‘Mr and Mrs Bode and Miss Dulcia are already here, Miss Nance,’ said Bethia, early the next morning. ‘The master said you would see your friends as usual.’
The sisters and Cassie went to the drawing-room, relieved that the library was not the stage of the meeting. Mrs Bode was seated on the sofa, weeping into her hands; Mr Bode was looking from her emotion to Duncan’s calm, uncertain what course to take between them. Dulcia stood with her head thrown back, and her foot forward, in a sort of abandonment of fate.
‘Mr Edgeworth, we are here in humility and nothingness, to acknowledge the enlistment of one of our own house amongst those beyond the pale! We ask you to see that our conscience is clear as your own, our connexion with the unspeakable as involuntary as yours.’
‘We need not talk of it. We have nothing to do with it, as you tell us. We know too little to make it our affair.’
‘I never thought I should grieve to be a mother,’ said Mrs Bode, barely ceasing to yield to this feeling.
‘Mother dear, that is illogical and needless,’ said Dulcia, in 203 gentle, reasoned tones. ‘Mr Edgeworth has given us the lead, pointed us the line we should take; and we should follow him gladly, though with heads bent down, facing simply the consequences of any other course.’
‘We are not left with nothing on the other side,’ said Mr Bode, indicating his daughter to Duncan, who did not acknowledge the compensation.
‘Father, that may be your view, and likely is; but we cannot expect Mr Edgeworth to take it, or to give a thought to what, in nature, I try to do for you and Mother. It were not in reason.’
‘What is to be the result of it all, Father?’
‘You are right to ask the question, Nance, and I am right to answer it. I shall seek a divorce from my second wife, and that will be the end. Her son – my son will remain.’
There was a pause.
‘And, taking it all in all, a just and wise decision,’ said Dulcia. ‘We recognize the something more than simple justice. We hear it, and bow our head.’
‘To think that Dulcia is not the child Mrs Bode is weeping for!’ murmured Nance.
‘Now, Mother dear, lift up your head and your heart. Mr Edgeworth has not roused himself from his own shock and sorrow – yes, the shame; for it must be almost that – to point us our direction, without looking for a touch of resilience and response. We can best repay him by throwing up our heads, facing the four winds squarely, and putting our best foot foremost out of the morass, and also out of his house.’
Dulcia suited her actions to her words; her parents followed; Duncan attended them to the hall, and returned to his daughters. 204
‘Father, it is surely the custom for the woman to divorce the man? For the man to allow her to do it, whatever the conditions. We want to avoid plans that will have to be changed.’
‘What part of the matter is yours? You are not divorcing anyone; you have no one to divorce; it might be the lesser evil for you. I don’t ask an old maid’s advice. I will have no slur on my name or on your mother’s; on yours and your sister’s, as it is likely to be your only one.’ Duncan did not mention his son. ‘I bring no disgrace upon the innocent. I have no care for what is recognized, or those who recognize it. I have been a rule to myself. And you have soon forgotten what is due to your mother.’
‘We had to forget it three years ago, Father; and it was very soon. You relied on our putting her aside, and you must not object to it now. What of the friends we were having to-day? Shall we send word we will not expect them?’
‘Why should we do so? They will not be unwilling to come.’
‘They will not, but I am unwilling to have them. We cannot quite pass over the change in the house.’
‘It does not bear upon us. We are outsiders with regard to it. Do not make your way into other lives. Make shift with your own, if it be a poor one. You will be the hostess, and other things will be as usual. That itself will be as usual, as it now becomes our custom.’ Duncan left the room.
‘The path of duty is the way to glory,’ said Nance. ‘Whom do you dread seeing most this afternoon?’
‘I dread no one,’ said Sibyl, wearily: ‘I don’t care how much sport we make for our friends.’
‘I daresay Father despised us for taking his marriage as we did. Now I think of it, it was despicable. But he behaved like a god, and we simply treated him as one. It shows what it is, never 205 to have any criticism. Gods contrive to have nothing but praise; they definitely arrange it; it is true they are all wise.’
‘Mother would not like Alison to leave Father, now that she has been his wife,’ said Sibyl, beginning to weep.
‘Take her away where her father cannot hear her,’ said Cassie. ‘We cannot prove our loyalty to your mother along that line.’
‘I cannot picture this afternoon,’ said Nance. ‘The guests are coming at Alison’s bidding to a house that knows her no more. But I wish we had nothing worse before us.’
The something worse was at hand.
Grant returned to the house at luncheon, and walked to the table and took his place.
The meal went its course in outward calm, an hour to the women, a moment to Grant, who saw nothing between it and the ordeal of his youth. Cassie ceased to speak for Bethia’s ears, as the support of her broke and failed. The sisters were pale and restless, and Duncan dumb and lowering. It seemed they were fighting with the silence. When Duncan rose and made his usual sign the familiar action emphasized the terror of the moment.
Grant followed his uncle, and stood waiting for his words. Duncan also waited, doing the worst he could do.
‘I will not explain my coming, Uncle. I thought you might not expect me simply to keep away.’
‘Why explain it, if you were not going to? It is a small thing, and attracts no notice.’
‘If you tell me to leave the house, I shall not be sorry I have come.’
‘You would choose that way? Why should you leave the house? You have made it your home since you lost your right to it. And you are a small person in it, and remain so.’ 206
Grant forced himself to his task.
‘Uncle, we were thrown together. We were young. I am as I am.’
‘You would play the child? You feel you should choose that part? You must choose again. Perhaps you incline to the part of a man?’
‘The temptation to which I yielded is common to men.’
Duncan rose and struck his nephew a blow in the face.
Grant received it in simple relief that the climax had come and passed.
‘I wonder you dare to stand and face me.’
‘I do not dare: I do it without daring. The weakness that leads to folly, does not involve the strength to meet its results.’
‘I would listen to talk if I had the patience. As I have not, be advised not to require it of me. If I can hear what must be said, you who must say it, can do so.’
‘I hardly hope you will believe I was helpless; that I found myself having it behind me, rather than in front.’
‘You have placed yourself beyond the pale of belief.’
‘I have given you the truth, Uncle.’
‘When it has come out. So you are a fine fellow to your own mind?’
‘Uncle, remember how you first felt to Alison. You could marry her: I could not.’
‘That was strange about another man’s wife! Be still. You say too much.’
‘I shall meet any obligation for Richard that you think fit.’
‘What do you think fit? To provide him with a home and a future? That is what is fit. Though indeed you may feel you have done your part. He will hold the place that was yours. It works out that you give him all you had.’ 207
‘It is a case of poetic justice indeed. You mean you will bring him up as a son in your house? I have a great respect for you, Uncle.’
‘I will not say the same to you.’
‘I see that, being as you are, you cannot.’
‘Being as I am! Do not deceive yourself. You have put yourself outside the pale of other men.’
‘It was a great shock to me when I heard.’
‘It should not have been. It was the outcome of what was behind. From whom did you hear?’
‘From Cassie, who wrote to me last night.’
‘What a thing for a woman in my house to touch! You make me glad her father is dead. I would not look her brother in the face.’
‘Cassie is a woman of the world.’
‘That would not accustom her to certain things. It would show her them in their place.’
‘If you will believe me, I had all but forgotten.’
‘You look for me to think more of you? You make a mistake. But I do not dispute it. Tell me what feeling you have now for this woman.’
‘I feel nothing for her; and she feels less than nothing for me. It never meant what you have thought.’
‘Then it was worse than I thought. Your words do you no good.’
Duncan was silent, lost in the maze of his own mind. His anger with his nephew lacked its impetus in himself. He saw how his feeling for him had transcended that for his wife, and suffered a sharp and simple self-pity.
‘If you could know, Uncle, how little meaning it has had!’ 208
‘I will not know it: I will not take that view, the view that nothing can be a man’s own. The fact that we shall keep this dark for ever, shows how far we take it, how far we expect it of other men. And we shall keep it for ever, from our family, our friends, our servants, the stranger within our gates. That points to what we think of it.’
Grant heard him with an easing heart, seeing he was listening to his own words.
‘I will not say I am grateful to you, Uncle.’
‘Yes, you have to be grateful,’ said Duncan, looking at the young man with an oddly moved expression. ‘That is your part. I won’t tell you what figure you cut in it. I cannot say I am sorry for you, nor you for yourself; so we will leave you in your gratitude.’
‘I should like to know if you are glad to have a son to your name.’
‘I hardly know if I am glad,’ said Duncan, falling for the first time in his life into a tone of old age. ‘It is one thing and then another, until I do not know what is what. I should have been glad if Ellen had had a son: that is the son I would have to my name. You think you have done me a service? You have got to that. I am not about to thank you.’
‘My son must have had the place in the end, a probable son of mine. This only takes us farther into the future.’
‘So I see farther than is my right? And again find myself in debt to you?’
‘The boy is of your blood. He will serve you instead of me. It is I whom he does not serve.’ Grant could hardly believe in the tone he could take.
‘It is for you to talk of his blood. And instead, instead! My wife is instead of my own wife. My son is a substitute. I am too 209 old to have a future, and my present is a sham: I feel as if I were a shadow. Well, I must live in the past, with the rest of the old. Why should I shirk my place? But, Grant, if this makes you a human creature, and you fancy a girl of mine; and she, knowing what she must, happens to fancy you – as anything may come true of a woman – see you make it known to me before you get too far. I have no mind to take more from you. And I ask to be left alone, to the company of an honest man.’
Grant left him, suspecting he was still welcome as a son.
The guests arrived in the afternoon, with an almost exaggerated form of their usual manner. They found the family made no attempt at a normal front.
‘It is so wise to allow the occasion to be openly a sad one,’ said Beatrice. ‘I like the straightforwardness of it. It is quite the best face to put on it, best in the real sense.’
‘Dear, dear, one can do nothing to help,’ said her cousin, finding so much less to like, that she made a gesture of wringing her hands.
‘What did you expect to be able to do?’ said Gretchen.
‘We guessed they would wish us to appear,’ said Dulcia. ‘So we saw it as our course, sorely though it went against the grain. I pulled the parents up to it, hard though it was with them to appear without their son and advertise their position. We know our disgrace transcends that of this house, and openly accept the difference.’
‘You need not accept too much,’ said Gretchen. ‘No one who is here, can help it.’
‘Now I knew Miss Jekyll would not remain out of the picture. Through all the family ups and downs she is with them, perhaps more in her element in the downs accounting herself repaid by their love and loyalty. For some people would ask only to shade. 210 To-day I feel personally grateful to her, representing as I do, the family who provides the villain of the piece.’ Dulcia deliberately returned to a lighter vein.
‘Is Richard quite well?’ said Beatrice in an easy tone to Nance.
‘Not quite. He may be in sympathy with the trouble in the house.’
‘He misses his mother, Nance?’ said Dulcia, speaking low.
‘Only as babies do. He takes to his new nurse. Father will see he suffers nothing.’
‘An instance of simple generosity, and of the kind that is civilization’s finest flower, that of a man to a woman! It shows no situation is so dark that it cannot be irradiated.’
‘Did Alison guess the result of taking Almeric from Dulcia?’ said Grant.
‘No,’ said Nance, ‘she knew not what she did. It is Almeric’s fault; he must have known.’
Duncan moved amongst his guests, with an open increase of his usual gravity: Dulcia glanced from him to her friends, and edged from his path, with a suggestion of being on tiptoe. Beatrice waited for him to be alone, and was at his hand.
‘Life is difficult for us sometimes,’ she observed, in a jerky manner.
Duncan looked at her, and almost bowed.
‘We cannot always find our own strength enough.’
Duncan did not acknowledge this experience.
‘Of course we cannot find it enough,’ said Beatrice, helped forward by her own stumble; ‘but some times teach us that more than others. You are face to face with the lesson.’ She bent on him a swift, low look, murmured her intended words, and giving him a smile of controlled radiance, moved away. 211
‘I did it!’ she said, in a tone that partook of the same radiant quality; ‘I spoke the word I was resolved to speak. I have not to feel I withheld it.’
‘Wonderful, darling!’ said Dulcia, patting her back, in rather perfunctory congratulation. ‘And wonderful of Mr Edgeworth too! Indeed I would assign him the harder part. He stoops to conquer in many ways to-day.’
Beatrice looked as if this new light did little towards dimming her own.
‘Courage, Grant!’ said Dulcia. ‘You feel this dreadful day will never be over. I was feeling the same, and behold, it is running its course. It will determine itself in time.’
‘Thank you; but why is it dreadful? Alison wanted to leave my uncle, and I am not sure he greatly wanted her to stay. What is wrong with the arrangement?’
‘She leaves her son,’ said Dulcia, striking a serious note on the other side.
‘She can hardly find fault with his fortunes.’
Dulcia shook her head at this view, and passed on, keeping Grant’s hand until it pulled away, and showing the increasing unrestraint which he had observed in her.
‘Well, a brave face upon it all, my Nance! As dignified and gracious as if nothing had befallen! I could almost hail the opportunity for you, though I cannot emulate your front: I feel a thought pulled down and humbled. However your heart knoweth its own bitterness, there is not a trace of it in your bearing. And there is one little piece of compensation. We see you again in your mother’s place. Your easy dignity in relinquishing the position remains one of our memories.’
‘I think resuming the position has its own difficulty.’ 212
‘Darling, you are too wonderful and resilient,’ said Dulcia, her eyes roving about. ‘And I do believe in the purification of suffering. Now where are your father and Sibyl, that we may make our farewells? We do not leave this house to-day, without shaking the hands of every member, lucky as we are to be permitted to shake them.’
‘Here are the truants!’ said Miss Burtenshaw. ‘Arrived in time for us to part from the family complete!’
There fell a silence, which, when Duncan and Sibyl had passed, returned and remained.
‘It is tactful to regard the family as complete, I suppose?’
‘Well, dear Miss Burtenshaw, perhaps tactful is hardly the word,’ said Dulcia, contorting her brow.
‘We are not supposed to keep referring to the family blank.’
‘I suppose your mentioning the family complete, did constitute a reference to it,’ said Beatrice, in a mild tone.
‘Now, anyone might have done what you have,’ said Dulcia, putting her arm in her friend’s. ‘We have all come thundering down at times: I suspect myself of more than one crash.’
‘I am not conscious of having done anything,’ said Miss Burtenshaw, staring before her.
‘And neither have you,’ said her father. ‘You have done nothing. Talk about a mountain out of a molehill! We shall be afraid to open our mouths.’
‘Good-bye, Mr Edgeworth. So many thanks,’ said Beatrice, her social manner disposing of any allusiveness.
‘Good-bye, Edgeworth,’ said Mr Bode. ‘We have the support of feeling we are still your friends.’
‘Nothing has happened between us.’
‘Nothing at all, Mr Edgeworth!’ said Dulcia, giving him her hand, with a straight look into his eyes. 213
‘How about your share of it all?’ said Oscar to his sister.
‘It is not so much. Things will be as they were after Ellen died, except for the child. And his father would send him to his mother, if it were not for the place.’
‘If it is not too much for you, it is of no account. Other people’s troubles are what they deserve. Ah, how they deserve them!’
‘Look at the rector, saying a family word to his sister, as if he were one of us,’ said Dulcia, not changing the direction of her companions’ eyes.
‘Well, good-bye all,’ said Gretchen. ‘There doesn’t seem much else that can happen.’
‘There doesn’t,’ said Grant; ‘unless Uncle marries a third time.’
‘You keep out of it, in that case,’ said Gretchen, causing Nance and Grant to meet each other’s eyes.
‘Will you arrange for dinner to be punctual, Nance?’ said Duncan, making a bridge between himself and his nephew. ‘I may have some matters to attend to. Grant, I have seen you appearing as a nobody, and the sight gives me to wonder if anything could be done to make you less so, for all our sakes. Would it help the matter for you to leave the Bar, and settle here as my agent? I am in my later years, and the boy will be young for my life. The Bar has no need for you, that has been shown; and my man retired this year, and leaves an empty and easy pair of shoes. I can put up with greenness, as I provide the experience.’ Duncan’s easy voice both covered and revealed his feeling.
‘I should like it of all things, Uncle. I love the place; but suppose Richard does not want me, when he is a man?’
‘I am coming to that. It is what I should be coming to. You seem a simple sort of fellow.’ Duncan’s voice had risen with the 214 new light on his future. ‘I will provide in my will for your salary to be paid, whether or no you keep the post. It seems that what I don’t arrange, will run amuck. Does that make up your mind, as you can’t make it up yourself?’
‘It does indeed, Uncle. I could ask no more than to have my home with you and the girls, and to watch the boy’s progress.’
‘The girls are used to you, poor young women; and knowing what they must, gives them the chance to improve you, which women are happy to like in men. And any connexion with them disposes me to serve you, as you are a second-rate figure by yourself. But the brat takes your place, and will one day be over you. His progress brings him nearer. It passes me why you talk of it.’