Merry Go Round (21 page)

'Oh, Jimmie, Jimmie, sometimes I don't know which way to turn, I'm that unhappy. If the baby had only lived, I might have kept my husband – I might have made him love me.'

She sank on a chair and hid her face, but in a moment, hearing the door close, looked up.

'He's just come in, Jimmie. Mind you don't say anything to put him out.'

'I'd just like to give 'im a piece of my mind.'

'Oh, Jimmie, don't. It was my fault that we quarrelled this morning. I wanted to make him angry, and I nagged at him.' She knew the best way to influence her brother. 'Don't let him see that I've said anything to you, and I'll try and send you a pound tomorrow,'

'Well, he'd better not start patronizing me, because I won't put up with it. I'm a gentleman, and every bit as good as he is, if not better.' At this Basil came in, noticed James, but did not speak.' 'Afternoon, Basil.'

'You here again?' he remarked indifferently.

'Looks like it, don't it?'

'I'm afraid it does.'

'Are you? I suppose I can come and see my own sister.'

'I suppose it's inevitable. Only I should be excessively grateful if you'd time your coming with my going, and
vice versa.'

'That means you want me to get out, I reckon.'

'You show unusual perspicacity, dear James,' said Basil with a frigid smile.

'Look here, Basil, let me give you a bit of advice. Don't put on quite so much side, or you'll hurt yourself.'

'I observe that you have not acquired the useful art of being uncivil without being impertinent.'

There was nothing James could brook less easily than the
irony and the deliberate sarcasm with which Basil invariably answered him, and now in his exasperation, forgetting all prudence, he jumped up.

'Look 'ere, I've 'ad about enough of this. I'm not going to stand you sneerin' and snarlin' at me when I come here. You seem to think I'm nobody. I should just like to know why you go on as if I was I don't know what.'

'Because I choose,' answered Basil, looking him up and down with chilling scorn.

Jenny's heart beating furiously as she foresaw the approaching quarrel and in an undertone, hurriedly, she begged James to hold his tongue. But he would not be restrained.

'You can bet anything you like I don't come 'ere to see you.'

'It has been borne in upon me that the length of my purse attracts you more than the charm of my conversation. I wonder why you imagined, because I married your sister, I was bound to support the whole gang of you for the rest of your lives? Would you have the intense amiability to inform your family that I'm sick and tired of giving money?'

'I wonder you don't forbid us your house while you're about it,' snarled James.

Basil shrugged his shoulders.

'You may come here when I'm not at home – if you behave yourself.'

'I'm not good enough for you, I suppose?'

'No, you're not,' answered Basil, with deliberation.

'I dare say you'd like to get me out of the way. But I mean to keep my eye on you.'

'What d'you mean by that?' asked Basil, so sharply that James saw he had touched him on the raw.

He pursued his advantage.

'You think I don't know what sort of a feller you are. I can just about see through two of you. Jenny has something to put up with, I lay.'

But Basil recovered himself quickly, and turned to Jenny with a smile of contempt, which, since it was undeserved, most deeply wounded her.

'Has she been telling you my numerous faults? You must
have had plenty to talk about, my dear.' He saw her motion of protest, and gave a laugh. 'Oh, my dear girl, if it amuses you, by all means discuss me with your relations. I should be so dull if I had no failings.'

'Tell him I've not said anything against him, Jimmie,' she cried.

'It's not for want of something to say, I'll be bound.'

Basil was growing bored, and saw no reason for concealing the fact. He sat down at his desk to write a letter, and took a sheet of note-paper. Jimmie watched him viciously, smarting under the bitter things the other had said, and wondering what the next move would be. Basil glanced at him indifferently.

'I'm getting rather tired, brother James. I'd go if I were you.'

'I shan't go till I choose,' answered Bush very aggressively.

Basil looked up with a smile.

'Of course, we're both of us Christians, dear James, and there's a good deal of civilization kicking about the world nowadays. But the last word is still with the strongest.'

'What d'you mean by that?'

'Merely that discretion is the better part of valour. They say that proverbs are the wealth of nations.'

That's just the sort of thing you'd do – to 'it a feller smaller than yourself.'

'Oh, I wouldn't hit you for worlds,' laughed Basil bitterly. 'I should merely throw you downstairs.'

'I should just like to see you try it on,' cried the other, edging a little towards the door.

'Don't be silly, James. You know you wouldn't like it at all.'

'I'm not afraid of you.'

'Of course not. But still – you're not very muscular, are you?'

Rage driving away prudence, James shook his fist in Basil's face.

'Oh, I'll pay you out before I've done. I'll pay you out.'

'James, I told you to get out five minutes ago,' said Basil, in a more peremptory fashion.

Jimmie looked at him for one moment, furious and impotent; then, without another word, flung out of the room,
slamming the door behind him. Basil smiled quietly and shrugged his shoulders. He felt almost as disgusted with himself as with James, but supposed that as such scenes grew more frequent he would acquire a certain callousness. In his self-contempt he told himself that without doubt the time would come when he would be proud of his triumph in repartee over an auctioneer's clerk. He glanced at Jenny, who sat with sewing in her hands, but without working gazed straight out of the window.

'The only compensation in brother James is that he causes one a little mild amusement,' he murmured.

'I don't know what's wrong with him,' she answered. 'Why d'you treat him as if he was a dog?'

'My dear child, I don't. I'm very fond of dogs.'

'Isn't he as good as I am? And you condescended to marry me.'

'I really can't see that because I married you I must necessarily take the whole of your amiable family to my bosom.'

'Why don't you like them? They're honest and respectable.'

Basil gave a little sigh of fatigue. They had discussed the matter often during the last month, and though he did his best to curb his tongue, his patience was nearly exhausted.

'My dear Jenny,' he said, 'we don't choose our friends because they're honest and respectable, any more than we choose them because they change their linen daily. But I'm willing to acknowledge that they have every grace and every virtue, only they rather bore me.'

'They wouldn't if they were swells.'

He looked at her curiously, wondering why she imputed to him such despicable motives, and reflected that he could have been very good friends with his wife's relations if they had been simple country folk, unassuming and honest; but the family of Bush joined the most vulgar pretentiousness to a code of honour which could only in charity be called eccentric. Jenny brooded over his words, and after a silence of some minutes burst out impatiently.

'After all, we're not in such a bad position as all that. My mother's father was a gentleman.'

'I wish your mother's son were,' answered Basil, without looking up from the letter he wrote.

'D'you know what Jimmie says
you
are?'

'I don't vastly care, but if it pleases you very much you may tell me.'

She shot at him an angry glance, but did not answer. Then Basil got up, and going to her, placed his hands on her shoulders. Making his tone very gentle, he explained that it was really not his fault if he did not care for her people. Could she not resign herself to the fact, and make the best of it? Surely it would be better than to make themselves miserable. But Jenny, refusing the offer of reconciliation, turned away.

'You don't think they're good enough for you to associate with because they're not in swell positions.'

'I don't in the least object to their being grocers and haberdashers,' he answered, with a flush of annoyance. 'I only wish they'd sell us things at cost price.'

'Jimmie isn't a grocer or a haberdasher. He's an auctioneer's clerk.'

'I humbly apologize. I thought he was grocer, because last time he did us the honour of calling he asked how much a pound we paid for our tea, and offered to sell us some at the same price. But then he also offered to insure our house against fire, and to sell me a gold-mine in Australia.'

'Well, it's better to make a bit as best one can than to moon around like you do.'

'Really, even to please you I'm afraid I can't go about with little samples of tea in my pocket, and sell my friends a pound or two when I call upon them. Besides, I don't believe they'd ever pay me.'

'Oh no,' cried Jenny scornfully, 'you're a gentleman, and a barrister, and an author, and you couldn't do anything to dirty those white hands that you're so proud about. How do other fellows manage to get briefs?'

'The simplest way, I believe, is to marry the wily solicitor's daughter.'

'Instead of a barmaid?'

'I didn't say that, Jenny,' he answered very gravely.

'Oh no, you didn't say it. But you hinted it. You never say anything, but you're always hinting and insinuating till you drive me out of my senses.'

He held out his hands.

'I'm very sorry if I hurt your feelings. I promise you I don't mean to. I always try to be kind to you.'

He looked at her wistfully, expecting some word of regret or affection; but sullenly, with tight-closed lips, she cast down her eyes, and went on with her sewing.

With darkened brows he returned to his letters, and for an hour they remained silent. Then Jenny, unable any longer to bear that utter stillness, which seemed more marked because he sat so near, hostile and unapproachable, went out to sit in her own room. Her anger was past, and she was frightened at herself. She wanted to think the matter out, and with despair remembered that there was none to whom she could go for advice. It would be impossible to make her own folk understand these difficulties, and instead of help they would give only flouts and cruel jibes. It crossed her mind to go to Frank, the only friend of Basil whom she knew with any intimacy, for he came not infrequently to Barnes, and his manner, always so kind and gentle, made her think that she could trust him; but what should he care for her misery, and what assistance could he offer? She knew well enough the expressions of helpless sympathy he would use. It seemed that she stood quite alone in the world, weak and without courage, separated at once from those among whom her life had been spent, and from those into whose class her marriage had brought her. With throbbing brain, like a puppet driven round endlessly in a circle of pain, she could not see an end to her troubles. But the very confusion, the terror and uncertainty of it, forced her to make some desperate attempt, and she sought within herself for strength to gain the happiness she so woefully desired. She pondered over the events of the last year, picturing distinctly each passing scene, and saw the gradual bitterness that darkened the bliss of the beginning; then she told herself that some great effort was needed, or it would be too late. She was losing her husband's love, and in bitter self-reproach took all the
blame therefor upon her own shoulders. The only chance now was to change herself completely. She must try to be less exacting, less insanely jealous; she must at least attempt to be more worthy of him. In an agony of repentance she reviewed all her faults. At last, with flushed cheeks and eyes still shining with tears, she went to Basil, and laid her hand on his shoulder.

'Basil, I've come to beg your pardon for what I said just now. I was carried away, and forgot myself.'

There was a gentleness in her voice which he had almost forgotten. He stood up and took her hands, smiling brightly.

'My dear girl, what does it matter? I'd forgotten all about it.'

'I've been thinking it all over. We haven't been getting on very well of late, and I'm afraid I've been to blame. I did things I regret. I have been reading your letters' – she blushed deeply with intense shame – 'but I swear I won't do it any more. I will try to be a good wife to you. I know I'm not your equal, but I want to try to get up to you. And you must be patient with me – you must remember I've got a lot to learn.'

'Oh, Jenny, don't talk like that; you make me feel such a cad.'

She smiled through her tears. He spoke in just the same eager tone which in time past had so charmed her. But then a wistful look came to her face.

'You do love me still a little, Basil, don't you?'

'My darling, you know I do.'

He took her in his arms and kissed her. She burst into tears, but they were tears of joy, for she thought, poor thing! that there ended their troubles. The future would be brighter and quite different.

P
ART
of Frank's work as assistant-physician was to make post-mortem examinations of patients who died in the hospital, and in the performance of this duty, some time after Easter, he contracted a septic inflammation of the throat. Characteristically making nothing of it till quite seriously ill, he was at length taken to St Luke's in a high fever, delirious, and there for more than a week remained in a somewhat dangerous condition. For a fortnight more he found himself so languid that, though with vexation rebelling against his weakness, he was obliged to keep his bed; but finally convalescent, he arranged to go for a little to Ferne, near Tercanbury, where his father had a large general practice; then he meant to stay at Jeyston in Dorsetshire, where the Castillyons were giving a small house-party for Whitsun. Nor was there much inconvenience in his taking then a needed holiday, for the absence during August and September of the physician whose place in the wards he must fill would keep him in town for the hottest months.

The night before his departure Frank dined with Miss Ley, alone as both preferred, and during the meal, as was their wont, they discussed the weather and the crops. Each was sufficiently fond of his own ideas to brook no interruption from the service of food, and chose rather to keep till afterwards any topic that needed free discussion. But when the coffee was brought into the library, Miss Ley being comfortably stretched on a sofa, and Frank, with his legs on an armchair, lit his cigar, they looked at one another with a sigh of relief and a smile of self-satisfaction.

'You are going down to Jeyston, aren't you?' he asked.

'I don't think I can face it. As the time grows nearer, I begin to feel more wretched at the prospect, and I'm convinced I shall have worried myself into a dangerous illness by the appointed day. I don't see why at my age I should deliberately expose myself to the tedium of a house-party. Paul Castillyon has notions of old-fashioned hospitality, and every morning after breakfast asks what you would like to do; (as if any sensible woman knew at that preposterous hour what she wanted to do in the afternoon!) but it's a mere form, because he has already mapped out your day, and you'll find every minute has its fixed entertainment. Then, it bores me to extinction to be affable to people I despise, and polite – Oh, how I hate having to be polite! A visit of two days makes me feel as if I should like to swear like a Billingsgate fishwife, just to relieve the monotony of good manners.'

Frank smiled, and drinking his Benedictine, settled himself still more comfortably in his chair.

'By the way, talking of good manners, did I tell you that just before I grew seedy I went to three dances?'

'I thought you hated them?'

'So I do, but I went with a special object. The chief thing that struck me was the execrable breeding of the people. Supper was to be ready at midnight, and at half-past eleven they began to gather round the closed doors of the supper-room; by twelve there was as large a crowd as at the pit-entrance of a theatre, and when the doors were thrown open they struggled and pushed and fought like wild beasts. I'm sure the humble pittite is never half so violent, and they just flung themselves on the tables like ravening wolves. Now, I should have thought polite persons showed no excessive anxiety to be fed. By Jove! they made a greater clamour than the animals at the Zoo.'

'You're so
bourgeois,
dear Frank,' smiled Miss Ley. 'Why do you suppose people go to a dance, if not to have a good square meal for nothing? But that was surely not your object.'

'No; I went because I'd made up my mind to marry.'

'Good heavens!'

'Having arrived at the theoretical conclusion that marriage is desirable, I determined to go to three dances to see whether I could find anyone with whom it was possible, without absolute distaste, to contemplate passing the rest of my days. I danced and sat out with seventy-five different persons, Miss Ley,
ranging in age from seventeen to forty-two, and I can honestly say I've never been so hideously bored in my life. It's no good; I'm doomed to a career of single blessedness. I didn't think I should fall desperately in love on the spot, but it seemed possible that one of those five-and-seventy blooming maidens would excite in me some faint thrill: not one disturbed my equilibrium for a single moment. Besides, they were mostly phthisical or anaemic or ill-developed; I hardly saw one who appeared capable of bearing healthy children.'

For a moment they were silent, while Miss Ley, not without amusement, pondered over Frank's fantastic scheme for finding a wife.

'And what are you going to do now?' she asked.

'Shall I tell you?' He put aside the light manner which prevented one from seeing how much of what he said was seriously meant, and how much deliberate nonsense, and leaned forwards, his square strong chin on his hand, looking at Miss Ley with steady gaze. 'I think I'm going to chuck everything.'

'What on earth d'you mean?'

'I've been thinking of it more or less for some months, and during this last fortnight in bed I've put two and two together. I'm going home partly to sound my people. You know my father has toiled year after year, saving every penny he could, so that I might have the best possible medical education, and take at once to consulting work without any anxiety about my bread-and-butter. He knew it entailed earning very little for a long time, but he was determined to give me a chance; it's a poorish practice round Ferne, and he's never had a holiday for thirty years. I want to find out if he could bear it if I told him I intend to abandon my profession.'

'But, my dear boy, d'you realize that you wish to give up a very brilliant career?' exclaimed Miss Ley in some consternation.

'I've considered it pretty carefully. I suppose no one of my years in the medical has quite such a brilliant chance as I. Luck has been on my side throughout. I fell into the post of resident at St Luke's by the death of the man above me, and at
the end of my time got the assistant-physicianship at a very early age. I have friends and connections in the world of fashion, so that I shall soon have a rich and important practice. In due course, I dare say, if I stick to it, I may earn ten or fifteen thousand a year, be appointed a royal physician, and eventually be baroneted; and then I shall die, and be buried, and leave rather a large fortune. That is the career that awaits me: I can see myself in the future portly and self-complacent, rather bald, with the large watch-chain, the well-cut frock-coat, and the suave manner of the modish specialist; I shall be proud of my horses, and fond of giving anecdotes about the royal personages I treat for over-eating.'

He paused, looking straight in front of him at this imaginary Sir Francis Hurrell who strutted pompously, sleek and prosperous, under a load of honours. Miss Ley, deeply interested in all stirrings of the soul, observed keenly his look of scorn.

'But it seems to me at the end of it I may look back, intensely bored with my success, and say to myself that, after all, I haven't really lived a single day. I'm thirty now, and my youth is beginning to slip away – callow students in their first year think I'm quite middle-aged – and I haven't lived yet; I've only had time to work, and by Jove! I have worked – like the very devil. When my fellow-students spent their nights in revelry, at music-halls, kicking up a row and getting drunk, or making love to pretty wantons, when they played poker into the small hours of the morning, reckless and light of heart, I sat working, working, working. Now, for the most part, they've settled down as sober, tedious general practitioners, eminently worthy members of society, and respectably married; and a fool would say I have my reward because I'm successful and somewhat distinguished, while they for past dissipation must pay to their life's end with the stupidest mediocrity. But sometimes their nerves must tingle when they look back on those good days of high spirits and freedom; I have nothing to look back on but the steady acquirement of knowledge. Oh, how much wiser I should have been to go to the deuce with them! But I was just a virtuous prig. I've worked too much, I've been altogether too exemplary, and now my youth is going, and I've
known none of its follies; my blood burns for the hot, mad riot of the devil-may-cares. And this medical life isn't as I thought once, broad and catholic; it's warped and very narrow. We only see one side of things; to us the world is a vast hospital of sick people, and we come to look upon mankind from the exclusive standpoint of disease; but the wise man occupies himself, not with death, but with life – not with illness, but with radiant health. Disease is only an accident; and how can we lead natural lives when we deal entirely with the abnormal? I feel I never want to see sick persons again; I can't help it, they horrify and disgust me. I thought I'd busy myself with science, but that, too, seems dead to me and irksome; it wants men of different temper from mine to be scientists. There are plenty to whom the world and its glories are nothing, but I have passions – hot, burning passions; my senses are all alert, and I want to live. I wish life were some rich fruit, that I could take it in my hands and tear it apart, and eat it piece by piece. How can you expect me to sit down at my microscope hour after hour when the blood is racing through my veins and my muscles are throbbing for sheer manual labour!'

In his excitement he jumped up, and walked up and down, blowing out the smoke furiously in white clouds. The old fable of the ant and the grasshopper came to Miss Ley's mind, and she reflected that so at the approach of autumn might have reasoned the ant when she contemplated her store of food laboriously collected; perhaps she, too, bitterly envied the grasshopper who had spent the glorious days in idle singing, and in her heart, notwithstanding an empty larder and the cold winter to come, felt that the careless songster had made a better use than she of the summer-time.

'Do you think you'll have the same ideas after a fortnight in the country has brought you back again your full health?' asked Miss Ley meditatively.

She was astonished at the effect of this question, for he turned on her with an anger which she had never seen in him before.

'D'you think I'm an absolute fool, Miss Ley?' he cried. 'D'you think these are mere idle womanish fancies? I've been
thinking of this for months, and my illness has left my brain clearer than ever it was. We're all tied to the wheel, and when one of us tries to escape the rest do all they can by jibes and sneers to hold him back.'

'I didn't mean to hurt your feelings, my son,' smiled Miss Ley indulgently. 'You know I have a certain discreet affection for you.'

'I beg your pardon; I didn't mean to be so violent,' he answered, quickly penitent. 'But I feel as though chains were eating into my flesh, and I want to get free.'

'I should have thought London offered a fairly spirited and various life.'

'London doesn't offer life at all – it offers culture. Oh, they bore me to extinction, the people I go and see, all talking of the same things and so self-satisfied in their narrow outlook! Just think what culture is. It means that you go to first-nights at the theatre and to private views at the Academy; you rave over Eleonora Duse and read the
Saturday Review;
you make a point of wading through the latest novel talked of in Paris, discuss glibly the books that come out here, and occasionally meet at tea the people who write them. You travel along the beaten track in Italy and France, much despising the Cook's Tourist, but really no better than a vulgar tripper yourself; you're very fond of airing your bad French, and you have a smattering of worse Italian. Occasionally, to impress the vulgar, you consent to be bored to death by a symphony concert, you go into fashionable raptures over Wagner, collect paste buckles, and take in the
Morning Post.'

'Spare me,' cried Miss Ley, throwing up her hands; 'I recognize a particularly unflattering portrait of myself.'

Frank in his vehemence paid no attention to her remark.

'And the dull stupidity of it just chokes me, so that I pant for the fresh air. I want to sail in ships, and battle with hurricane and storm; I want to go far away among men who actually do things – to new countries, Canada and Australia, where they fight hand to hand with primitive nature; I desire the seething scum of great cities, where there's no confounded policeman to keep you virtuous. My whole soul aches for the
East, for Egypt and India and Japan; I want to know the corrupt, eager life of the Malays and the violent adventures of South Sea Islands. I may not get an answer to the riddle of life out in the open world, but I shall get nearer to it than here; I can get nothing more out of books and civilization. I want to see life and death, and the passions, the virtues and vices, of men face to face, uncovered; I want really to live my life while there's time; I want to have something to look back on in my old age.'

'That's all very fine and romantic,' replied Miss Ley; 'but where are you going to get the money?'

'I don't want money; I'll earn my living as I go. I'll ship before the mast to America, and there I'll work as a navvy; and I'll tramp from end to end picking up odd jobs. And when I know that, I'll get another ship to take me East. I'm sick to death of your upper classes; I want to work with those who really know life at the bottom, with its hunger and toil, its primitive love and hate.'

'That's nonsense, my dear. Poverty is a more exacting master than all the conventions of society put together. I dare say one voyage before the mast would be interesting, and would certainly teach you the advantage of ample means and the comfort of useless luxuries. But remember that as soon as anything becomes a routine it ceases to be true.'

'That sounds epigrammatic,' interrupted Frank; 'but does it by any chance mean something?'

Miss Ley, uncertain that it did, went on quickly.

'I assure you that no one can be free who isn't delivered from the care of getting money. For myself, I have always thought the philosophers talk sheer silliness when they praise the freedom of a man content with little; a man with no ear for music will willingly go without his stall at the opera, but an obtuse-ness of sense is no proof of wisdom. No one can really be free, no one can even begin to get the full value out of life, on a smaller income than five hundred a year.'