Two Worlds and Their Ways (9 page)

“I am surprised that Lesbia should aim at our establishment, and spare her own,” said Juliet.

“Grandpa looks as if he were thinking something,” said Oliver.

“I think that parents should do their own duty.”

“Why did you not say that before?” said Maria, with a note of despair.

“It was not such a strange thing to think, that people should need to be informed of it.”

“It would have made no difference, my dear,” said Sir Roderick. “It is what we thought ourselves, and it made none.”

“But I wish people would not keep their opinions until after a decision, and then air them.”

“They may not know them until then. Juliet was right in her account of the way they form them.”

“What is it, that you say of me?” said Mr. Firebrace.

Maria put her hands to her head.

“Come, my pretty, let us go downstairs. We have done our best, and must leave it. No one can do more.”

“We have done nothing,” said Maria.

“Well, that is usually people's best,” said her stepson. “Their worst is something quite different.”

“Well, let us say good-night to the victims of our indecisions.”

“Dear, dear, is that still the word?” said Mr. Firebrace.

“So it is as bad as that, to be afforded ordinary advantages?” said Lesbia, turning to Clemence and using an almost friendly tone. “What do you think of the new prospect, Clemence?”

“We never know what to think of prospects, until they become something else.”

“We can use our imaginations,” said Lesbia, with quiet gravity, keeping her eyes from the parents.

“I don't think I can. Or not in any way that would show me how things are to be. I have never been inside a school.”

“Well, then you have not much to build upon,” said Lesbia, meeting simple truthfulness with cordiality. “We cannot do quite without a foundation. So you will wait and let the new world break upon you in all its unexpectedness.”

“I shall not be able to prevent it.”

Lesbia laughed readily and followed the others from the room.

“Good-night, my little ones,” said Maria, folding her children in a close embrace.

Sir Roderick followed her example, and it was felt that a seal had been set upon the coming change.

“Well, it is good to be with my own flesh and blood,” said Mr. Firebrace, as he sat down amongst his family. “It may be that they will leave us for a spell.”

“We must not resent their presence in their own home,” said Lesbia.

“If I had such a thing myself, I should not need to do so.”

“Roderick has never filled Mary's place. And I mean no disrespect to Maria, when I say so.”

“I call it gross disrespect,” said Oliver.

“Maria has a place of her own.”

“And Mary has the same by now,” said Juliet. “When things are people's own, there is never much to be said for them. ‘A poor thing but mine own,' was a natural saying to become established.”

“Poor Maria!” said Lucius, looking surprised at himself, and incurring looks of surprise.

“Yes, poor Maria!” said Lesbia. “I have often thought it.”

“It is terrible that we reveal our thoughts,” said Oliver.

“So have I,” said Juliet, “but I have never said it, because I knew it was insensitive to pity people.”

“Pity may be a healthy and natural feeling,” said her sister.

“It certainly flourishes,” said Oliver. “I pity most people. I mean, I think how dreadful it would be to be them.”

“Do you pity me?” said Juliet.

“Yes. You are a woman and older than I am. You have less of your life left.”

“Do you pity your father?”

“Yes, he is sixty-eight, and he loves the treacherous land with a man's simplicity.”

“And the children?”

“They are always pitiful.”

“And me?” said Lesbia. “Am I subject to a woman's subtlety?”

“There is no such thing.”

“But if you admit a man's simplicity, you must admit a woman's corresponding quality.”

“I do admit it.”

“And what is it?”

“Simplicity,” said Oliver. “But I do not pity you or Grandpa. I am not quite sure of the reasons, but they are the same for both.”

“And yourself, my boy?” said Mr. Firebrace.

“Well, self-pity is too deep a thing to be broached in words. I envy you for being able to do it. It shows how simple your causes for self-pity are. Mine are the knotted and tangled kind, that lie fallow in the day and rise up to torment people at night.”

“Mine do their business by day, it is true. And they are
active at the moment,” said Mr. Firebrace, as steps sounded on the stairs.

“Well, we have left the two little martyrs,” said Maria.

“Come, that is too strong,” said Lesbia. “Thousands of children are martyrs, if that is the truth.”

“And is that impossible?” said her nephew.

“Yes, I think it is, Oliver. I think we may say so. The force of such a weight of suffering would react and end the cause.”

“Oliver takes a pride in taking a gloomy view of everything,” said Maria.

“Well, no one would be proud of looking at the bright side of things,” said Juliet. “It leads to saying that poverty is a blessing in disguise—as if a disguised thing ever served its purpose—or that sacrifice is its own reward, or even that we should not grieve at people's death. It is simply a cover for what we are ashamed of.”

“I wonder if we should send the children to school, if we put ourselves in their place,” said Maria. “You will all forgive my harping on the same thing. It must fill my mind.”

“I hardly think they will forgive it much longer,” said her stepson. “Certainly not all of them.”

“Well, no one would do anything then,” said Sir Roderick. “A murderer would not kill, or a thief steal, if they did that. If we all formed the habit, the world could not go on. Of course we should not send them.”

“A pessimistic presentation of human activities,” said Lesbia, with a laugh.

The door opened and Sefton entered, holding his jacket together to cover an early stage of undress. He went to a bookcase and appeared to fumble for a book.

“What do you want, my dear?” said Maria.

“I wanted a book. I thought it was here. I was not quite sure if it was,” said Sefton, with his hands on his knees and his back to the audience. “It is a book about the way things happen because people think they are happening. I forgot
what the thing is called. And it could not be like that. If someone thought someone was ill, thought it in the night, when he was away from home, that person would not be ill and perhaps die because of it.”

“Come here, my little son,” said Maria.

Sefton went to her at once, brushing his hand across his eyes.

“Now say what is true, my dear. There was no book there that you wanted, was there?”

“No,” said Sefton, sinking into tears.

“You wanted to know if imagining things at school could make those things happen to someone at home?”

“I did want to know. I felt I had to. It is in the night that the thoughts come, when you can't help it.”

“Well, it could not, my dear. It would not make any difference. Except that trying to be contented and cheerful would please your mother and help her to be happy and well. Nothing that you cannot help, will do any harm. And another time you will ask a question straight out, and not pretend to be doing something else.”

“Yes, I will.”

“It does not matter if a question is odd or unexpected,” went on Maria, in an easy almost offhand manner. “We all want to ask those questions sometimes. It shows we are thinking people. And we can say anything to our mothers, can't we?”

“Yes.”

“So run away to bed with an easy mind. And do not think about changes until they come. You will find they bring their own help with them.”

Sefton left the room, still holding his jacket together, and without glancing at the onlookers. Maria turned to them with a sort of triumph in her face.

“So that had to happen to prepare me for being a schoolmaster,” said Oliver.

“So harm is already being done,” said Sir Roderick.

“It is possible that the swifter life of school may do something
for him,” said Lucius. “I think we may hope that it may.”

“His life has been too stagnant, as you say,” said Lesbia.

“Did Lucius say it?” said Juliet. “I hardly think he should have. And it is not like him to have positive thoughts.”

“I wonder what Clemence is imagining,” said Maria, still with the exultant touch.

“She is three years older than Sefton,” said Lesbia. “Not that that would prevent imagination. But it might alter its channels. Yes, you must wonder, Maria. But, as Lucius says, a fuller life will do its work.”

“Lucius is really getting garrulous,” said Juliet. “And rather dogmatic as well. I hope he is not going to lose his touch. He almost recommended the school. If he begins to do that, there will be an end of everything. Fancy keeping a school that needs recommendation!”

“It may need it the less, that it can have it,” said Lesbia. “Anyhow from its owner.”

“Where are you going, Roderick?” said Maria.

“To see that it is well with my little man and woman upstairs. I should not sleep if I did not see them.”

“I suppose I might have had a father like that, if I had been the child to invite it,” said Oliver.

“You had the same father,” said Maria.

“I did not, and you know it, and are glad about it.”

“Your father never spoke a harsh word to you.”

“No, but I do not think he spoke words to me.”

“You must have had the ordinary intercourse of daily life.”

“I do not call that speaking words. And I see you do not.”

“Did you ever try to do anything for him?”

“No. What could I have done? He had power; I had none. He had everything; I had nothing. It could only have been a farce.”

“He always did everything for you.”

“Of course. What other arrangement could have been made?”

“You could have pleased him in many little ways.”

“That is where I did not please him. And where I do not. He is not attracted by the little touches that make up my personality.”

“And are you by those that make up his?”

“I do not think he has any. The whole of his personality is one touch. And everyone is attracted by it. He does not need to have any more. If he did, he would have them.”

“You make him sound a simple person.”

“I should hardly have thought I did.”

“I can never follow your talk. I suppose you know what you mean yourself?”

“That is how I should put it.”

“To be contemptuous is to be contemptible,” said Maria.

“Well, it is probable that I am that. I do not say I know I am. I am really not quite sure.”

“Perhaps you were for a moment, Oliver,” said Lesbia.

Sir Roderick had mounted to the schoolroom and paused outside the door. He sustained this violation of his instincts to gain light on his children's minds. Adela's voice came to him, low and carrying a crooning sound, that suggested it was an accompaniment to rocking someone in her arms. Sefton's, coming from the same point, succeeded hers.

“I have always thought you might be ill, Adela, when I have woken in the dark. Sometimes I have thought you were dead.”

“When I was young, I thought so too,” said Clemence. “But I never do now. Or I should not, if I did not remember doing it.”

There was a sound of movement, as though Adela contrived a place for her elder charge. The crooning was resumed, and Sir Roderick for the first time in his life tiptoed away from a door.

“Well, how were matters upstairs?” said Maria.

“I heard their voices through the door, and I thought I need not go in.”

“I will go up myself. It is better to be on the safe side. I cannot have Sefton lying awake, fancying that his mother has been reft from him. And Clemence imagining the same thing on the other side of the wall.”

“I should not, my pretty,” said Sir Roderick, laying a hand on her arm. “They do not think so at the moment, and we need not put it into their minds. We will leave them to adapt themselves to the future in their own way. Adela is with them.”

“Adela is the right person, Maria?” said Lesbia, in a tone that held nothing beyond the question.

“Yes, I think so. She is kind and trustworthy and attached to them. And they are fond of her, or fond enough. More we hardly want A nurse should not take the mother's place.”

“I suppose in a sense that is what she does,” said Sir Roderick. “She gives what the mother would naturally give.”

“In a savage state,” said Oliver. “Why do we set up that as an example, when we spend thousands of years in getting away from it?”

“We see to whom Sefton turns in his real needs,” said Maria.

“Yes, we do, my pretty,” said Sir Roderick, perhaps feeling he had a right to say this.

“There may be the more need to keep schools, that children are rendered so vulnerable by life at home,” said Lesbia, as if as the result of thought.

“Of course, if it is a duty, it has to be done,” said her sister.

“I think—I hope it becomes so,” said Lucius. “Much of what is done in the world is begun as a means to live.”

“Most of it, if we think,” said Lesbia, with an air of doing this. “I suppose Shakespeare earned by his plays and began to write to gain his bread.”

“It is so pleasant always to be compared to Shakespeare,” said Juliet. “It is a nice instinct always to take him as an example. There really seems to be nothing between him and savages.”

“Well, everyone knows about him,” said Sir Roderick. “We only half-know about the other people, though so much more is known.”