“My father has written to me for my birthday,” said Felix Bacon, holding out a letter in his long, pale hand. “He congratulates me on completing my fortieth year. Last year he congratulated me on entering it. It seems inconsistent to congratulate for both, and a little tactless to congratulate for either. He says it is absurd to be doing nothing at that age. He said the same thing when I was twenty and thirty, and everyone knows that different things are absurd at different ages. Do I realise that he has paid for every meal that I have eaten? I had not actually realised it, meal by meal; he must be always thinking about food. That I have been a daily expense to him? Of course, it is a daily expense to pay for a person’s meals; but he does not really consider them; it is a false implication. I don’t know anyone who thinks less about his child’s meals.”
Felix crossed the room with a dancing step, and standing before a much older man, who sat by the hearth, waved the letter towards him.
“He says that forty is not too late to turn over a new leaf. Then why make this trouble about it, if it is not too late? I thought the lateness was the point. And he does not say a word about my looking so young for my age.”24
Felix surveyed in the mirror his small, light frame, his smooth, black hair, his narrow, green eyes, his pale, narrow face, his prominent, narrow features and his subtle, alert expression.
“My figure is remarkably supple and lithe,” he said. “But when my father treats me as if I had the gift of perennial youth, I do not believe he is thinking about my figure.”
“You have it indeed, my boy, and it is the rarest gift. You have to be old, to realise how rare.”
Jonathan Swift rose from his seat, and, putting a hand on Felix’s arm, regarded the contrast they made in the glass, his own girth double that of his companion, and the latter’s head barely at his shoulder. He was a tall, vigorous man of seventy, with rather formless features, with a likeness to those of his sister, Josephine Napier, the remains of bushy, auburn hair, emotional, roving, gold-brown eyes and an expression at once benevolent and unrestrained. His parents, realising that he bore the surname of a famous man, had given him also the Christian name, by way of doing all in their power towards equality; and possibly reflecting that for his father the precaution had been omitted, and equality had not been the result. They had further put him into the same profession of the Church; and he had himself continued in the line by turning his attention to letters, so that the difference in their practice of these was the only difference between his predecessor and himself. With regard to this difference he had observed that his writings were not in accord with the present taste, and could not be published with advantage during his life. He had helped himself through this period by taking pupils; and the last of these, Felix Bacon, had remained with him for twenty-two years, ever since he had arrived as a youth of eighteen in the escort of his father, a country squire, whose difference from Jonathan’s family was illustrated by his ignoring the advantage of the name of Francis for his son.25
“My father has not sent me my usual birthday cheque,” said Felix, “because I must not get to depend upon it. He must know that habits get set at my age, when he has so often warned me about it. The best way of learning a thing is to teach it to another. He will not pay another tailor’s bill this year. I should not want him to; it would look as if my personality depended on externals. But he is really rather womanly in the way he thinks of my food and clothes. Of course he knows that I am motherless.”
Felix put the letter in his pocket, indicating by a gesture that it was near his heart.
“My boy, it is the wish of my life that I may cease to be a burden. It is hard on my friends that my work is not for their time.”
“The judgement of posterity is known to be the only true one. So there seems no point in getting any other. I wonder so many people do it. You seem to be very wise.”
“Ah, they get something besides judgement. But I may get some ordinary work, while I can do it, and do justice with it. God knows, I hope so; God knows, I do.”
“He may do something about it, now he knows. I think it must be impressed on him. But perhaps he feels it hardly matters what I wear, as I carry off shabby clothes so well.”
“Your father may take his view,” said Jonathan, giving his gruff, deep laugh.
“Well, it is natural that they should think about me on the same line, when they bear the same relation to me; especially as the one claims to follow the other.”
“I am not going to make a business of accepting what I need from one I love,” said Jonathan. “I am simply grateful, as I ought to be.”
“I would have a sale of my drawings, if they were good enough to be sold for anything but charity. It is a tribute to human nature 26that people will only pay for things they don’t want, to help good works. What a mean criticism, that they ought to help them for nothing! If I were a woman, I should always serve at bazaars; I never know why men do not serve at them. I should have a regular employment. My father should have had a daughter.”
“Does he wish he had had a daughter?”
“Yes. He says he would have found one a consolation. He says too, that I might be a woman, for all the difference he can see. That seems to show that I have tried to be a comfort to him.”
“Is he lonely?” said Jonathan.
“You know he is. Pray do not upset me.”
“And I am not lonely owing to him.”
“Entirely owing to him. He has the first claim. I could not bear to be the object of only one claim.”
“We don’t often get a chance of a talk like this. Young Fane seems always to be everywhere. I can’t think when he does his work.”
“I never think about people’s work. Work is a thing I do not like to think about. It is odd that my father always connects me with it. He can hardly separate the two ideas.”
“Does he suggest anything definite?”
“That I should save him the expense of an agent, and the discredit of having a son who will not live in his house. I don’t mean that he actually suggests the whole of that.”
“He does not sound addicted to work himself.”
“Of course he is not addicted to work. Please do not speak unsuitably about my father.”
“You may have inherited his liking for leisure?”
“Children must not be levelling in what they inherit. My father has a great dislike for what is levelling. I should be shocked if he worked. I must always work before him, as I recognise work to 27be degrading. I am not one of those modern people; I try always to seem a survival from the old world.”
“It is generous of your father to continue your allowance.”
“Yes, that often comes over me, and I resolve to amend my life. Could I teach drawing to the girls in your sister’s school? The post is vacant, and I am the soul of delicacy.”
“How would that appeal to your father?”
“Well, he says I might be a woman; and he wants me to work, though it is dreadfully unchivalrous of him; it would never do for him to teach in a girls’ school. And women who work generally teach girls. Great women have done it, and I had better choose them for my model. I can’t help thinking that my drawing is better than theirs.”
“Good afternoon,” said a strident, self-confident voice, as there entered a spare, vigorous man of thirty-five, with definite movements, openly penetrating eyes, and strongly aquiline features set aslant. “And what are you wagging your tongues about so busily? I hope, as the children say, it was not about me, or I shall perforce interrupt your colloquy.”
“I have no respect for people who cannot have their colloquies interrupted,” said Felix. “We were not talking about you, but of course we might often do so. I should never suggest anything else to a person who thought he was being talked about. But we generally talk about my father.”
“I hope you have arrived at some satisfactory conclusions concerning him,” said the newcomer, spacing his words as if they called for note.
“Yes; I have said some generous things.”
“Well, it is never too late to mend.”
“It is quite early for me to mend. I really think I am one of those people who are as old as they look.” 28
“Well, I don’t know what my looks do for me,” said Mr. Fane, facing Felix as though without intention. “I may appear a thought jaded at this time of the day. I have earned my cup of tea, whether or no anybody else has.”
“Nobody else has. It is extraordinary how many people talk about earning meals. My father is really typical.”
William Fane was a local lawyer, who had been introduced to Jonathan as a paying guest, by a former pupil, evincing his sentiments towards his own late educator. It was a need of his nature to feel self-esteem, and as he had no unusual quality but the power of sinking below his class, he esteemed himself for being a man and a potential husband; which human attributes were, to do him justice, less general than many he possessed.
“Well, I have the pleasant weariness that comes after a day of hard and not unremunerative effort. I am a tired but contented man.”
“I am glad you do not regard work as an end in itself. But I could never be both tired and contented. I don’t think I understand about pleasant weariness. But I am upset when I hear that doing nothing is the most ageing thing in the world. I get into the way of busying myself with little services to others.” Felix poured out the tea and brought a cup to Fane.
“You ought to marry, and find scope for your gifts as a family man.”
“Please do not look at me with a masculine expression. I may not have the power of making a woman happy.”
“A woman asks very little beyond a home and a husband.”
“She could not ask for a home from me. My father would have to offer her his; and I do not see how she could be happy with my father.”
“I suppose your mother was happy with him.”
“Why do you suppose that?” said Felix.29
“Well, he has always been very kind and polite to me when we have met.”
“He may have made differences between you and my mother.”
“Well, I don’t see why your mother should have died of a broken heart.”
“She died when I was born. It was if she had lived, that I should have broken her heart, my father tells me. It was I, and not he, who had to cause her death.”
“You seem quite obsessed by your father.”
“So do you,” said Felix. “I quite understand it.”
“No, no, come, that is not possible.”
“It seems to me inevitable, when you have met.”
“I repeat that he was very kind and polite.”
“Yes, you do repeat it.”
“Well, come now, if you ask me, you and he would be doing more for women if you gave a couple of them mates.”
“I should not dream of not asking you. You seem to know everything about it; though you have rather soon forgotten my mother. But I have heard that women like men to work.”
“Yes, that is a true word,” said Jonathan. “Look at my sister, who is to be with me to-night. She likes people to work indeed, dear, good woman that she is! She has been the saving of my boy. She and I are the last of our family, the eldest and the youngest, the first and the last. Yes, that is the right description in another way.”
“Oh, a dinner-party to-night, is there?” said Fane.
“No, just my family to see me, if you will bear with it. My sister and her husband, and my son.”
“I wonder you do not have your son to live with you, now he is a grown man.”
“Surely you do not, when my sister has brought him up from babyhood, and is more than a mother to him.”30
“Yes, she is more than that,” said Felix.
“I think I will go and take a nap, as people are coming to dinner,” said Fane. “I don’t want to be a damper on the proceedings.”
“It will be nice to see him at his best,” said Felix. “I suppose he is generally a damper. I wish my father could really observe a person who did regular work.”
“My boy, you have had a happy twenty years with me?”
“I have. And you remember my father asked you to make me happy. The one thing he has asked of you, you have done for him.”
Felix danced towards Jonathan and took a seat on his knee, the older man moving his arm as if accustomed to the position.
“What would your father say, if he knew all our life together?”
“I don’t think he uses words about everything.”
“He deserves to be more respected than I am.”
“Well, I think he gets what he deserves.”
“Do people despise me?”
“Some people admire you for being a writer, but I think more people admire my father for being a squire.”
“Well, I believe it is the rarer thing. But I would rather earn my admiration. But I am not of the men who have the facile trick of putting all of themselves on to paper.”
“Is it really facile? I daresay they would say it was. We must go and dress. Your family is never late.”
Felix ran upstairs and called to the man, who with the aid of his wife, conducted Jonathan’s household.
“I will wear my ordinary evening clothes, as they give an impression of greater ease than the new ones. I ought to be a person whose clothes never look new; it shows that no one really conforms to type. But one thing about me is that limpness gives the effect of grace.”