Tales of two people

“What a fool I’ve been! How you must have been laughing at me – at my poor Prince and me!” She looked across to him, smiling faintly. He sat twisting his hat in his hands. Then she turned her eyes towards the fireplace. Byers had nothing to say; he was wondering whether he might go now. Glancing at her for permission, he saw that her clear bright eyes had grown dim; presently a tear formed and rolled down her cheek. Then she began to sob, softly at first, presently with growing and rising passion. She seemed quite forgetful of him, heedless of what he thought and of how she looked. All that was in her, the pang of her dead hopes, the woe for her poor Prince, the bitter shame of her own crushed pride and helpless folly, came out in her sobs as she abandoned herself to weeping. Byers sat by, listening always, looking sometimes. He tried to defend himself to himself; was it decent of her, was it becoming, wasn’t it characteristic of the lack of self-control and self-respect that marks the sort of woman she was? It might be open to all these reproaches. She seemed not to care; she cried on. He could not help looking at her now; at last she saw him looking, and with a little stifled exclamation – whether of apology or of irritation he could not tell – she turned sideways and hid her face in the cushions of the sofa. Byers rose slowly, almost unsteadily, to his feet. “My God!” he whispered to himself, as he stood for a moment and looked at her. Then he walked over to where she lay, her head buried in the cushions.

“It doesn’t make all that difference to you,” he said roughly. “You wouldn’t have gone with him.”

She turned her face to him for a moment. She did not look her best; how could she? But Mr Byers did not notice that.

“I love him; and I wanted to do it.”

Byers had “wanted to do it” too, and their desires had clashed. But in his desire there had been no alloy of love; it was all true metal, true metal of self. He stood over her for a minute without speaking. A strange feeling seized him then; he had felt it once before with regard to this woman.

“If it had been for you I’d have damned the money and gone ahead,” he blurted out in an indistinct impetuous utterance.

Again she looked up; there was no surprise, no resentment in her face, only a heart-breaking plaintiveness. “Oh, why couldn’t you be honest with me?” she moaned. But she stopped sobbing and sat straight on the sofa again. “You’ll think me still more of a fool for doing this,” she said.

Was the abuse never coming? Mr Byers began to long for it. If he were abused enough, he thought that he might be able to find something to say for himself.

“You think that because – because I live as I do, I know the world and – and so on. I don’t a bit. It doesn’t follow really, you know. Fancy my thinking I could do anything for Julian! What do I know of business? Well, you’ve told me now!”

“If it had been for you I’d have risked it and gone ahead,” said Byers again.

“I don’t know what you mean by that,” she murmured vaguely. Byers did not try to describe to her the odd strong impulse which had inspired his speech. “I must go and tell the Prince about it,” she said.

“What are you going to do?” he demanded.

“Do? What is there to do? Nothing, I suppose. What can we do?”

“I wish to God I’d – I’d met a woman like you. Shall you marry him now?”

She looked up; a faint smile appeared on her face.

“Yes,” she said. “It doesn’t matter now; and he’ll like it. Yes, I’ll marry him now.”

Two visions – one was of Mrs Byers and the babies in Portland Place – rose before Byers’ thoughts.

“He hasn’t lost much then,” he said. “And you? You’ll be just as happy.”

“It was the whole world to me,” said she, and for the last time she put her handkerchief to her eyes. Then she stowed it away in her pocket and looked expectantly at her visitor; here was the permission to go.

“Will you take the money?” said he.

“What money?”

“What I’ve made. My share of it.”

“Oh, don’t be silly! What do I care what money you’ve made?”

He spoke lower as he put his second question.

“Will you forgive me?” he asked.

“Forgive you?” She laughed a little, yet looked puzzled. “I don’t think about you like that,” she explained. “You’re not a man to me.”

“You’re a woman to me. What am I to you then?”

“I don’t know. Things in general – the world – business – the truth about myself. Yes, you’re the truth about myself to me.” She laughed again, nervously, tentatively, almost appealingly, as though she wanted him to understand how he seemed to her. He drew in his breath and buttoned his coat.

“And you’re the truth about myself to me,” he said. “And the truth is that I’m a damned scoundrel.”

“Are you?” she asked, as it seemed half in surprise, half in indifference. “Oh, I suppose you’re no worse than other people. Only I was such a fool. Good-bye, Mr Byers.” She held out her hand. He had not meant to offer his. But he took hers and pressed it. He had a vague desire to tell her that he was not a type of all humanity, that other men were better than he was, that there were unselfish men, true men, men who did not make fools of women for money’s sake; yes, of women whose shoes they were not worthy to black. But he could not say anything of all this, and he left her without another word. And the next morning he bought the “call” of a big block of the Stock; for the news of Prince Julian’s marriage with Mrs Rivers would send it up a point or two. Habit is very strong.

When he was gone, Mrs Rivers went upstairs to her room and bathed her face. Then she rejoined Prince Julian in the library. Weary of waiting, he had gone to sleep; but he woke up and was rejoiced to see her. He listened to her story, called Mr Byers an infernal rogue, and, with an expression of relief on his face, said:

“There’s the end of that! And now, darling – ?”

“Yes, I’ll marry you now,” she said. “It doesn’t matter now.”

Thus, as has been said, the whole affair had only three obvious effects – the renovation of Lady Craigennoch’s town house, a baronetcy for Sir Henry Shum (services to the Party are a recognised claim on the favour of His Majesty), and the marriage of Prince Julian. But from it both Mrs Rivers and Mr Byers derived some new ideas of the world and of themselves. Shall woman weep and hard men curse their own work without result? The Temple of Truth is not a National Institution. So, of course, one pays to go in. Even when you are in, it is difficult to look at more than one side of it at once. Perhaps Mrs Rivers did not realise this; and Mr Byers could not while he seemed still to hear her crying; he heard the sobs for so many evenings, mingling oddly with the click of his wife’s knitting-needles.

MISS GLADWIN’S CHANCE

I

OLD Tom Gladwin was not a man to whom you volunteered advice. He had made an immense deal of money for himself, and people who have done that generally like also to manufacture their own advice on their own premises; perhaps it is better done that way, perhaps there’s just a prejudice in favour of the home trade-mark. Anyhow, old Tom needed no suggestions from outside. You said, “Yes, Sir Thomas,” or “Of course not, Sir Thomas,” or “Certainly, Sir Thomas.” At all events, you limited your remarks to something like that if you were – as I was – a young solicitor trying to keep his father’s connection together, of which Sir Thomas’s affairs and the business of the Worldstone Park estate formed a considerable and lucrative portion. But everybody was in the same story about him – secretary, bailiff, stud-groom, gardener, butler – yes, butler, although Sir Thomas had confessedly never tasted champagne till he was forty, whereas Gilson had certainly been weaned on it. Even Miss Nettie Tyler, when she came on the scene, had the good sense to accept Sir Thomas’s version of her heart’s desire; neither had she much cause to quarrel with his reading, since it embraced Sir Thomas himself and virtually the whole of his worldly possessions. He was worth perhaps half-a-million pounds in money, and the net rent-roll of Worldstone was ten thousand, even after you had dressed it up and curled its hair, for all the world as if it were a suburban villa instead of an honest, self-respecting country gentleman’s estate, which ought to have been run to pay three per cent. But the new-comers will not take land seriously; they leave that as a prospect for their descendants when the ready money, the city-made money, has melted away.

So I took his instructions for his marriage settlement and his new will without a word, although they seemed to me to be, under the circumstances, pretty stiff documents. The old gentleman – he was not really old, fifty-eight or-nine, I should say, but he looked like a granite block that has defied centuries – had, of course, two excuses. In the first place, he was fairly crazy about Nettie Tyler, orphan daughter of the old vicar of Worldstone, an acquaintance of two months’ standing and (I will say for her) one of the prettiest little figures on a horse that I ever saw. In the second, he wanted – yes, inevitably he wanted – to found a family and to hand on the baronetcy which had properly rewarded his strenuous and successful efforts on his own behalf; it was the sort of baronetcy which is obviously pregnant with a peerage – a step, not a crown; one learns to distinguish these varieties. Accordingly, to cut details short, the effect of the new will and of the marriage settlement was that, given issue of the said intended marriage (and intended it was for the following Tuesday), Miss Beatrice Gladwin was to have five hundred a year on her father’s death, and the rest went to what, for convenience’s sake, I may call the new undertaking – to the Gladwin-Tyler establishment and what might spring therefrom. Even the five hundred was by the will only, therefore revocable. Five hundred a year is not despicable, and is good, like other boons, until revoked. But think what Beatrice Gladwin had been two months before – the greatest heiress in the county, mistress of all! So the old will had made her – the old will in my office safe, which, come next Tuesday, would be so much waste paper. I have always found something pathetic about a superseded will. It is like a royal family in exile.

Sir Thomas read over the documents and looked up at me as he took off his spectacles.

“One great advantage of having made your own way, Foulkes,” he observed, “is that you’re not trammelled by settlements made in early life. I can do what I like with my own.”

And I, as I have foreshadowed, observed merely, “Certainly, Sir Thomas.”

He eyed me for a moment with an air of some suspicion. He was very acute and recognised criticism, however inarticulate; an obstinacy in the bend of one’s back was enough for him. But I gave him no more opening, and, after all, he could not found an explicit reproach on the curve of my spine. After a moment he went on, rasping the short grey hair that sprouted on his chin:

“I think you’d better have a few minutes with my daughter. Put the effect of these documents into plain language for her.” I believe he half suspected me again, for he added quickly: “Free of technicalities, I mean. She knows the general nature of my wishes. I’ve made that quite clear to her myself.” No doubt he had. I bowed, and he rose, glancing at the clock. “The horses must be round,” he said; “I’m going for a ride with Miss Tyler. Ask if my daughter can see you now; and I hope you’ll stay to lunch, Foulkes.” He went to the door, but turned again. “I’ll send Beatrice to you myself,” he called, “and you can get the business over before we come back.” He went off, opening his cigar-case and humming a tune, in excellent spirits with himself and the world, I fancied. He had reason to be, so far as one could see at the minute.

I went to the window and watched them mounting – the strong solid frame of the man, the springy figure of the pretty girl. She was chattering gleefully: he laughed in a most contented approval of her, and, probably, with an attention none too deep to the precise purport of her merry words. Besides the two grooms there was another member of the party – one who stood rather aloof on the steps that led up to the hall door. Here was the lady for whom I waited, Beatrice Gladwin, his daughter, who was to have the five hundred a year when he died – who was to have had everything, to have been mistress of all. She stood there in her calm composed handsomeness. Neither pretty nor beautiful would you call her, but, without question, remarkably handsome. She was also perfectly tranquil. As I looked she spoke once; I heard the words through the open window.

“You must have your own way, then,” she said, with a smile and a slight shrug of her shoulders. “But the horse isn’t safe for you, you know.”

“Ay, ay,” he answered, laughing again, not at his daughter but round to the pretty girl beside him. “I’ll have my way for four days more.” He and his fiancée enjoyed the joke between them; it went no further, I think.

Beatrice stood watching them for a little while, then turned into the house. I watched them a moment longer, and saw them take to the grass and break into a canter. It was a beautiful sunny morning; they and their fine horses made a good moving bit of life on the face of the smiling earth. Was that how it would strike Beatrice, once the heiress, now – well, it sounds rather strong, but shall we say the survival of an experiment that had failed? Once the patroness of the vicar’s little daughter – I had often seen them when that attitude obviously and inevitably dominated their intercourse; then for a brief space, by choice or parental will, the friend; now and for the future – my vocabulary or my imagination failed to supply the exact description of their future relations. It was, however, plain that the change to Miss Beatrice Gladwin must be very considerable. There came back into my mind what my friend, neighbour, and client, Captain Spencer Fullard of Gatworth Hall, impecunious scion of an ancient stock, had said in the club at Bittleton (for we have a club at Bittleton, and a very good one, too) when the news of Sir Thomas’s engagement came out. “Rough on Miss Beatrice,” said he; “but she’ll show nothing. She’s hard, you know, but a sportsman.” A sportsman she was, as events proved; and none was to know it better than Spencer Fullard himself, who was, by the way, supposed to feel, or at least to have exhibited, even greater admiration for the lady than the terms of the quoted remark imply. At the time he had not seen Miss Tyler.

One thing more came into my head while I waited. Did pretty Nettie Tyler know the purport of the new documents? If so, what did she think of it? But the suggestion which this idea carries with it probably asked altogether too much of triumphant youth. It is later in life that one is able to look from other people’s points of view – one’s own not being so dazzlingly pleasant, I suppose. So I made allowances for Nettie; it was not perhaps so easy for Beatrice Gladwin to do the same.

II

OF course the one thing I had to avoid was any show of sympathy; she would have resented bitterly such an impertinence. If I knew her at all – and I had been an interested observer of her growth from childhood to woman’s estate – the sympathy of the county, unheard but infallibly divined, was a sore aggravation of her fate. As I read extracts from the documents and explained their effect, freeing them from technicalities, as Sir Thomas had thoughtfully charged me, my impassivity equalled hers. I might have been telling her the price of bloaters at Great Yarmouth that morning, and she considering the purchase of half-a-dozen. In fact, we overdid it between us; we were both grotesquely uninterested in the documents; our artificial calm made a poor contrast to the primitive and disguise-scorning exultation of the pair who had gone riding over the turf in the sunshine. I could not help it; I had to take my cue from her. My old father had loved her; perhaps he would have patted her hand, perhaps he would even have kissed her cheek: what would have happened to her composure then? On the other hand, he would have been much more on Sir Thomas’s side than I was. He used often to quote to me a saying of his uncle’s, the venerable founder of the fine business we enjoyed: “Every other generation, the heir ought to lay an egg and then die.” The long minority which he contemplated as resulting from a family bereavement prima facie so sad would reëstablish the family finances. The Chinese and Japanese, I am told, worship their ancestors. English landed gentry worship their descendants, and of this cult the family lawyer is high priest. My father would have patted Beatrice Gladwin’s cheek, but he would not have invoked a curse on Sir Thomas, as I was doing behind my indifferent face and with the silent end of my drily droning tongue. I was very glad when we got to the end of the documents.