Spring Days Part 3

On Sundays Mr. Brookes walked through the long drawing-rooms aimlessly. Sometimes he would stop before one of his pictures. "There, that's a good picture, I paid a lot of money for it, I paid too much, mustn't do so again." Pa.s.sing his daughters, sometimes without speaking, he then stopped before one of the big chimney-pieces, and, pulling out his large silk pocket handkerchief, dusted the ma.s.sive clocks and candlesticks.

In the billiard-room, at a table drawn up close to the c.o.ke fire, w.i.l.l.y slowly and with much care made pencil notes, which he slowly and with great solemnity copied into his diary.

"Your sisters are a great source of trouble to me, a source of deep anxiety," said Mr. Brookes, and he flicked the rearing legs of a bronze horse with his handkerchief.

"My sisters are only fit for pleasure," said w.i.l.l.y and he finished the tail of the y, pa.s.sed the blotting paper over, and prepared to begin a fresh paragraph.

"I am afraid Grace is scarcely any better; she will not leave her room. I hear she is crying. It is too ridiculous, too ridiculous. What she can see in that man I can't think; he is only a man of pleasure.

I've told her so, but somehow she can't get to see why I will not settle money upon her--money that I made myself, by hard work, judicious investments."

"That's a smack at the shop," thought w.i.l.l.y, as he placed his full stop.

"I'll not settle my money upon her," said Mr. Brookes, as he resumed his dusting; "and for what? to keep an idle fellow in idleness. No, I'll not do it. She'll get over it--ah, it will be all the same a hundred years hence. But tell me, have you noticed--no, you notice nothing--"

"Yes, I do; what do you want me to say, that she is looking very ill?

I can't help it if she is. I've quite enough troubles of my own without thinking of other people's. I'm sure I am very sorry. I wish she'd never met the fellow."

"That's what I say, I wish she'd never met the fellow, and she never would had it not been for that horrible Southdown Road. Southwick has never been the same since those villas were put up."

"I know nothing about them; I won't know them. I don't go to the Horlocks because I may meet people there I don't want to know. If you hadn't allowed the girls to go there, she never would have met him."

"But we had to call on the Horlocks. Every Viceroy that ever came to India called upon her, and they're excellent people--t.i.tled people come down from London to see them: but I daresay their banking accounts wouldn't bear looking into. She walks about the green with the chemist's wife, and has the people of the baths to dinner.

Mostextraordinary woman. I like her, I enjoy her society; but I can't follow her in her opinions. She says that only men are bad; that all animals are good; that it is only men who make them bad. Her views on hydrophobia are most astonis.h.i.+ng. She says it is a mild and easy death, and sees no reason why the authorities should attempt to stamp it out. She quite frightened me with the story she told me of a mad dog that died in her arms. But that by the way. The point is not now whether she is right to feed mice in her bedroom instead of getting rid of them, but whether we should call on people we don't want to know because she asks us to do so. I say we should not. When she spoke to me the other day about the lady whose mother was a housemaid, I said, 'My dear Mrs. Horlock, it is very well for you to call on those people. I approve of, I admire magnanimity; but what you can do I cannot do. You have no daughters to bring out; every Viceroy that ever came to India called on you, your position in the world is a.s.sured, your friends will not think the less of you no matter how intimately you know the chemist's wife, but you could not do these things if you had daughters to bring out.'"

"What did she say to that?"

"She was just going out to walk with her pugs. Angel began to--you know, and for the moment she could think of nothing else; when the little beast had finished I had forgotten the thread of my argument.

However, I spoke to her about Grace; and she promised that she shouldn't meet the fellow again. I can't think of his name, I get lost in the different names, and they are all so alike I scarcely know one from the other. I have had nothing but trouble since your poor mother died. Your sisters give me a great deal of trouble, and you have given me a great deal of trouble. We couldn't get on in business together on account of your infernal slowness. No man is more for keeping his accounts and letters straight than I, but your exact.i.tude drives me mad; it drives me mad; there you are at it again. I should like to know what you are copying into that diary. One would think you were writing an article for the _Times_, from the care with which you're drawing out every letter; 'pon my word it isn't writing at all, it's painting. You can't write for a pair of boots without taking a copy of the letter, entering it into this book, and entering it into that book; 'pon my word it is maddening."

w.i.l.l.y laughed. "Each person has his own way of doing business; I don't see how it interferes with you, or what difference it makes to you, if I spend three minutes or three days writing a letter."

"Perhaps not, perhaps not; but I am terribly upset about Grace," said Mr. Brookes, and he walked slowly across the room and stood looking at his Bouguereau; "she'll get over it, but in any case she'll miss her chance of marrying Berkins; that is what distresses me. The man stinks of money. I hear that he has been appointed manager of a colliery, that alone will bring him another thousand a year. His business is going up, he must be worth now between seven and eight thousand a year. And he began as an office boy, he hadn't a penny piece, made it all himself."

"So I should think; a purse-proud a.s.s!"

"Never mind, his eight thousand is as good an eight thousand as any in the land, better than a great many. I wouldn't give a snap of my fingers for your broken-down landowners; Berkins has always made excellent investments, and I hear he is now getting as much as fifteen per cent. for money invested."

w.i.l.l.y had been to Oxford, and the arrogance and pomposity of this purse-proud man shocked his sense of decorum. Berkins's vulgarity was more offensive than that of Mr. Brookes. Mr. Brookes was a simple, middle-cla.s.s man, who had made money straightforwardly and honestly, and he had cultivated his natural taste for pictures to the limit of his capacities and opportunities. Berkins, however, had been born a gentleman, but had had to s.h.i.+ft for himself, even when a lad, and he had caught at all chances; he was more sophisticated, he was a gentleman in a state of retrograde, and was in all points inferior to him whom he crossed in his descent. Berkins had bought a small place, a villa with some hundred acres attached to it, on the other side of Preston Park. There he had erected gla.s.s houses, and bred a few pheasants in the corner of a field, and it surprised him to find that the county families took no notice of him. Mr. Brookes had sympathised, but the young people laughed at him and w.i.l.l.y had told a story how he had been to shoot at ----, and when a partridge got up right in front of his gun, Berkins turned round and shot it, exclaiming: "That's the way to bring them down!"

And now whenever his name was mentioned, w.i.l.l.y thought of this incident, so very typical did it seem to him of the man, and he liked to twit his father with it. But Mr. Brookes could not be brought to see the joke, and he fell back on the plausible and insidious argument that, notwithstanding his manners, Berkins was worth eight thousand a year.

"And very few girls get the chance of catching eight thousand a year; and she'll miss it, she'll miss it if she doesn't take care."

"You talk of it as if it were an absolute certainty; you don't know that Berkins wants to marry Grace; he hasn't been here for the last month."

"Mr. Berkins is not like the young good-for-nothings your sisters waste their time with, he is a man of means, of eight thousand a year; you don't expect him to come round here every evening to tea, and to play tennis, and to walk in the moonlight and talk nonsense. Berkins is a man of means, he is a man who can make a settlement."

"Has he spoken to you on the subject, then?"

"No, Mr. Berkins is a man of tact, however you may laugh at him for having shot your partridge. He spoke to your Aunt Mary, or rather she spoke to him. Ah, clever woman, your Aunt Mary, wonderful manner, wonderful will, when she wants a thing done it must be done. Your poor mother--I mean no disparagement--but I must say she couldn't compare with her for determination; Sally reminds me of her, but Sally's determination is misdirected, deplorably misdirected; it is directed against me, entirely against me. She must be made submissive; when I spoke to Aunt Mary about her, she said her spirit must be broken; and if she were here she'd break it. If she were here things would be very different, your sisters wouldn't be flirting with all the little clerks in the Southdown Road; but I am alone. I have no one to turn to."

"You were telling me that Berkins had spoken to Aunt Mary about Grace."

"Your Aunt Mary spoke to Berkins about Grace; she told him he ought to be thinking of marrying; that he wanted a wife. Then the conversation turned on my daughters, and Mary no doubt mentioned that at my death they would all have large fortunes."

"Ah, so it is the money that Berkins is after."

"Money comes first. If a man can make a settlement he will naturally demand a--that is to say he will naturally look forward, he will consider what her prospects are; not her immediate prospects, that would be mercenary, but her future prospects."

w.i.l.l.y smiled. "And what did Berkins say?"

"He said he wanted to marry, and he spoke of Grace; he said he admired her. I shouldn't be surprised if we saw him at church to-day."

"Are you going to ask him to lunch?"

"Certainly, if he's there." Then, after a long silence, Mr. Brookes said: "He'll come in here to smoke. Of course you'll leave us alone.

Do you mind leaving out your cigars?"

"I have only half a box left; I think really you might keep some in the house to supply your own guests with. You always object if I interfere with your things."

"I am out of my best cigars--it is so hard to remember. He won't smoke more than one."

"I'll put one in the cigar case then."

"You had better fill it; it will look so bad if there is only one; he won't take it."

"He'll take all he can get; he took my bird, I know that!"

"This is a matter of great importance."

"To you and to Grace, not to me," said w.i.l.l.y, and with very bad grace he unlocked a drawer, and placed a box of cigars on the table.

"Thank you. Now what time is it? Half-past ten. By Jove! we must be thinking of starting; I suppose you aren't coming?"

"I am afraid I've too much to do this morning."

The young ladies appeared in new dresses, and with prayer-books in their hands. Mr. Brookes took his hat and umbrella, and w.i.l.l.y watched them depart with undisguised satisfaction. "Now I shall be able to get through some work," he said, untying a large bundle of letters. He wrote a page in his diary, tied up the letters, diary, and notebook in brown paper, and, with a sigh, admitting that he did not feel up to much work to-day, he took up the envelopes that had contained his letters and began tearing off the stamps, and he did this very attentively as if he did not trust his dry thick fingers. Somebody had told him that ten thousand old stamps were worth--he had forgotten the price of old stamps, and wondering he dozed off. When he awoke he cried: "Half-past twelve, they must be on their way back; I wonder if Berkins is with them!" And he strolled out on the gravel.

A few spring flowers marked the brown earth about the trees, and a beautiful magnolia, white as a bride, shed its sh.e.l.l-like petals in an angle beneath a window; the gold of the berberis glowed at the end of the path; and the greenery was blithe as a girl in clear muslin and ribbons. The blackbirds chattered and ran, and in turn flew to the pan of water placed for them, and drank, lifting their heads with exquisite motion. The trees rustled in the cold wind; the sky was white along the embankment, where an engine moved slowly up and down the line.

w.i.l.l.y was sensible that the scene was pleasant and pretty, and remembering he was fond of birds, he thrust his hands deeper in his pockets and walked slowly down the drive, his toes well turned out. "I wonder if they met Berkins at church?" was the question he put to himself gravely. "What a cad he is! No wonder the county people fight shy of us; a fellow like that is enough to close their doors against us for ever. My father pooh-poohs everything but riches; he positively flies in their faces, so what can I do? I don't care to ask my Oxford friends down here; one never knows how he will receive them. He can talk of nothing but his business. Had I a free hand, had I not been so hampered, we might have known all the best county families, even theduke."

The latch of the gate clicked, and Mr. Brookes and his family appeared. Maggie and Sally walked on the right and left of their father; Grace came on behind with Berkins, and it seemed to w.i.l.l.y that the city magnate bore himself with something even more than his usual dignity. At first sight he suggested that anomalous creature--a footman with a beard; and the slow, deliberate enunciation marked him as one accustomed to speak in public. His manner of sitting at a table suggested letters and dictation of letters, his manner of moving his gla.s.ses on his nose accounts, and at no moment would it have been surprising to see him place his strong finger at the bottom of a line of figures, and begin "Gentlemen," etc.

During lunch, Sally and Maggie spoke in undertones; they glanced occasionally at Grace, who sat by and received Berkins's bald remarks with deference. The girls trembled with excitement; they had pressed and extorted from Grace a hurried statement of what had happened.

Berkins had proposed to her, he had told her he had never seen any one except her whom he would care to make his wife. What had she said? She didn't know. She couldn't really remember. She had been taken so suddenly, she was so upset, that she hadn't known what to say. She thought she had said something about the honour--but she really had not had time to say much, for at that moment they were at the gate.

Did she intend to accept him? She didn't know; she could not make up her mind. It was a terrible thing to throw over poor Jack; she didn't think she could do it--no matter what father might say. However, she knew he would never give his consent, so it was no use thinking,