Miss Charity Marcon walked up her garden path, crossed her hall and entered her plain little drawing-room, her great height almost coinciding with the door, and her long neck bending, lest the experience of years should prove at fault and it should quite coincide with it. She stood inside the room, an elongated, angular figure, with her prominent, opaque, brown eyes looking out from her deep, jutting head over her strong, elaborate, slightly ludicrous face.
Her brother looked up with eyes of comprehension and companionship, and lifted from the sofa a length equal to her own, but less on a man, and a frame at once more willowy and with more weight. He had a face and head of the same jutting shape, lighter, narrower, sharper eyes and the same shock of drab, grizzled hair, apparently transferred from the head to the face, as he was bald and wore a beard. Miss Marcon had observed that it was somehow absurd that they should be twins of fifty seven, and she was right that it was somehow absurd.
She began to speak in her deep, dry monotone.
“I have been up to London to get the book I am writing, out of the British Museum. I have got a lot of it out, and I shall go again presently to get some more; and when I have got it all, there will be another book.” She slung a strap of notebooks off her arm, and advanced to the fire with the smooth, unswaying motion of a figure drawn on wheels. “So many people were there, getting out their books. It doesn’t seem to matter everything’s being in books already: I don’t mind it at all. There are attendants there on purpose to bring it to you. That is how books are made, and it is difficult to think of any other way. I mean the kind called serious: light books are different. Mine ought to be quite a success. It will be just like the ones I am getting it out of, and they are standard books. I put things from several into another, and then it is called a biography. What have you done to-day?”
“I have paid a visit to Mrs. Ponsonby,” said Stephen, in a voice which was as high for a man’s as his sister’s low for a woman’s. “And I have begun to weed the garden.”
“I saw you had, and you have got beyond the weeds, and Mrs. Ponsonby is a host in herself, so you have done more than it sounds. I shall soon have to weed my book. Books are very like plants. They are better, the more they are weeded, and they come up out of each other and are all the same.”
Stephen Marcon had had an early scientific bent, and desired to give his life to research, replying to his father’s objection that there should be a safer support for the family of a younger son, that he had no intention of supporting anyone but himself. The father had insisted on a normal career, and Stephen had chosen medicine as the nearest to his own line, viewing its practical side with deprecation, its human contacts with distaste, its system of fees as displeasing and unfit; and, naturally overcome by these feelings, had ended as an obscure country doctor, with his science the pursuit of his leisure, which was the greater part of his life. He was a contented, disappointed man, happy in his own disappointment, living simply on inherited means, making the friends he fancied, preferring his sister to other women, and indeed to other men, and seeing his small advance in science the reward and reason of life, to which he did not assign any great reward or reason. Sabine was of those who chose him as a doctor, because of his easy fulfilment of the duty and indifference to their choice.
“What is wrong with Mrs. Ponsonby?”
“Nothing. Or everything. She is eighty four.”
“She is a wonderful woman.”
“No, she is not: she is just what she ought to be at her age, or must be, life being what it is.”
“Stephen, of course she is wonderful. People over eighty always are.”
“It is what they are not. They are more wonderful at any other age.” Stephen’s high voice became a squeak, when he felt what he said. “Unless you mean they are not blind or deaf, or actually dead, which is what you do mean.”
“Actually dead is what I mean, I suppose. It is what is meant. You see, you knew my meaning.”
“Not actually dead after eighty years and therefore wonderful! With the knowledge of a child, because they have had no time to increase it! How can things advance? Why should they? I wonder people are not afraid of the truth.”
“They are afraid of it, terrified, as you are. You have put their fears into words. You are much bolder than most people; I think you are too bold. I said that people were wonderful, and it is better than not being blind and deaf and the other things you say of them. And I can’t think Mrs. Ponsonby has the experience of a child; I am sure there is something unchildlike about her.”
“Was it cold and stuffy in the reading-room?” said Stephen, his voice descending to its normal pitch.
“Yes, it was both. I moved about it, a grotesque but dignified figure. Many people looked up to wonder who the tall, strange woman was.”
“And did you tell them, Aunt Charity?” said another voice, as a young man entered and sank down at Miss Marcon’s feet.
“No, I am a woman who seldom speaks of herself. It would not fit with writing lives of other people.”
“And with opening your doors to your ne’er-do-well nephew, and keeping them open.”
Miss Marcon rose and loomed towards the mirror in the chimney-piece.
“Ah, Charity, rightly named!” she said, and resumed her seat.
“Are you tired by the day? I am exhausted by striving with a man’s simplicity to manage my life.”
“I suppose I have the pleasant tiredness which comes after a day’s work. It is not so very pleasant; it is too much like the ordinary tiredness which I should have thought a day’s work would cause. I am only just beginning to like it, and even now hardly enough. Of course, doing nothing is the most exhausting thing in life. A lot seems to be known about exhaustion, but I think myself it needs more study.”
Alfred Marcon leaned his head against his aunt’s knees, considering his own tiredness rather than hers, as it was of the more exhausting kind she mentioned. He was a tall, supple man of thirty, with a straight, dark face, which had a foreign look without any cause, and rather large, slate-blue eyes, which had the opaqueness of his aunt’s brown ones and gave him an unplaceable likeness to her. His face had an obvious handsomeness, which faded as it became familiar. He was a nervous, versatile man, accomplished rather than gifted, more unstable than indolent, who did not so much grow tired of successive kinds of work as simply tired by them, and repaired for periods of rest to his uncle’s roof. His aunt welcomed his company and enjoyed his facile gifts, and neither found him a burden. Their means were enough for their needs, and this ended their concern with them.
“Are we not to have tea, Aunt Charity?”
“This is the time when it usually comes. I hope there is not going to be any exception to prove the rule. Rules don’t need the proof, if they don’t have it. Will you rise with your unconscious grace and ring the bell?”
“I have something to confess,” said her nephew, as he obeyed in every particular. “I am going to do some new work, and I feel shy about telling it, much shyer than about living at your expense, though I know that is shameful.”
“It is the things that are not shameful, that make us shy. That is why we are warned about it, and work is one of them, anyhow honest work.”
“The honest gain is often shameful,” said Stephen.
“This is not honest work, Aunt Charity. It is work done under false pretences: I am not fit for it. I am going to educate Mrs. Ponsonby’s grandsons.”
“Has she asked you to do it? Does she know you are not fit?” said Stephen in his highest tone. “Must they not be nearly educated?”
“She is going to ask me. Chilton and I have arranged it. She is not to know I am not fit. Remember that, Uncle Stephen. It will be less dishonest, as they are nearly educated. I must do something to earn my support.”
“And doing something nearly done is a good way,” said his aunt.
“Chilton says she respects me too much for being related to you, to insult me as much as the last tutor. He left because of the insults. Foolish youth! As if a rough word hurts anyone!”
“There is a governess as well as a tutor there,” said Stephen.
“Yes, yes, but I am not going to be both. Muriel is not nearly educated.”
“It is true that the last tutor was driven away by insults; I heard from Clare,” said Miss Marcon. “Alfred is going to be him. Of course bread is all the sweeter if it is hardly earned.”
“It does sound as if the tutor was foolish to leave,” said her brother.
“It is a privilege to hear any word from Mrs. Ponsonby,” said Alfred, going to the piano. “The tutor could not have been a civilised man: I remember he was not.”
“How about the salary?” said Stephen.
“That will be between Mrs. Ponsonby and me.”
“You will still live with us, I suppose?”
“No, I think I live in the house with the governess,” said Alfred, moving his hands with effect and ease. “I flinch at nothing; I will no longer be a burden.”
“The governess has left too,” said Miss Marcon. “I noticed she was not there, and pried into the matter. She bore the insults with a woman’s courage, but at last rebelled. Mrs. Ponsonby had a woman’s courage too, and it all leaves them without a governess. But some other woman will soon come, and Clare is teaching Muriel for the time. One does see what women are.”
Alfred heard his aunt with his hands held over the keys, and now brought them down with a crash.
“We have a tea party this afternoon,” he said, softening the music to speak above it. “I met the Seymours and saw that Jane wanted one. I cannot resist the appeal in a woman’s eyes.”
“I will go and get rid of the dust,” said Miss Marcon. “There is no reason why everyone should not try to please. To be careless about it is only a different kind of conceit, though I do think it is very different.”
The guests arrived as their hostess returned, a short, fair man about fifty six, with a wide, weathered face, kind, bluish eyes, a broad nose and lips and a look of breeding; his sister, a few years younger, tall and thin and pale, with larger eyes, narrower features and the look of breeding less definite; and his son, a tall, spare man of thirty four, with a long, oval face, a high, hooked nose which seemed to overshadow his short upper lip, and the look of breeding so pronounced, that it blunted his other attributes. They lived in the large house of the neighbourhood and formed the whole family.
“I hope you do not mind my arriving with my two stalwart men!” said Miss Seymour, in her usual tone of exclamation, summing up her party in her own terms. “I could have done with a single escort, if I could have left the other helpless man hanging about at home.”
“Men ought not to be stalwart and helpless,” said Miss Marcon. “It is quite unnecessary.”
“I am glad for my aunt to hear you do not approve of that, Jane,” said Alfred. “She has left me all day and gone off on her own concerns.”
Miss Seymour was generally addressed as Jane, and did not dislike the custom, as she had an inability to be intimate with anyone, and felt it was disguised by an appearance of intimacy with everyone. Miss Marcon, who was easily intimate, was given the formal address, which tended to be pronounced in one word, as if it were a Christian name. Jane was much affected by the circumstance of living with her brother and his son, seeming to consider that the assignment to her lot of two members of the male sex had significance, though it was explained by her brother’s having lost his wife and her nephew’s not yet having chosen one. Sir Rowland saw his sister with affection, because their relationship involved this sentiment, and she believed that she sufficed him for the outlet of his gentler emotions. Rowland and Evelyn knew that it was Evelyn who sufficed him, and that no one aroused and held his feelings as did his son.
“Well, Charity,” said Rowland, in the ordinary, pleasant voice which had a permanent note of sympathy in it, looking at Miss Marcon with eyes in which the sympathy was also permanent. “I saw you going by yourself to the early train. I tried to catch you up, but your legs were too long for mine. And you like walking by yourself. You like going along alone.”
“Well, you might have managed that, Rowland!” said his sister with a note of serious reproof. “That was not much for a full-sized man to undertake.”
“Next time you go to London, Miss Marcon,” said Evelyn, “I will call for you and the notebooks, and we will swing along, two tall figures in step, the books dangling from my hand.”
“Miss Marcon has her own escort, Evelyn,” said his aunt, still with the note of reproof. “I don’t know what was happening to her two active men.”
“I don’t get up for breakfast,” said Alfred. “Aunt Charity forbade it after my last breakdown. You would not have me disobey my aunt?”
“Well, no, I would not. You have me there, with my large nephew all ears at my side. I am put in a tight corner.”
“Jane seems to meet a high standard of physique in men,” said Stephen to his sister. “It makes her expect a good deal of them.”
“I am going to be a governess,” said Alfred suddenly. “I am going to educate the Ponsonby boys, whom so many people have educated. It seems silly not to try a thing which is so generally tried, before I give myself up and become a burden on my relations.”
“And they are not the nearest relations!” said Jane.
“No, so it will not matter very much if he does become a burden on them,” said Miss Marcon. “They will mind so much less.”
“It is a good, self-respecting idea!” said Jane. “A little bird told us about it.”
“I wish the little bird had told my uncle and aunt, and saved me the embarrassment. It always tells the last people it should. Uncle Stephen hates my being hired in the same house as he is.”
“Ideas that show you respect yourself don’t bring you the respect of other people,” said Miss Marcon. “And Alfred is to sleep in the house. We wish he would become a burden.”
“When you can do so many things, Alfred, why do you have breakdowns?” said Evelyn. “They are for people who find things difficult.”
“I don’t know, Evelyn; I don’t know. They are just part of me,” said Alfred, getting up and spreading his hands. “I don’t find anything difficult, and I am always a success for a time, but nothing averts them. I don’t know anything about them; it is enough just to suffer them. With me nothing fails like success.”
“You would be poorly off without your aunt!” said Jane.
“That is a matter of opinion, Jane. I should be in the river. It would do Evelyn good to have to support himself.”
“You think so well of the river?” said Stephen.
“No, you are right, Uncle Stephen. Evelyn can be the man he was meant to be.”
“What were you meant to be?” said Rowland, gently, looking into Alfred’s face.
“What Evelyn is, only with more gifts.”
Rowland looked from his son to Alfred, as if it was not for him to decide between them.
“That is half true,” said Evelyn. “I am so glad an unjust fate prevents it. But, of course, half the truth is the blackest of lies.”
“Who was the little bird? Chilton or Victor?”
“Clare,” said Evelyn.
“How does Clare come to be chattering about?” said Stephen. “I thought she was shut up at home.”
“That is how she came to it,” said his sister. “She could not bear it any longer, and so she did not. She felt she must have something different, and so she had it, sensible child!”
“Does her grandmother know?” said Jane.
“No, no, no, that would not be sensible,” said Rowland, more quickly than usual. “And no one else knows. No.”
“How nice of Clare to think about having me with her!” said Alfred.
“Now, now, is that the kind of thing you have in your mind?” said Jane.
“So Mrs. Ponsonby wants to have you, likes the idea of having you on her staff?” said Rowland, smiling.
“I don’t know if she knows about my being on it. Chilton was to suggest it to her. Did the little bird mention if he had?”
“Yes, he had,” said Evelyn. “And she is calling this afternoon to talk it over. That is why we are here. I want to hear you say that you will do your best, and that she will not regret her decision, if you can help it.”
“You did not tell me she was coming here, Evelyn!” said his aunt.
“No; you might have thought we should not be wanted.”
“I should certainly have thought it! Was there ever a woman who had to manage two such monsters?”
“Why two?” said her brother. “I am not guilty of anything.”
“Oh, but you will be before long, if I take my eyes off you. I make no mistake about that.”
“Come and look, Alfred,” said Miss Marcon from the window. “They say that to look at some people is to love them. What do you think about Mrs. Ponsonby?”
Rowland laughed.
“I always think there is a lot of good in her!” said Jane.
“That is not at all what I mean.”
“Alfred has never learned to obey,” said Evelyn. “How will he be able to command, when you have to obey first?”
“That is quite untrue,” said Stephen. “The one hardly ever leads to the other. There are no two things more apart. People who obey may go on doing so.”
“Then it has been clever of Alfred to refuse to do it in all his posts,” said Miss Marcon. “And he has not gone on doing so.”
“How do you do?” said Sabine, entering the room and glancing round with an openly appraising eye. “It is nice to have a fire on the first chilly day. We were taken unawares. You must have very thoughtful servants.”
“One of our two servants is thoughtful, and so is my brother,” said Miss Marcon. “If they had known you were coming, they would have shown some more thoughtfulness.”
“We surely could not have more than this.”
“But if we had known you were coming, we would have. Mary and my brother would have arranged it. We never tell our friends we are not going to make strangers of them. I wonder who found out how sensitive strangers are to discomfort. We would have made a stranger of you, if we had had the chance.”
“The guests you prepare for must be fortunate. But enough is as good as a feast.”
“A feast is better, and much more suitable when you are here,” said Alfred, displacing his aunt and taking a seat by Sabine.
“We prepare for guests ourselves, but our ordinary standard is perhaps not so high.”
“Plain living and high thinking are best,” said Alfred, “but our standard of thinking is not high enough to warrant the living’s being too plain. I am sure in your house things are properly balanced.”
The opening was made; the talk was soon under way; the outcome was plain from Alfred’s lively bearing and fluent speech.
“And you won’t find the living omitted in our house,” Sabine was heard to say. “We attend to that side of things as well. It would not do to go in only for thinking. That would not be the way to get the best out of anyone. I have too much experience for that.”
“Get the best out of anyone,” murmured Rowland to himself.
“So Alfred is a tutor now,” said Miss Marcon to her brother, “and people will get the best out of him. I wonder what that will be. People are always at their worst with their families, so we can’t have any idea.”
“There are Clare and Chilton walking up and down outside the gate!” said Jane.
“They came to walk with me,” said Sabine. “I naturally do not walk alone. They are waiting to take me back. We need not consider them: there is no hardship in waiting: it is what they are there for.”
“But will they not come in and have some tea?” said Stephen, not observing his sister’s silence.
“No; we were too many to come to tea. We settled that. It was quite clear between us. It was silly of them to wait where they could be seen. It looks like attracting notice: I hope it was not that.”
“It doesn’t seem to have turned out very differently,” said Evelyn.
“They are coming up the path,” said his father in an appreciative tone. “Stephen beckoned to them.”
“They lost no time in responding,” said Sabine. “I don’t know what good my words were: I must put things more plainly. Clare, why did you walk where you could be seen, when we arranged that you should keep out of sight?” Her tone implied that she had no scruple in bringing the matter into full light.
“We forgot, as the time went by, that our office was a guilty one. And it began to rain, and we were casting wistful glances towards the porch.”
“Of course you could not stand in the porch, when we had come to that arrangement. You could have waited under the hedge on the sheltered side; the rain would not have hurt you there. There is nothing to be ashamed of in waiting for your grandmother.” Sabine’s tone became ruthless. “There is no need to be self-conscious about it, if that was the trouble.”
“Of course Alfred will have a breakdown,” murmured Evelyn, while his father silently regarded Sabine.
“It is natural to be self-conscious about waiting beyond a point,” said Clare. “If you suspected it, why did you not put us out of our misery? And about waiting where we seemed to be concealing it. It looked as if someone was self-conscious about it.”
“We arranged it in order that you should not come to tea,” said Sabine in a distinct tone. “You knew that.”
“I am rather glad the arrangement fell through,” said Chilton, stirring his cup. “It hardly took enough account of Clare and me.”
“Fancy being a tutor to Chilton!” said Evelyn. “And for a man prone to break down.”
“I hope Mr. Marcon will not think my words are generally ignored like that,” said Sabine. “It would be a most misleading beginning.”
“I tremble to think what he must think of you, Grandma,” said Clare. “I wish the beginning had been more misleading.”
“Your words were not ignored, Grandma,” said Chilton. “We lurked in the lanes until human nature rebelled, and the heavens wept in sympathy.”
“Boy’s talk, boy’s talk,” said his grandmother.
Rowland looked at Sabine with the startled expression which had withstood a lifetime’s knowledge of her.
“And we are not strangers in this house.”
“You certainly do not seem to be.”
“Oh, do you see that you are not? I am so sorry,” said Miss Marcon. “I am afraid it does seem as if we knew you very well. It is dreadful to have to take people as they are. No wonder they apologise for making it necessary. If you will come again, we will be quite different, not in the least like ourselves.”
“I will be going, if you have both finished,” said Sabine, coldly to her grandchildren. “And I suppose you have. You must see that we have taken enough kindness.”
“From the tutor’s family,” murmured Miss Marcon.
“I am going to take a little more,” said Chilton.
“I will not impose my commands to have them disobeyed. I will go home alone, and will speak to you when you have followed me.”
“Will they not be afraid to go home?” said Rowland to his son, in desire to know.
“Miss Marcon will have to adopt them. She said she wanted to treat them as strangers, but that will not be possible.”
“Will you let me walk home with you, Mrs. Ponsonby?” said Alfred, as Sabine was leaving without word or sign. “You will have to get used to having me about.”
Sabine relaxed, and turned and performed her farewells, and left at Alfred’s side.
“It is extraordinary that anyone can choose to live in our family, when he has met us,” said Clare.
“Alfred likes to be scolded by women,” said Stephen.
“Yes, it is true,” said his sister, “especially by old women. He lost his mother as a young boy, and has worried over what he has missed. He likes a family atmosphere.”
“Missed,” said Rowland to himself.
“He will have it,” said Clare. “And perhaps he will cease to worry.”
“We must return to it,” said Chilton. “We do not dare to stay away. It will be wise to have our meeting with Grandma, in his presence. It is wonderful that so much of our lives will take place in it.”
“I have so liked having you,” said Miss Marcon. “You have such nice ways with each other, just as Stephen and I have. You really almost treat each other as strangers. It is the only way to keep family affection. One must never feel that one is in one’s own home.”
“We never do feel it,” said Clare. “Grandma makes it clear that our proper condition is homelessness. She is herself very much at home.”
“I hope Alfred will not be at home,” said Miss Marcon. “I think he has that tendency. It may be wise for him to leave us, before he begins to be at home here. He has spoken to me more than once lately as if I were his aunt.”
“What will be the end of those children?” said Jane.
“Mrs. Ponsonby can’t live for ever,” said Miss Marcon. “There will be an end, and we can’t always say that.”
“She is a wonderful woman!”
“That is what I tell Stephen, but he does not believe it.”
“He likes to be original!” said Jane. “Most people do like to have an individual view. What I like is to form my own opinion and state it. You can’t be the one woman in a family for long, without seeing a good deal of the other kind of originality!”
“I am the one woman myself, but I have not seen much.”
“Well, you are one of the original ones too. I should not go up to London to research.”
“That is not a thing an original person would do. You don’t understand about research. It is rather natural that people should keep it to themselves.”
“Well, it seems quite odd to be at home again,” said Alfred, returning. “It shows how readily I shall settle down. My position in the house will call for all my qualities; and I almost mean that, the whole variety of them. Do you know who are the most pathetic of the Ponsonbys? Miss Ponsonby, Mrs. Ponsonby, John; in that order. Then Clare, Victor, Chilton, France, Muriel; in that order. Muriel reaches the point where there is no pathos.”
“Born with the gift for a happy childhood, she simply uses it,” said Evelyn.
“It is a rare gift,” said Stephen, “if not so rare as is thought. I did not know it was even recognised to-day.”
“What will you be paid, Alfred?” said Evelyn.
Rowland looked up in interest.
“If you will come up close, I will whisper it.”
Rowland turned away so as not to hear.
“Not so bad,” said Evelyn, “with treatment as one of the family.”
“No, it is much more than the governess is paid. You would hardly believe that.”
“I should not, but Clare says it is true,” said Miss Marcon. “You would hardly believe in treatment worse than that of the family either, but that is true too.”
“Does Mrs. Ponsonby realise how Clare talks behind her back?” said Jane.
“No, she does not,” said her brother, “and that is best.”
“A good deal is done to her face,” said Alfred. “Clare has her own courage.”
“Yes, courage,” said Rowland.
“I believe you are in danger of admiring Clare, Alfred,” said Jane.
Rowland turned his face quickly, as if to confront the same accusation.
“I admire France, Clare and Chilton intensely,” said Evelyn; “and I rather admire Victor and Muriel.”
“Dear me, you young men are in danger.”
“I should like to teach someone,” said Evelyn, “and give the best of myself to him. That is what teachers are said to do. It is true that you would hardly believe in their treatment.”
“What I can’t understand about that family,” said Rowland, “is how they say what they like all the time, and yet seem to be afraid. Can anyone explain it?”
“No one yet,” said Miss Marcon. “Alfred may be able to presently. But families can seldom be explained, and they make better gossip without any explanation. To know all is to forgive all, and that would spoil everything.”
“You don’t ever think, Evelyn, you don’t ever think about Clare?” said Rowland, as he left the house behind his sister, hurrying to keep up with her rapid steps. “You don’t ever give a thought to it? I think, if I were a young man—I think she would like a change in her life, would like to have things different.”
“I am not a young man, Father. I am one of those strange people who are born old. It is only to the superficial eye that I have the gift of perennial youth. The life of the ordinary man is not for me.”