Masterman and Son Part 34

"I suppose because, as you say, he's too proud. But there's something else too, something deeper, I think."

"And what's that, pray?"

"Well, I don't know how to describe it, but it's more than mere pride and perversity. I think it's a kind of return to type. He began life as a workman, and he's gone back to it. It's his way of showing the world he doesn't care what it does to him."

"And what's that but pride?"

"Perhaps so," said Arthur wearily. "I've long ago given up judging my father. I only know that I never thought so well of him as I do now."

"Well done!" cried Mrs. Bundy. "That's what I think too."

"Well, I can't see it," said Bundy. "Tell me again how he's living."

"He's taken a small house at Tottenham, almost a cottage. Grimes gives him two pounds a week. He works from six in the morning till six at night. Next week I'm going to live with him."

"Yes, that's the worst part of it!" cried Bundy. "Your life is to be sacrificed too. With your splendid education you ought to be making a figure in the world. At all events you ought to be back upon your ranch, if that's the kind of life you mean to live. You must know that."

"Yes, I know it. But I can't go back as long as father lives. I have to make amends to him for past unkindness. And, remember, he has no one left but me."

"What about Helen?" said Mrs. Bundy.

"That's one of the things I came over to tell you about. I have a letter from her. You had better read it."

The letter was dated from Paris, and read as follows:

"DEAR ARTHUR:

"I hear that you are back in London, so you know all about the _mess_ father has made of his affairs. You were lucky to be out of it, for it was a dreadful disgrace. I thought I should have _died_ of shame.

Just, too, when he was going to be knighted, for that's come out since, you know. He must have known all about it--I mean the disgrace--long before it came. And yet he never told me one word, but let me think things were all right, and was always talking to me about the house he meant to build, and the place in society I was to have. I can see now that it was all lies, and I will never forgive him. I suppose you will say I ought to sympathise with him, and all that kind of _rot_: you always did pretend to be so mighty good. Well, I don't, and I won't forgive him. And I dare say you'll say I ought to have stayed with him, and all that kind of thing. A pretty idea! As if I could have put my head out of doors, with everybody talking about us, and father's name in all the papers. I did go out once, and the Collinson girls, _proud, conceited things_, cut me dead, though I went to school with them. I wasn't going to stand that, so, after mother's funeral, I went away to one of my _true_ friends in Paris. I didn't tell her what had happened, you may be sure. And she doesn't read the English papers, _thank G.o.d_. Her name is Adele Siedmyer. She went to school with me, and her father is rich. She gave me a good time, I can tell you, and not a word said. The Siedmyers live in a beautiful house, much better than that _old_ Eagle House, which I always detested. Well, now, I've something to tell you, which is quite _important_. There was a nice old gentleman who used to come to dinner at the Siedmyers', and I soon saw that he was very fond of me. They told me he was seventy, but he doesn't look more than _fifty_, for these Frenchmen know how to dress and keep young, which Englishmen never do. He told me all about his life--he'd been twice married, but his wives had treated him _abominably_--and I felt very sorry for him. I forgot to say he's something in the Stock Exchange--the Bourse, they call it here--and the Siedmyers thought no end of him. Well, I dare say you'll guess the rest. He asked me to marry him. I thought he put it so _cleverly_; he said it was the _entente cordiale_. I laughed at first, and then I cried a good deal; for it seemed hard that I should have to marry an old man, even if he is only fifty and a _good figure_. But what was a poor girl to do? Adele and the Siedmyers persuaded me, and really it did seem to me quite _providential_, just in the midst of this disgrace; and it's not as though he didn't love me, for he's perfectly _infatuated_ over me. I know you'll sneer, you always were good at that. But I don't care. There's one thing I _always_ made my mind up to--it was that I wouldn't be poor. And, as I said, it did really seem quite _providential_, just when I couldn't hope to marry well in England, because of father's _wickedness_, that M. Simon--that's his name--should fall in love with me. I was dreadfully afraid at first that he'd ask awkward questions about father, but he never did, though he must have known _something_. Of course I didn't tell him--not likely. So the upshot of it is that we were married last week. So now you know. I thought I ought to tell you, and you can tell father, if you like. You needn't expect me _ever_ to come to London again--horrid, hateful city! If you like to come over to Paris some time, of course I'll see you; but I won't see father! I draw the line at that. And I am sure he won't expect it after all the _cruel_ wrong he's done me. I should think he would be too _ashamed_. If you can find any of my little knick-nacks in my drawers I wish you would pack them up and send them over. But I dare say they're gone--very likely the servants took them; and it doesn't _really_ matter, for I've everything I need. Thank G.o.d, I shall not be poor now, in spite of father's _wickedness_.

"Your sister, "HELEN.

"P.S.--We are living at the Hotel Continental, _for the present_. If you were only sensible I would say come over, and meet Adele Siedmyer.

She will have lots of money when her father dies. But I suppose you prefer _digging_ like a labourer in that _nasty_ Canada. There's no accounting for tastes, is there?"

Arthur, who, of course, was familiar with the letter, turned his face away while Mrs. Bundy read it, for he was heartily ashamed of it. Its complete selfishness and shallowness, its spite, its rancour, its hard worldliness, above all, its nauseous pietism, had filled him with disgust. He was surprised therefore when Mrs. Bundy put it down, with the exclamation, "Poor child!"

"Why do you say that?" he cried. "A letter like that puts its writer beyond pity."

"Ah, Arthur! I see you've not yet got out of the bad habit of judging people harshly. My laddie, don't let your heart grow hard against your sister, even though she is to blame. I'm not saying that that isn't a bad letter, and it comes from a hard, cruel heart. But I mind Helen as a little girl, as sweet and bright a child as you might meet in a day's march. It wasn't her fault that she was shallow; that's the way she was made. Yes, she was shallow, and only meant to sail in shallow waters, and when the deep waters overtook her, she was frightened to death. That's the letter of a poor, terrified girl who doesn't know what she's saying."

"I didn't think of it like that."

"No; it wasn't to be supposed you could. It isn't a boy that understands the heart of a poor, terrified girl."

"But it's the meanness of it--no word about my father but cruel accusation."

"Yes, it's mean; fear makes weak people mean."

"That's right," interjected Bundy. "I've seen a man, when thoroughly frightened, pour out all the black things in his heart, without the least idea of what a cad he looked to other people."

"Ah! and that's not all," went on Mrs. Bundy. "You think she's beyond pity. Why, she never had a better right to pity than now. She's sold her youth to that old Frenchman--I never did believe in Frenchmen--and she's got to pay for her folly, and it'll be a hard, long price before she's through with it, be sure of that. December and May--I never did know any good come of that kind of marriage yet. No, no. Your father's to be pitied, but he's got his pride; and you are to be pitied, but you've got your youth and freedom; but, if you ask me who is to be pitied most, it's that poor motherless girl. She may have a hard heart, but it can bleed; yes, and life will make it bleed before long, I doubt."

And so from Mrs. Bundy Arthur once more learned that lesson in life which he had found so difficult to master, the lesson always difficult to youth, and perhaps the most difficult of all to those whose ideals are highest--the lesson of charity, of tolerance, of lenient judgment toward the faulty. Mrs. Bundy had once before shown him the better road, when she had made him acquainted with virtues in his father which he had ignored; he had learned something of what charity meant from Vyse upon the _Saurian_, and Horner in New York, each with his catholic axiom that Englishmen ought to stand by one another; he had remarked Vickars's altered att.i.tude to life, his sense of life's complexity, and his allowance for faults in men, for which their own will was but partially responsible: four times the Angel of Charity had stood beside him, and each time he had turned his face away. He had not allowed Mrs. Bundy's plea; he had accepted Horner's kindness, but without any accurate conception of the rarity and real beauty of his character; he had heard Vickars's confession, and in his utmost heart had thought him an apostate prophet. And now the same test met him again in the case of his sister. He saw her hardness and shallowness with more than sufficient accuracy; what he had not seen was her weakness, her terror under sudden disaster, and the tragic folly to which she had been driven by her terror. It was left to Mrs. Bundy to show him that.

Suddenly he saw it; and he saw much besides. He saw that there is a vision of the mind and a vision of the heart; that the one is judging vision, the other sympathetic vision; that the one sees the surface only, the other the depth; and that therefore the vision of the heart is the only true vision. Of the four persons who had instructed him, three were quite simple persons, without the least claim to intellectual superiority; the other a man of genius, who had become humble by contact with human sorrows. And there was a fifth--there was Bundy himself, an adventurer whom he had secretly despised and ridiculed, but from whose hand had come salvation in his own hour of direst need. And the bond between these persons was quite simple; they had warm, human hearts, and in the difficult hours of life they were governed by warm impulses. Ah! that had been his error; he had looked at life with the mind, rarely with the heart. He had set himself up to judge others, and now he was judged. He had not pitied his sister; it was left for a stranger to do that; and in that moment he saw, as clearly as though expressed in tongues of heavenly flame, the divine grace resting on the head of Mrs. Bundy, and himself standing in the dark shadows cast by his own proud egoism.

"O Mrs. Bundy!" he cried, "I have been wrong--quite wrong; you have made me see it!"

And, having no mother, he was not ashamed to turn to this motherly heart for comfort. He knelt before her, and laid his head upon her lap, as he had often done in childish troubles; and her kind hands were upon his head, and her kind voice soothed him.

"There, there, laddie, that's all right. You've been badly hurt yourself, and you've been very brave over it. It's not easy to keep sweet-tempered when you're hurt--you know that, don't you, Bundy?

Many's the time and oft I've said hard things I didn't mean, because my heart was bleeding. We all do it sometimes. But I think G.o.d turns His head away and doesn't listen. Perhaps He couldn't go on loving us if He did. And you know what the prayer says: 'Forgive us our trespa.s.ses as we forgive them that trespa.s.s against us.' I never understood anything about theologies, and that kind of thing; but I know _that's_ true. It's true because we can't go on living without it. So that's over, my dear, and don't you think any more about it."

And so she drew the bitterness out of his heart, and kissed him, and finally laughed at him through her tears, calling herself a foolish old woman to be supposing she could teach a big, clever fellow like him, until they were both laughing into one another's eyes like a pair of lovers.

"Well, now, we'll write Helen, and wish her joy. And, Bundy, you're going to Paris next week, aren't you? You will go to see her, of course. And we must send the poor child a present. It's a mercy, after all, she hasn't got into worse mischief than getting married to an old Frenchman. And perhaps he may make her a good husband, there's no telling--even though he is a Frenchman. And now I've a surprise for you. What do you think it is?"

"Something pleasant, no doubt."

"Well, it ought to be. Vickars and Elizabeth are coming to lunch. And you must stay, of course. And after lunch you can talk to Elizabeth, and we old folk will go away and talk about you, and see what can be done for you."

"Yes," said Bundy. "It's all very well for your father to work for Grimes; but you have to get to work too. Ah! there's the bell.

That'll be Vickars, so we'll postpone that business."

It was a delightful lunch. For the first time since his return to England Arthur attained a real cheerfulness. In this atmosphere of warm affection it was impossible to think too urgently of past griefs.

And it did seem as if the black shadow was at last rolling off, like a rain-cloud with trailing skirts edged with pure light.

Vickars, to his surprise, took quite a cheerful view of Helen's marriage.

"What Helen always needed was _duties_," he remarked. "Duties give poise and ballast to life. I suppose, ever since she left school, she has had no real duties to fulfil, and nothing makes people so selfish as a total absence of some kind of daily duty. If marriage does nothing else, it does impose duties on men and women. It takes them out of themselves, makes them look outward instead of inward, which is always a great thing."

"Then you don't think she has made a mistake?" said Arthur.

"No one can know that. But there's a kind of instinct in people which often guides them to what is right for them, though to an outsider their actions may appear quite foolish and incomprehensible. They unconsciously know what's good for them, just as animals know the kind of food that suits them best. Not a very complimentary a.n.a.logy, is it?" he added, with his whimsical smile.

"No; but I see what you mean, I think."

"It doesn't need much seeing, for it meets us everywhere. Have you ever watched a dog in a field? He knows exactly what gra.s.ses are good for him, and he finds them. We don't know in the least the principle of his discrimination. Well, it's like that with men and women. They make their own choice, and it often seems to us a matter of folly or caprice. But, in nine cases out of ten, if they are left to themselves, they do somehow manage to choose what's best for them."

"And you would apply the same principle to my father?"

"Precisely. He is probably doing the only thing that was left for him to do. He knows what is the best medicine for his wound, and no one else knows anything at all about it."

"Poor father! At this moment, while we are feasting, he is working in bitterness of heart."

"Well, you don't know that. Very likely he is forgetting his bitterness of heart in his work, and if he were here he would remember it."