Tales of two people

I went back to Bittleton, kept my own counsel, set the business of the money on foot, and waited for the issue of the fair fight. No whisper about the money leaked through to the Bittleton Club; but I heard of a small party at Worldstone Park, and Spencer Fullard was one of the guests. Therefore battle was joined.

VI

THE following Saturday fortnight the Bittleton Press scored what journalists call a “scoop” at the expense of the rival and Radical organ, the Advertiser. Such is the reward of sound political principle! Here is the paragraph – “exclusive,” the editor was careful to make you understand:

We are privileged to announce that a marriage has been arranged and will shortly be solemnised between Captain Spencer Fullard, D.S.O., of Gatworth Hall, and Henrietta, daughter of the late Rev. F. E. Tyler, Vicar of Worldstone. We extend, in the name of the county, our cordial congratulations to the happy pair. Captain Fullard is the representative of a name ancient and respected in the county, and has done good service to his King and country. The romantic story of the lady whose affections he has been so fortunate as to win will be fresh in the minds of our readers. As we sympathised with her sorrow, so now we may with her joy. We understand that Miss Gladwin of Worldstone Park, following what she is confident would have been the wish of her lamented father, the late much-respected Sir Thomas Gladwin, Bart., M.P., D.L., J.P., C.A., is presenting the prospective bride with a wedding present which in itself amounts to a fortune. Happy they who are in a position to exercise such graceful munificence and to display filial affection in so gracious a form! It would be indiscreet to mention figures, but rumour has not hesitated to speak of what our gay forefathers used to call “a plum.” We are not at liberty to say more than that this in no way overstates the amount.

Whereupon, of course, the Bittleton Club at once doubled it, and Miss Gladwin’s fame filled the air.

This was all very pretty, and it must be admitted that Beatrice Gladwin had performed her task in a most tactful way. For reasons connected with the known condition of the finances of the Gatworth Hall estate, it sounded so much better that Miss Gladwin’s present should come as a result of the engagement than – well, the other way round. The other way round would have given occasion for gossip to the clubmen of Bittleton. But now – Love against the World, and an entirely unlooked-for bonus of – “a plum,” as the editor, with a charming eighteenth-century touch, chose to describe the benefaction. That was really ideal.

Really ideal; and, of course, in no way at all correspondent to the facts of the case. The truth was that Miss Beatrice Gladwin had secured her “fair fight” – and, it seemed, had lost it very decisively and very speedily. As soon as it was reasonably possible – and made so by Miss Gladwin’s action – for Fullard to think of marrying Nettie Tyler, he had asked her to be his wife. To which question there could be only one answer. Miss Gladwin had given away too much weight; she should have quartered that “plum,” I thought.

But that would not have made a “fair fight”? Perhaps not. Perhaps a fair fight was not to be made at all under the circumstances. But the one thing which, above all, I could not see was the old point that had puzzled me before. It might be fair to soften the conflict between Captain Fullard’s love and Captain Fullard’s duty as a man of ancient stock. It might be fair to undo some of fate’s work and give Nettie Tyler a chance of the man she wanted – freedom to fight for him – just that, you understand. But where came in the chance for herself of which Beatrice Gladwin had spoken?

As I have said, I was Captain Fullard’s lawyer as well as Miss Gladwin’s, and he naturally came to me to transact the business incident on his marriage. Beatrice Gladwin proved right: he was not overwhelmed, nor, from his words, did I gather that Miss Tyler was. But they were both highly appreciative.

The captain was also inclined to congratulate himself on his knowledge of character, his power of reading the human heart.

“Hard, if you like,” he said, sitting in my office arm-chair; “but a sportsman in the end, as I told you she was. I knew one could rely on her doing the right thing in the end.”

“At considerable cost,” I remarked, sharpening a pencil.

“It’s liberal – very liberal. Oh, we feel that. But, of course, the circumstances pointed to liberality.” He paused, then added:

“And I don’t know that we ought to blame her for taking time to think it over. Of course it made all the difference to me, Foulkes.”

There came in the captain’s admirable candour. Between him and me there was no need – and, I may add, no room – for the romantic turn which the Bittleton Press had given to the course of events; that was for public consumption only.

“But for it I couldn’t possibly have come forward – whatever I felt.”

“As a suitor for Miss Tyler’s hand?” said I.

The captain looked at me; gradually a smile came on his remarkably comely face.

“Look here, Foulkes,” said he very good-humouredly, “just you congratulate me on being able to do as I like. Never mind what you may happen to be thinking behind that sallow old fiddle-head of yours.”

“And Miss Tyler is, I’m sure, radiantly happy?”

Captain Fullard’s candour abode till the end. “Well, Nettie hasn’t done badly for herself, looking at it all round, you know.”

With all respect to the late Sir Thomas, and even allowing for a terrible shock and a trying interval, I did not think she had.

Miss Gladwin gave them a splendid wedding at Worldstone. Her manner to them both was most cordial, and she was gay beyond the wont of her staid demeanour. I do not think there was affectation in this.

When the bride and bridegroom – on this occasion again by no means overwhelmed – had departed amidst cheers, when the rout of guests had gone, when the triumphal arch was being demolished and the rustics were finishing the beer, she walked with me in the garden while I smoked a cigar. (There’s nothing like a wedding for making you want a cigar.)

After we had finished our gossiping about how well everything had gone off – and that things in her house should go off well was very near to Beatrice Gladwin’s heart – we were silent for a while. Then she turned to me and said: “I’m very content, Mr Foulkes.” Her face was calm and peaceful; she did not look so hard.

“I’m glad that doing the handsome thing brings content. I wonder if you know how glad I am?”

“Yes, I know. You’re a good friend. But you’re making your old mistake. I wasn’t thinking just then of what you call the handsome thing. I was thinking of the chance that I gave myself.”

“I never quite understood that,” said I.

She gave a little laugh. “But for that ‘handsome thing,’ he’d certainly have asked me – he’d have had to, poor man – me, and not her. And he’d have done it very soon.”

I assented – not in words, just in silence and cigar smoke.

She looked at me without embarrassment, though she was about to say something that she might well have refused to say to any living being. She seemed to have a sort of pleasure in the confession – at least an impulse to make it that was irresistible. She smiled as she spoke – amused at herself, or, perhaps, at the new idea she would give me of herself.

“If he had,” she went on – “if he had made love to me, I couldn’t have refused him – I couldn’t, indeed. And yet I shouldn’t have believed a word he was saying – not a word of love he said. I should have been a very unhappy woman if I hadn’t given myself that chance. You’ve been a little behind the scenes. Nobody else has. I want you to know that I’m content.” She put her hand in mine and gave me a friendly squeeze. “And to-morrow we’ll get back to business, you and I,” she said.

THE PRINCE CONSORT

I HAD known her for some considerable time before I came to know him. Most of their acquaintance were in the same case; for to know him was among the less noticeable and the less immediate results of knowing her. You might go to the house three or four times and not happen upon him. He was there always, but he did not attract attention. You joined Mrs Clinton’s circle, or, if she were in a confidential mood, you sat with her on the sofa. She would point out her daughter, and Muriel, attired in a wonderful elaboration of some old-fashioned mode, would talk to you about “Mamma’s books,” while Mrs Clinton declared that, do what she would, she could not prevent the darling from reading them. Perhaps, when you had paid half-a-dozen visits, Mr Clinton would cross your path. He was very polite, active for your comfort, ready to carry out his wife’s directions, determined to be useful. Mrs Clinton recognised his virtues. She called him an “old dear,” with a fond pitying smile on her lips, and would tell you, with an arch glance and the slightest of shrugs, that “he wrote too.” If you asked what he wrote, she said that it was “something musty,” but that it kept him happy, and that he never minded being interrupted, or even having nowhere to write, because Muriel’s dancing lesson occupied the dining-room, “and I really couldn’t have him in my study. One must be alone to work, mustn’t one?” She could not be blamed for holding her work above his; there was nothing at all to show for his; whereas hers not only brought her a measure of fame, as fame is counted, but also doubled the moderate private income on which they had started housekeeping – and writing – thirteen or fourteen years before. Mr Clinton himself would have been the last to demur to her assumption; he accepted his inferiority with an acquiescence that was almost eagerness. He threw himself into the task of helping his wife, not of course in the writing, but by relieving her of family and social cares. He walked with Muriel, and was sent to parties when his wife was too busy to come. I recollect that he told me, when we had become friendly, that these offices made considerable inroads on his time. “If,” he said apologetically, “I had not acquired the habit of sitting up late, I should have difficulty in getting forward with my work. As it happens, Millie doesn’t work at night – the brain must be fresh for her work – and so I can have the study then; and I am not so liable to – I mean, I have not so many other calls then.”

I liked Clinton, and I do not mean by that that I disliked Mrs Clinton. Indeed I admired her very much, and her husband’s position in the household seemed just as natural to me as it did to himself and to everybody else. Young Gregory Dulcet, who is a poet and a handsome impudent young dog, was felt by us all to have put the matter in a shape that was at once true in regard to our host, and pretty in regard to our hostess, when he referred, apparently in a casual way, to Mr Clinton as “the Prince Consort.” Mrs Clinton laughed and blushed; Muriel clapped her hands and ran off to tell her father. She came back saying that he was very pleased with the name, and I believe that very possibly he really was. Anyhow, young Dulcet was immensely pleased with it; he repeated it, and it “caught on.” I heard Mrs Clinton herself, with a half-daring, half-modest air, use it more than once. Thus Mrs Clinton was led to believe herself great: so that she once asked me if I thought that there was any prospect of The Quarterly “doing her.” I said that I did not see why not. Yet it was not a probable literary event.

Thus Mr Clinton passed the days of an obscure useful life, helping his wife, using the dining-room when dancing lessons did not interfere, and enjoying the luxury of the study in the small hours of the morning. And Mrs Clinton grew more and more pitiful to him; and Muriel more and more patronising; and the world more and more forgetful. And then, one fine morning, as I was going to my office, the Prince Consort overtook me. He was walking fast, and he carried a large, untidy, brown-paper parcel. I quickened my pace to keep up with his.

“Sorry to hurry you, old fellow,” said he, “but I must be back in an hour. A fellow’s coming to interview Millie, and I promised to be back and show him over the house. She doesn’t want to lose more of her time than is absolutely necessary: she’s in the thick of a new story, you see. And Muriel’s got her fiddle lesson, so she can’t do it.”

“And what’s brought you out with the family wash?” I asked in pleasantry, pointing to the parcel.

The Prince Consort blushed (though he must have been forty at least at this date), pulled his beard, and said:

“This? Do you mean this? Oh, this is – well, it’s a little thing of my own.”

“Of your own? What do you mean?” I asked.

“Didn’t Millie ever tell you that I write too? Well, I do when I can get a few hours. And this is it. I’ve managed to get a fellow to look at it. Millie spoke a word for me, you know.”

I do not know whether my expression was sceptical or offensive, but I suppose it must have been one or the other, for the Prince Consort went on hastily:

“Oh, I’m not going to be such an ass as to pay anything for having it brought out, you know. They must do it on spec. or leave it alone. Besides, they really like to oblige Millie, you see.”

“It doesn’t look very little,” I observed.

“Er – no. I’m afraid it’s rather long,” he admitted.

“What’s it about?”

“Oh, it’s dull, heavy stuff. I can’t do what Millie does, you see. It’s not a novel.”

We parted at the door of the publisher who had been ready to oblige Mrs Clinton, and would, I thought, soon regret his complaisance; and I went on to my office, dismissing the Prince Consort and his “little thing” from my mind.

I went to the Clintons’ about three months’ later, in order to bid them farewell before starting for a holiday on the Continent. They were, for a wonder, without other visitors, and when we had talked over Mrs Clinton’s last production, she stretched out her hand and pointed to the table.