Two Worlds and Their Ways (6 page)

“Well, what a commotion for two small people to make!” said Maria.

The children felt a shock they did not define. Was the protagonist to be passed over? Was their behaviour beyond the pale of words? Was he himself struck dumb, petrified, dissolved by shock? The last appeared to be the case; Aldom was no more; and advantage might be taken of it before the long grief supervened and held its course. And Adela's voice was her own.

“They get excited, my lady. They were acting a scene. It is what they learn with Miss Petticott that puts it into their heads. I got quite lost in it, sitting and watching them.”

“They had the door wide open,” said Maria, taking this safeguard of guilt as a proof of innocence. “We heard the noise and could not think what it was. I suppose it is a sort of play. Go on from where you were, my dears; and if it is good enough, I will bring Father up to see it.”

The children cast about in their minds for words—of Aldom's, of Shakespeare's, of Miss Petticott's—to meet the need; took a step towards Maria and uttered some sounds, and looked at Miss Petticott with their hearts in their faces.

“Oh, come, Lady Shelley, you do not know how sensitive we are about our artistic efforts. I am afraid self-conscious is the word, but that is no help, as we cannot get away from ourselves. We must accept the artistic temperament and take what it has to give us in its own good time. It is a tax on patience, but we do not make such demands on you in vain.”

“Well, I will be patient, though I do not think the noise I heard, quite bears out that view. Thank you for all your help, Miss Petticott. Good-night, my little shy actor and actress.”

The children received the caress with as much consciousness as could have resulted from any dramatic gift. Miss Petticott followed Maria to the staircase and engaged
her in talk, bringing her pencil down at intervals on some papers in her hand. Her eyes remained on the papers as she retraced her steps, so that a figure that flashed from behind the sofa to the stairs, escaped her notice.

“Well, you are a nice pair,” she said to her pupils. “Keeping your artistic efforts for when I am away, instead of giving me the benefit of them! I shall not expect such scurvy treatment another time. I feel I have deserved better at your hands.” The pupils had something of the same feeling. “And I should not act any more tonight. Miss Clemence is flushed, Adela, and Sefton is pale, and you are rather pale yourself. I recommend a rest to you all, before you go to bed. And I expect my advice to be followed.”

“I Have Come to offer you myself,” said Lesbia Firebrace, as she mounted the Shelleys' steps. “Because I have nothing else to offer. When people say that, they are content with their offering and expect other people to be.”

“This is, indeed, a pleasure, Lesbia,” said Sir Roderick, with a simple air of welcome.

“It is good of you to find it so, Roderick,” said Miss Firebrace, her simplicity so well-matched as almost to suggest something else.

“My dear, you are welcome, welcome,” said Mr. Firebrace, pressing forward and displacing the host, indeed seeming to assume the character. “You are in your father's home again. I wish it were that to you, but things must be as they are. I have been looking to this day; I can do that under any roof.”

Miss Firebrace's filial greeting seemed hardly to accord with her grey head and experienced face. She was a small, odd-looking woman of sixty, with small, clear, grey eyes contrasting with a sallow skin, features that, like the rest of her, seemed to conform to some standard of her own, and sparse, iron-grey hair worn short at a time when the fashion carried some meaning. In her case it was an outcome of illness, that she had not troubled to rectify, but she accepted any significance read into it as an enhancement to her personality. This was a thing to which she gave attention, though she had not created it, merely rendered it its due.

Her sister was a plainer, feminine counterpart of her father and nephew. She followed with the air of the secondary character, that she clearly fulfilled in her family and in her father's sight. He greeted her with equal affection, but without any touch of deference, a distinction that had
become established. She had an air of being clever, complacent and dissatisfied, and was all these things and would have denied none. Her complacence, like all her qualities, was real, and as deeply rooted in her as in the rest of her family. Oliver's mother had been between the two sisters in age, and had been the dearest to her father, or been rendered so by death, a state less grudging of advantages than of the opportunity to enjoy them. Her sisters accepted this view of her life, seeing it as mild compensation for losing it.

Juliet's husband followed her, tall and upright and a person apart, and also evincing the slight humility of mien. He had a Grecian profile, thin, silver hair, and ice-blue eyes so honest that they seemed to hold some menace. His name of Cassidy seemed to have arisen out of himself.

Mr. Firebrace gathered them about him, put his arms about the women, marshalled his grandson to the front of the group, and fulfilled his part as a patriarch ordering his family. The pathos of his life was clear at the moment of its passing.

“I feel I am a guest in my own house at these times,” said Maria to her husband.

“Well, they are guests in other people's, and that is not so good. And it is the old man's moment. He was once in this house in a different place.”

“It must bring it all back to you, Roderick. I can see you are living in the past.”

“I live in the past and in the present, as all reasonable people must. The past is in us, and the present with us,” said Sir Roderick, with his not infrequent sense of surprise at himself.

“If you are not the host, you are nothing in your own home.”

“Well, that is easy, and I am equal to it. We should all be able to be nothing there. More is asked of people who are something anywhere else.”

“Here is scope for you, Maria,” said Oliver. “It is a
great position. You can show all the deep and subtle qualities that generally escape notice. I wish I had such an opportunity.”

“You might make use of it, and so miss it,” said Lesbia.

“Perhaps I should. It is that touch of the actor about me.”

“We cannot have passed over our hostess in making our greetings,” said Lesbia, coming towards Maria. “That is not a possible thing, and it is fortunate that it is not.”

“Maria gives you a real welcome,” said Sir Roderick.

“Lesbia, Juliet, Lucius, Mr. Firebrace, Roderick, Oliver,” said Maria, handing the teacups as she filled them.

“We are too many,” said Lesbia. “It neutralises the inconvenience of a large party, for someone to say they are too many.”

“I am not at my ease,” said her sister, “shocking thing though that is. It is not that I cannot take kindness; I am rather fond of taking it. But I have not the grace that can accept. Neither has Lucius, but people assume that he has. I appear to take everything for granted.”

“I hope you do so in this house,” said Sir Roderick.

“But I do not. I am trembling with gratitude and a sense of presuming on the past.”

“I always feel that my family and I ought not to be here at these times,” said Maria.

“Well, neither ought you,” said Lesbia, in her soft, almost mysterious tones. “It was all complete without you, even to the blank caused by death. You have added to the finished picture, which is known to be a mistake. But the addition is always worth while in itself.”

“That is why the temptation to make it is never resisted,” said Oliver.

“I was not a conscious artist in the matter,” said Maria.

“Well, art is instinctive,” said Lesbia.

“The impulse in matters of this kind commonly is,” said Mr. Fire-brace to his grandson.

“Father seems to have forgotten how to speak to anyone but Oliver,” said Juliet.

“Well, that is no wonder, my dear. My memory in the matter has not had an easy time.”

“My children must feel superfluous in their own home,” said Maria.

“What harm does that do?” said her stepson. “Whatever it is, I have always suffered it.”

“We had your letters about them, Lesbia,” said Sir Roderick.

“I have no doubt you did. People always have letters. They never really go astray. But I was not thinking of your children at the moment; I was thinking of myself, improper though it is.”

“I am sure you meant the advice for the best,” said Sir Roderick, not concealing the tendency of his own thought.

“Yes, Roderick, we did,” said Lesbia, in a sudden, impressive tone. “We were thinking of the children's welfare. And who is more qualified to do that? Children's welfare is the object of our lives.”

“My children's welfare has that place in mine. It is simply a more concentrated feeling.”

“Clemence has had no experience outside her own home. This house is the bound of her universe.”

“And long may it be so,” said the father.

“Of course we are not asking for pupils,” said Juliet. “It is not conceivable, and that is a good thing. People might form the conception.”

“Are you thinking of yourself or of Clemence, Roderick?” said Lesbia, in a neutral manner.

“Of myself, improper though it is,” said Sir Roderick, with triumph in his tone. “I like to have my girl at home; I like her to think of me and not of other people; I like to keep her feeling and not share it. In other words, I have the only kind of affection for her that is worth having or worth giving.”

“To be with Roderick must be a liberal education,” said Juliet.

Maria's eyes rested on her husband, as though questioning if this could be the case.

“Is there not a good deal of simple selfishness in the feeling?” said Lesbia, in a tone of taking a purely theoretic view.

“Of course there is, or it would not be the kind worth giving,” said Sir Roderick. “How do you separate a personal feeling from yourself?”

“I believe it is the only kind,” said Juliet. “When people love other people better than themselves, it means that they are prepared to give them up, or not to see them for their own sakes, or do something else that shows indifference.”

“A good definition of sending people to school,” said Sir Roderick.

“I am arguing against my own advantage. No wonder Lucius is looking at me. I am almost on his plane.”

“Might it not be better for them to go to schools kept by strangers?”

“Yes, Roderick, that might be better,” said Lesbia, in a quiet tone, that yet had a faintly scolding note. “It would be necessary to look at the matter from all its sides.”

“What difference would it make to them to go to connections?” said Maria. “If one thing is better than the other, there must be some difference.”

“Well, we should have to be careful to show them no favour,” said Juliet. “And to let no sign of interest or affection escape us. And awkward things might reach home, that would otherwise escape notice. And their companions would see them as the relations—no, of course, the connections—of people who earned their living by service to themselves; and I believe they might see them as relations. And they would get a good deal of knowledge of life.”

“Yes. Yes. It would have that side. It would have that educational point,” said Lesbia. “And we are not related to them, you know.”

“It seems that you ought to be,” said Oliver.

“Yes, Oliver, it does seem so.”

“Would you advise us to send Sefton to you, Lucius?” said Sir Roderick.

“Well, well, I am the last person to give the advice. I might be prejudiced in favour of my own methods. It might be so, as I have given my life to them. I would rather hold aloof.”

“It was I who wrote the letter,” said Juliet. “And that was because I could not disobey Lesbia. Lucius only gets pupils in spite of himself. That is why he has so many. People like their boys to go where they are not wanted.”

“Why?” said Sir Roderick.

“They think they will get so much. If they were only to get a little, they would be wanted.”

“Lesbia, would you advise us to send Clemence to you?” said Maria, in a definite tone.

“I would, Maria, and for the reason that Lucius gave for not advising the same thing, that I am prejudiced in favour of my own methods, as I have given my life to them.”

“Well, I suppose the matter is settled,” said Maria, with a sigh.

“The two kinds of advice seem to lead along the same way,” said Sir Roderick.

“Settled need not be the word as yet,” said Lesbia, looking at the window, “though it is a good thing to have the lines of the matter clear. Questions will arise and will not be gainsaid, and among them is the matter of a vacancy. I do not generally allow such problems to follow me into the country.”

“Is there a vacancy or not?” said Sir Roderick.

“Letters arrive by every post,” said Lesbia, stooping to adjust her shoe. “When I have the data, the matter can be settled.”

“You are rash, Aunt Lesbia,” said Oliver. “Suppose letters do not arrive at such intervals?”

“Then I must say that they have not been forwarded,” said his aunt with a laugh. “They are waiting for me at home.”

“Why should other pupils have preference over Clemence?” said Sir Roderick.

“They may make a definite application,” said Lesbia, in an incidental tone.

“I did not think about vacancies,” said Juliet. “I am so undignified. And I do not know about them. Perhaps mere space does not attract my attention. Or I may be used to it.”

“We have plenty of room,” said her husband. “We are not running the school at full numbers.”

“Lucius, you have even less dignity than I have. And it is not true that people have nothing to fear, if they speak the truth. They have everything to fear. That is the reason of falsehood. And now we fear that they will not send Sefton to us. Why should they when there is a vacancy?”