reversed the arrangement. He was a slightly pompous but simpleminded little old gentleman, very proud of his position as head clerk to Mr. Stillwood, the solicitor to whom my father was now assistant. Stillwood, Waterhead and Royal dated back to the Georges, and was a firm bound up with the history — occasionally shady — of aristocratic England. True, in these later years its glory was dwindling. Old Mr. Stillwood, its sole surviving representative, declined to be troubled with new partners, explaining frankly, in answer to all applications, that the business was a dying one, and that attempting to work it up again would be but putting new wine into worn-out skins. But though its clientele was a yearly diminishing quantity, much business yet remained to it, and that of a good class, its name being still a synonym for solid respectability; and my father had deemed himself fortunate indeed in securing such an appointment. James Gadley had entered the firm as office boy in the days of its pride, and had never awakened to the fact that it was not still the most important legal firm within the half mile radius from Lombard Street. Nothing delighted him more than to discuss over and over again the many strange affairs in which Stillwood, Waterhead and Royal had been concerned, all of which he had at his tongue’s tip. Could he find a hearer, these he would reargue interminably, but with professional reticence, personages becoming Mr. Y. and Lady X.; and places, “the capital of, let us say, a foreign country,” or “a certain town not a thousand miles from where we are now sitting.” The majority of his friends, his methods being somewhat forensic, would seek to discourage him, but my aunt was a never wearied listener, especially if the case were one involving suspicion of mystery and crime. When, during their very first conversation, he exclaimed: “Now why — why, after keeping away from his wife for nearly eighteen years, never even letting her know whether he was alive or dead, why this sudden resolve to return to her? That is what I want explained to me!” he paused, as was his wont, for sympathetic comment, my aunt, instead of answering as others, with a yawn: “Oh, I’m sure I don’t know. Felt he wanted to see her, I suppose,” replied with prompt intelligence: