Fraternity

These signs passed unperceived by Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace, whose eyes were busy.

“In the F.H.M.P., of course, I see a lot of young girls placed in delicate positions, just on the borders, don’t you know? You should really join the F.H.M.P., Mrs. Dallison. It’s a first-rate thing – most absorbing work.”

The doubting deepened in Cecilia’s eyes.

“Oh, it must be!” she said. “I’ve so little time.”

Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace went on at once.

“Don’t you think that we live in the most interesting days? There are such a lot of movements going on. It’s quite exciting. We all feel that we can’t shut our eyes any longer to social questions. I mean the condition of the people alone is enough to give one nightmare!”

“Yes, yes,” said Cecilia; “it is dreadful, of course.

“Politicians and officials are so hopeless, one can’t look for anything from them.”

Cecilia drew herself up. “Oh, do you think so?” she said.

“I was just talking to Mr. Balladyce. He says that Art and Literature must be put on a new basis altogether.”

“Yes,” said Cecilia; “really? Is he that funny little man?”

“I think he’s so monstrously clever.”

Cecilia answered quickly: “I know – I know. Of course, something must be done.”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace absently, “I think we all feel that. Oh, do tell me! I’ve been talking to such a delightful person – just the type you see when you go into the City – thousands of them, all in such good black coats. It’s so unusual to really meet one nowadays; and they’re so refreshing, they have such nice simple views. There he is, standing just behind your sister.”

Cecilia by a nervous gesture indicated that she recognized the personality alluded to. “Oh, yes,” she said; “Mr. Purcey. I don’t know why he comes to see us.”

“I think he’s so delicious!” said Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace dreamily. Her little dark eyes, like bees, had flown to sip honey from the flower in question – a man of broad build and medium height, dressed. with accuracy, who seemed just a little out of his proper bed. His mustachioed mouth wore a set smile; his cheerful face was rather red, with a forehead of no extravagant height or breadth, and a conspicuous jaw; his hair was thick and light in colour, and his eyes were small, grey, and shrewd. He was looking at a picture.

“He’s so delightfully unconscious,” murmured Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace. “He didn’t even seem to know that there was a problem of the lower classes.”

“Did he tell you that he had a picture?” asked Cecilia gloomily.

“Oh yes, by Harpignies, with the accent on the ‘pig.’ It’s worth three times what he gave for it. It’s so nice to be made to feel that there is still all that mass of people just simply measuring everything by what they gave for it.”

“And did he tell you my grandfather Carfax’s dictum in the Banstock case?” muttered Cecilia.

“Oh yes: ‘The man who does not know his own mind should be made an Irishman by Act of Parliament.’ He said it was so awfully good.”

“He would,” replied Cecilia.

“He seems to depress you, rather!”

“Oh no; I believe he’s quite a nice sort of person. One can’t be rude to him; he really did what he thought a very kind thing to my father. That’s how we came to know him. Only it’s rather trying when he will come to call regularly. He gets a little on one’s nerves.”

“Ah, that’s just what I feel is so jolly about him; no one would ever get on his nerves. I do think we’ve got too many nerves, don’t you? Here’s your brother-in-law. He’s such an uncommon-looking man; I want to have a talk with him about that little model. A country girl, wasn’t she?”

She had turned her head towards a tall man with a very slight stoop and a brown, thin, bearded face, who was approaching from the door. She did not see that Cecilia had flushed, and was looking at her almost angrily. The tall thin man put his hand on Cecilia’s arm, saying gently: “Hallo Cis! Stephen here yet?”

Cecilia shook her head.

“You know Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace, Hilary?”

The tall man bowed. His hazel-coloured eyes were shy, gentle, and deep-set; his eyebrows, hardly ever still, gave him a look of austere whimsicality. His dark brown hair was very lightly touched with grey, and a frequent kindly smile played on his lips. His unmannerised manner was quiet to the point of extinction. He had long, thin, brown hands, and nothing peculiar about his dress.

“I’ll leave you to talk to Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace,” Cecilia said.

A knot of people round Mr. Balladyce prevented her from moving far, however, and the voice of Mrs. Smallpeace travelled to her ears.

“I was talking about that little model. It was so good of you to take such interest in the girl. I wondered whether we could do anything for her.”

Cecilia’s hearing was too excellent to miss the tone of Hilary’s reply:

“Oh, thank you; I don’t think so.”

“I fancied perhaps you might feel that our Society – hers is an unsatisfactory profession for young girls!”

Cecilia saw the back of Hilary’s neck grow red. She turned her head away.

“Of course, there are many very nice models indeed,” said the voice of Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace. “I don’t mean that they are necessarily at all – if they’re girls of strong character; and especially if they don’t sit for the – the altogether.”

Hilary’s dry, staccato answer came to Cecilia’s ears: “Thank you; it’s very kind of you.”

“Oh, of course, if it’s not necessary. Your wife’s picture was so clever, Mr. Dallison – such an interesting type.”

Without intention Cecilia found herself before that picture. It stood with its face a little turned towards the wall, as though somewhat in disgrace, portraying the full-length figure of a girl standing in deep shadow, with her arms half outstretched, as if asking for something. Her eyes were fixed on Cecilia, and through her parted lips breath almost seemed to come. The only colour in the picture was the pale blue of those eyes, the pallid red of those parted lips, the still paler brown of the hair; the rest was shadow. In the foreground light was falling as though from a street-lamp.

Cecilia thought: “That girl’s eyes and mouth haunt me. Whatever made Blanca choose such a subject? It is clever, of course – for her.”

CHAPTER II

A FAMILY DISCUSSION

The marriage of Sylvanus Stone, Professor of the Natural Sciences, to Anne, daughter of Mr. Justice Carfax, of the well-known county family – the Carfaxes of Spring Deans, Hants – was recorded in the sixties. The baptisms of Martin, Cecilia, and Bianca, son and daughters of Sylvanus and Anne Stone, were to be discovered registered in Kensington in the three consecutive years following, as though some single-minded person had been connected with their births. After this the baptisms of no more offspring were to be found anywhere, as if that single mind had encountered opposition. But in the eighties there was noted in the register of the same church the burial of “Anne, nee Carfax, wife of Sylvanus Stone.” In that “nee Carfax” there was, to those who knew, something more than met the eye. It summed up the mother of Cecilia and Bianca, and, in more subtle fashion, Cecilia and Bianca, too. It summed up that fugitive, barricading look in their bright eyes, which, though spoken of in the family as “the Carfax eyes,” were in reality far from coming from old Mr. Justice Carfax. They had been his wife’s in turn, and had much annoyed a man of his decided character. He himself had always known his mind, and had let others know it, too; reminding his wife that she was an impracticable woman, who knew not her own mind; and devoting his lawful gains to securing the future of his progeny. It would have disturbed him if he had lived to see his grand-daughters and their times. Like so many able men of his generation, far-seeing enough in practical affairs, he had never considered the possibility that the descendants of those who, like himself, had laid up treasure for their children’s children might acquire the quality of taking time, balancing pros and cons, looking ahead, and not putting one foot down before picking the other up. He had not foreseen, in deed, that to wobble might become an art, in order that, before anything was done, people might know the full necessity for doing some thing, and how impossible it would be to do indeed, foolish to attempt to do – that which would fully meet the case. He, who had been a man of action all his life, had not perceived how it would grow to be matter of common instinct that to act was to commit oneself, and that, while what one had was not precisely what one wanted, what one had not (if one had it) would be as bad. He had never been self-conscious – it was not the custom of his generation – and, having but little imagination, had never suspected that he was laying up that quality for his descendants, together with a competence which secured them a comfortable leisure.

Of all the persons in his grand-daughter’s studio that afternoon, that stray sheep Mr. Purcey would have been, perhaps, the only one whose judgments he would have considered sound. No one had laid up a competence for Mr. Purcey, who had been in business from the age of twenty.

It is uncertain whether the mere fact that he was not in his own fold kept this visitor lingering in the studio when all other guests were gone; or whether it was simply the feeling that the longer he stayed in contact with really artistic people the more distinguished he was becoming. Probably the latter, for the possession of that Harpignies, a good specimen, which he had bought by accident, and subsequently by accident discovered to have a peculiar value, had become a factor in his life, marking him out from all his friends, who went in more for a neat type of Royal Academy landscape, together with reproductions of young ladies in eighteenth-century costumes seated on horseback, or in Scotch gardens. A junior partner in a banking-house of some importance, he lived at Wimbledon, whence he passed up and down daily in his car. To this he owed his acquaintance with the family of Dallison. For one day, after telling his chauffeur to meet him at the Albert Gate, he had set out to stroll down Rotten Row, as he often did on the way home, designing to nod to anybody that he knew. It had turned out a somewhat barren expedition. No one of any consequence had met his eye; and it was with a certain almost fretful longing for distraction that in Kensington Gardens he came on an old man feeding birds out of a paper bag. The birds having flown away on seeing him, he approached the feeder to apologize.

“I’m afraid I frightened your birds, sir,” he began.

This old man, who was dressed in smoke-grey tweeds which exhaled a poignant scent of peat, looked at him without answering.

“I’m afraid your birds saw me coming,” Mr. Purcey said again.

“In those days,” said the aged stranger, “birds were afraid of men.”