Chapter IX (1)
From the bottom of Maurice’s crib, wherein he lay fast asleep, his favourite rag soldier, sitting propped against the rails, stared at him reproachfully, for the little boy had taken to bed with him, against all precedent, an old black and white wooden horse, long discarded, whose hairless head now lay nose to nose on the pillow with his own. The rag soldier probably felt his world tumbling around him.
And, indeed, the whole night-nursery was rather topsy-turvy. Maurice’s bath things were not cleared away, though the water was long cold, and in the midst of downflung towels, soap, sponge and powder-puffs, sat his mother herself, doing nothing. It was she who was responsible for the disorder, for that dislocation in fact of the whole day which had been so pleasant to Maurice. He was certainly not likely to complain when, after breakfast, Mamma had sent Martha away and announced that she was going to have him to herself, for a special reason. The reason was less than nothing to Maurice, but the fact was delightful, implying a free hand with the coal-box, while Mamma, instead of wanting to change his frock, kept herself quiet with a piece of paper covered with black marks, on which she from time to time let fall those tears which Maurice himself could produce, though seldom so silently. The culmination of being bathed by Mamma had led to a great deal of splashing, and to the exhibition, which Martha would never let him complete, of his powers of drinking water from his sponge. That his mother was quite incapable of clearing up the mess which he and she had made together was not likely to trouble him either, indeed he fell asleep too soon to realise this deficiency.
And Horatia sat in the midst of the confusion, her eyes full of tears, her chin on her hand, watching the sleeping child. She could not get poor little Claude-Edmond out of her head. Most clearly of all she remembered him at Plaisance, confiding to her his desire to resemble Armand, to be able to ride, to fence.... Now they would neither of them ever ride again.... And the death of the little boy had thrown across her own life a shadow not only of regret, but of menace. For in her lap lay the testimony to the triumph of the indomitable spirit of an old lady over the Code Napoléon, under whose ægis Horatia had fondly imagined herself and Maurice to be sheltering.
The letter had come yesterday morning, the third day after her interview with Tristram. It was quite simple. The Duchesse’s lawyer wrote that his venerable client was about to make her will for the last time, a course necessitated by the recent unfortunate death of the little heir. As Madame la Comtesse was no doubt aware, the ancient and noble family of La Roche-Guyon was extremely impoverished. Nothing indeed but the great private fortune of the Dowager Duchess had enabled it to keep up the appearance due to its rank. The bulk of this fortune the Duchesse was now proposing to settle upon the child of her late dearly-beloved younger grandson—on one condition. Madame la Comtesse must renounce entirely her plan of bringing him up in England; with or without her he must return to France by the time he was five—though in deference to the last wishes of her dear grandson he should be allowed to pass some years at an English school. But he must be brought up as a Frenchman, as the heir of the family which he would one day represent, and Madame la Comtesse was to signify her willingness to return to Paris for three or four months as early as possible in the New Year. If she refused to comply with these conditions the Duchesse’s money, after the deaths of her son and elder grandson, would be left to distant relatives of her own family, and the future Duc de la Roche-Guyon would find himself the almost penniless inheritor of his great name and position.
Stunning though this ultimatum was, it had not taken Horatia long to decide that Maurice must go. She could not be the means of beggaring her child. He must go—but was she to go too? It was true that the Duchesse had not had the brutality to suggest an immediate separation from his mother, but the two years and ten months which lay between him and his fifth birthday would soon pass. If she went, good-bye to all her old home life, taken up again and found so peaceful and so dear; good-bye to her father who had recovered her with so much joy.
And good-bye to Tristram.....
But if she stayed, good-bye to that head of curls on the pillow. O no, no, she could never do that! She slipped to her knees and clutched at the cot rails. “My darling! I could not! I could not!”
And yet, on the other side of the crib seemed to stand Tristram, looking at her as he had looked three mornings ago, his voice fallen to that strange tone, “Will it make any difference to you, Horatia?” the only real evidence that she had of his wanting her—since his visits and his obvious pleasure in them could all be accounted for by their long friendship—but evidence enough. Yes, it had actually come to the choice, all unforeseen, between her child and the man... she loved. The issue must be decided, too, within a week, for the Duchesse insisted on an immediate answer. This was why she had spent the day with Maurice, “to help her to decide”—a proceeding not free from the charge of indulgence in sentiment.
(2)
And yet she had not made up her mind when she heard her father, who had been out all day, coming heavily up the nursery stairs.
“My dear,” he said, astonished, “why are you up here alone? Martha is wandering about outside waiting to come in to you. It is too much for you to do all this for the child by yourself, and why should you?”
To which his daughter responded, in an appealing tone not far from tears, “O Papa, I can’t leave him, I can’t leave him!”
“Well, my dear,” remarked Mr. Grenville, approaching the crib, “you can leave him now, at any rate, for he is fast asleep, and Martha can sit with him instead of catching cold on the landing. Come, come, we will go down into the library and leave her to clear up. Yes, come in!” And as Martha entered and fell to work on the disorder he put Horatia’s hand through his arm and led her out.
In the library she settled down in her favourite attitude on a stool at his feet, and for a time nothing much was said, except that the Rector, as he stroked her hair, would mutter, “It is very hard, very difficult, my love,” and, at intervals, “I should never have expected it of them, never!”
At last Horatia broke out passionately, “I can’t let Maurice be a pauper! He will have to go, and I—I think I must go with him.” With that she escaped from her father’s caress, and putting her head in her hands began to cry.
The Rector got up, found a box of Prometheans, went successfully through the process of pinching out the sulphuric acid, at the end, on to the chlorate of potash and sugar (in which he generally burnt his fingers), obtained a flame and lit a couple of candles. Then he sighed heavily, sat down again, and drawing his chair up close to Horatia took hold of a hand and made her rest her head on his knee.
“Now, my dearest child,” he began, “I am going to speak very plainly to you. I do not think these tears are for me. No, don’t say anything about that! It’s all quite right. I should not wish them to be. I think Tristram is at the bottom of this.”
For answer he saw her getting crimson behind the ears, and heard her murmur faintly, “O Papa!”
“Well, my dear, it’s very right and natural, and nothing to be ashamed of. I have thought that I have seen signs, for some time, and I have been very thankful, very thankful. He is the right husband for you.”
“I thought, Papa,” came a stifled voice, “that you did not approve of second marriages.”
“Perhaps not,” replied the Rector, “but this is different, and Tristram has wanted you all his life.”
“But how do I know that he wants me now?”
“That,” said the Rector with conviction, “is very apparent; in fact, I was on the verge of speaking to him about it last week.”
“Papa!” ejaculated his daughter, sitting up.
“Yes, we understand one another,” went on Mr. Grenville, smiling, for there was unmistakably more pleasure than horror in her protest. “I have known more about all this, my dear, than you have. You never knew, because Tristram would not allow me to tell you, but he was going to propose to you, the very week that poor Armand came to visit him.”
“Tristram was going to propose to me again,” said Horatia slowly, “and yet he made the way easy for me to marry Armand!”
“One of his extraordinary notions, my dear. ‘If she wanted the moon, I would get it for her,’ he said. I have often thought that it was not for nothing that he had a fanatic for a father. He is one in a thousand, but of course, before now, he has seemed to me unnecessarily quixotic. I have meant to tell you this, Horatia, but I thought things were best without my interference. Still it is but right, now that the crisis has come, for you to know all that I do. It is my belief that Tristram is only hindered at this very moment from speaking by some idea of propriety. Or perhaps he feels that his prospects are not yet assured. Still, it is clear that he must declare himself in the near future, unless he wants to lose you altogether. If only it were possible to give him a little encouragement!”
“I couldn’t give him encouragement!” exclaimed Horatia in a tone of horror.
“I was not suggesting such a thing for a moment, my love. I was only saying if it were possible. I feel something could be done, ought to be done... Let me see, how much time have we?”
Horatia had twisted round on her footstool and was now facing him with flushed cheeks. “A week. And, O Papa, even if he did... if he wanted me to marry him, how could I let Maurice go without me?”
The Rector bent forward. He had the air of thorough and pleasurable mastery of the situation.
“My dear, let us be quite clear about that anyhow! I’m as fond of the boy as if he were my own, but I think you would do very wrong to deprive him of a stepfather like Tristram. After all, if you take him to France for a few months next year you may keep him until he is five years old. It was the Jesuits who said, ‘Give us a child until he is five and we will make anything of him.’ (No, now I come to think of it, it is ‘until he is seven,’ but no matter.) Very well then, until that age you and Tristram can bring him up, and you see already how he takes to Tristram. After that the parting will be hard for you, I do not doubt, but the time will soon come for him to return to England to school, and, if you agree in the main to the conditions, the Duchesse is not likely to wish to drive such a hard bargain that you cannot occasionally have him for his holidays... Besides, we may hope that you will have other children.”
“Papa, do you really mean all this?” asked Horatia thoughtfully. “I have never looked at it in that light.”
“I do indeed mean it, but the question is, what is to be done? There is not too much time,” said the Rector, pursing his lips. “This needs careful consideration.” And, apparently, he considered, and Horatia too. At any rate she was silent, looking into the fire.
Finally Mr. Grenville gave an exclamation. “I have it! Did you not say, my dear, that you had to send back a proof of Tristram’s to him? What more natural than to enclose the letter from the Duchesse’s lawyer, and say that you would value his advice, or something of the sort?”
Horatia turned over and over the locket with the little curl of Maurice’s hair that she wore.
Then she said, very quietly, “Yes, I will do it.”
(3)
“My dear Horatia,
“I feel with you very much in the difficulty of the decision. It will be hard for the Rector to part with you again so soon, but I know you both too well to imagine that you can hesitate for long where Maurice’s interests are concerned.
“For myself, I need not say how, after this year of renewed friendship, I shall miss your help and sympathy, but I have come to feel that my life is not my own. Wherever you go, whatever you do, may God bless you always!—T.H.”
This was the letter which Horatia received at breakfast four mornings later, and which lay in her pocket all through that meal and for some time afterwards, not because she did not wish her father to see it, since he was away for the night, but because she dared not open it. In her own room, the door locked, she read it at last, once not understanding, the second time unbelieving, the third time understanding too well.
Then it dropped from the hands which she raised to hide the scorching blush that, though she was alone, spread itself from the nape of her neck to the roots of her hair, and that seemed to run like a wave of fire over her whole body. He had refused her! Under the guise of asking advice from a friend, she, Horatia de la Roche-Guyon—Horatia Grenville—had, practically, offered herself to a man, and he had refused her! And this man was Tristram!
After a few minutes, red and white by turns, she took up the letter again, and, reading it for the fourth time, she received yet a new impression. This did not seem to be Tristram at all who wrote to her; it was like the voice of someone else, or, rather, it was as though a veil hung between her and the man who had penned those words—words which, as she could see, had been chosen to spare her, words which made no reference to what the writer must have known was in her mind. But they were final enough, in all conscience!
She put the letter down on her dressing-table. Yes, that was what it was like—a dictated letter, a letter which another person had made him write....
There was something that she did not understand. She got up and began to walk about the room, the first biting shame of the repulse a little blunted by contact with her own imperious temper and by a certain bewilderment. She had a feeling that there was, somewhere, what her father would have called “hokey-pokey.” And, as she arrived at that conclusion, she saw it all in a flash, and wondered how she could have been so stupid. Tristram had of course been “got hold of” by the Oriel people and had swallowed their ridiculous ideas on celibacy. That was what he meant by writing that he had come to feel his life not his own. That was, no doubt, the sort of thing they said, and that they had taught him to say; it was all a part of that miserable glorification of suffering as a part of Christianity at which her whole soul revolted.
Horatia stopped, her eyes shining with anger. Illogically enough, though she had endured many qualms since sending her letter, the receipt of his refusal made her quite sure that the real Tristram himself wanted to marry her, that “they” were preventing him. Well, they should see!
She carried this fighting mood about with her for an hour or so while she ordered the household and visited Maurice, who this morning was greatly intrigued by the presence of frost on the window-pane, a phenomenon, like many others, still strange to him. But all the while she was conscious that the spirit of resistance was slowly slipping away from her. At half-past ten she returned to her room, took out the letter and read it again, and thereafter sat a long time thinking.
No, it was not so simple. Something much more was here than the combatting of the influence of others. One thing, if one alone in life, the most ardent fighter should shrink from lifting sword against, a man’s conscience. Had she not recently felt the reawakened stirrings of her own? And in this matter, however it came there, was some deep conviction of Tristram’s. He could not, otherwise, have written so.
And a great and sad tenderness fell on her as, thinking of him whom she knew so well, she began to realise what he must be suffering at having to answer her thus. She forgot for a time her own shame and anger, and thought only of his long, unwavering, selfless devotion, that would do anything in the world for her, so as it was not against his conscience. Could not she, then, who had never, perhaps, been anything but a source of pain to him, could not she do something for him—take the disturbing element of herself out of his life, because, for his real happiness, she would be better gone, and go, without an attempt to hold him, to that other life where duty was calling her?... The way was open, if she were strong enough to follow it.
But she must be sure that such a renunciation would be for Tristram’s happiness. She must be sure that he really had this conviction. In her present mood she could almost have gone and asked Tristram himself, had she not known that he was away from Oxford. And the time was drawing very near when she must answer the Duchesse’s letter.
But there was one person who could probably tell her as well as Tristram himself—Mr. Dormer, if he had not gone down. She could not write to him on such a matter. She would have to go and see him. The unusualness of the step gave her only a momentary pause. Even though it were not proper for her, a young woman—if a widow—to go and call on an unmarried man in his College rooms she did not care. At the worst she could get the Puseys to ask him to Christ Church and she could talk to him there. But she knew that only the most direct method would really satisfy her. The matter was too pressing and too desperate to admit of considering the proprieties.
Nevertheless, some three hours later, as she followed the porter across the quadrangle at Oriel, she was already regretting her precipitancy, and it was with a throbbing heart that she heard him announce her name in the mangled fashion to which she was becoming accustomed in England.
But the room was empty. It was undeniable relief, and had the porter, apologising for his mistake, not adjured her to take a seat, as Mr. Dormer could not be long, she would have brought out the words of excuse already on her lips and fled. But that everyday form—its visage not untouched by curiosity—was a barrier to escape more effectual than any sword-girt angel, and she obeyed.
So she was left, with a sulky little fire for company, to wait. For some time she was too restless to sit down, and wandered between the fireplace and the window. The room did not strike her as uncomfortable, and it was very orderly, except for the big table in the middle, which was strewn with books and papers, as if the occupant had been interrupted in his work. There was a good deal of old furniture, some of it beautiful, and the walls could not look bare, for they were almost completely lined with books. Indeed the only picture that she noticed was an engraving over the hearth of Velasquez’ Christ on the Cross, straight and stark against its background of more than night, the face shadowed by the falling hair. Horatia felt suddenly afraid, she knew not of what, and going as far as possible from the print, sat down by the window.
The only thing that comforted her was the sight of some Christmas roses in a saucer, standing among the books and papers, close to their owner’s chair.