A God and His Gifts (3 page)

“I am sure Hereward did not know,” said Joanna. “I believe I hardly knew myself. I am proud of you, Michael. And I see that our children must be more and more ashamed.”

“Well, I talk and think in my own way. We all have our ways of doing everything. And of course mine is not theirs. I often wonder how my children came about. It escapes me. I can't explain it.”

“Something may have come to them through me. Not from me. It has passed me over.”

“Yes, it has missed a generation. That is a thing that does happen. I know there were unusual people in your family, and that they had no recognition in their time. It rather bears out what I have said. Well, Galleon, and what do you say to my son's manner of life? What is your opinion of it?”

“Well, Sir Michael, if there happens to be necessity, it
does not involve anything manual,” said Galleon, making this clear.

“Well, I am not so sure. Scratching and scribbling and shuffling papers! It does that into the bargain.”

“Well, not to the point of soiling the hands, Sir Michael.”

“The ink and dust are equal to it, I should think.”

“Well, they may have their own suggestion, Sir Michael.”

“Would you like to write a book, Galleon?”

“Well, I have often thought of it, Sir Michael. The simplicity of it is before one's eyes, as it might seem.”

“Yes, it puts it into people's heads. I wonder I have never set my hand to it. It is a thing I shall never explain.”

“No doubt there is explanation in both cases, Sir Michael.”

“You mean you have not the time, and I have not the talent? Ah, I can read your thought, Galleon. I can often read people's minds. That might be useful to me, if I wrote. But the time is past. And one writer in a house is enough.”

“And the other pursuits are necessary, Sir Michael. To enable the writing to take place and the results to ensue.”

“Ah, you are indispensable, Galleon. Mr. Hereward's work depends on yours, and so we all depend on it,” said Sir Michael, again using his gift of reading minds. “Ah, we give you your due. Yes, you can go to your work, and so can he. Yes, your sister will go with you, Hereward. Ah, you have a helpmate in my Zillah. You have your comrade there. And I am glad to know it. It is a solace to me. I don't always feel you have sympathy in your home. I sometimes think we fail you there. And you do not fail us. You don't indeed. You have lifted a weight from us to-day. We respect work that does so much for us. If we have given another impression, it is a wrong one. My Joanna, our future is safe. We need not hide our joy. Galleon, can you imagine our son and daughter celebrating matters in this way?”

“It may not need such a feat of imagination, Sir Michael,” said Galleon, who knew that the pair in question were indulging in mimicry of the activity, as they went upstairs.

“Which of our parents is the greater character?” said Zillah, when they reached her brother's room.

“Pappa. Mamma is the greater person. How you protect me from them! From those arch enemies of the artist, parents and home. Where should I be without you? Where should any of us be?”

“So many of your readers must be parents, and more must live in a home. It is no wonder that your best work is too little known.”

“Ah, Zillah, I am content. All my work is my own. If I serve many thousands of people I am glad to know I serve them. It is no ignoble task. What comes from my brain comes from myself, and I would not disown it. My best work, as it is called, is no more deeply mine. And its serving fewer gives it no higher place. Everything springs from the same source. I feel it is the same. But we can't control our brains as we control our movements. When I am in the power of mine, I don't belong to myself. Well, you will be on guard to-day. No one must come to my door. Meals can be sent up, if there is need.”

The need arose, and Sir Michael heard the order given. “So the force is at work,” he said, as he came to the luncheon table. “But it must need fuel like anything else. And that could be supplied down here.”

“It breaks a train of thought to take part in ordinary talk,” said Zillah.

“Hereward does not take part in it. He sits like a stork with his mind elsewhere. And eats as if he was doing something else, as I suppose he is. But he has a life apart from his thought. He can't feed himself with a pen. And we must use a knife and fork, as he does. I don't see there is all that difference. You will say that
he feeds us all with his pen. Ah, ha, I forestalled you there. I took the words out of your mouth. There is not such a gulf between us.”

“It is natural that the words should be in our mouths. The thought must be in our minds.”

“Well, well, it is in yours, I know. It may be too seldom in mine. But it does not lessen my pride in my son. Why, I read things about him that quite take me aback. And I say to myself: ‘I am the father of this man. I gave him life. Whatever he has done, I have done myself in a way.' It is a serious thought. I am sobered by it.”

“You knew not what you did,” said his daughter.

“Well, no, it is true in a sense. And yet it is not, you know. Why, sometimes I understand him as well as anyone. Parts of his books have brought tears to my eyes. And I have not been ashamed of it. And I have laughed too. Why, I have thrown back my head and laughed until tears came of another kind, and I was quite glad no one was there to witness it. I have been lost to anything outside myself. I don't deny it.”

“That was when anyone might have witnessed it.”

“Oh, well, was it? So the funny parts are the best. Well, I should hardly have thought it. They seem more on anyone's level. And yet I am not sure, you know. I sometimes see light on things in a way. I might make more of myself, if I tried.”

“People would not like you to try,” said Joanna. “They think we make enough of ourselves. And they would see you trying and despise you.”

“Well, I should not care if they did. I don't always think as much of them as they believe. Why, when Hereward and Zillah talk, I often glimpse their hidden meanings, though I don't try to get the credit. It is as I have said. Indolence is my trouble. I might have been a different man without it.”

“We should all be different without our distinguishing
qualities,” said Zillah. “Not that our meanings are probably so deeply hidden.”

“Well, not from your father. There are games that two can play at. It does not do to forget it.”

“They are a good son and daughter,” said Joanna. “We would not have them changed. Ought not one of us to say it?”

“Joanna, if I saw a hint of change in either of them, I should be distressed. It would be a grief to me. I would not alter one jot or one tittle of their qualities. I am not equal to them. I look up to them. My heart swells at the thought of them. They are superior to their father. If ever a man was thankful for his wife and children, I am that man. Well, Galleon, do you not feel I do well to be thankful?”

“No one could take exception to the feeling, Sir Michael.”

“I daresay you could see some cause for discontent.”

“No real one, Sir Michael. There are perhaps circumstances that might be found unexpected.”

“My son's doing work that you find so? You feel we should be mildly ashamed of it?”

“I should not use that word, Sir Michael. I see no disgrace in honest work. I need only adduce my own case. But in some we may look for a difference.”

“And you don't see it in this one? Well, I am a proud father, whether you believe it or not.”

“There seems no room for doubt of it, Sir Michael.”

“But you would not be proud in my place?”

“It is the place that might prevent it, Sir Michael.”

“Galleon, my son is a household word.”

“I have gathered that that is the position, Sir Michael.”

“And you hardly like to refer to it?”

“I do not often find it necessary, Sir Michael.”

“You would not betray us, unless you were obliged to?”

“I respect any private circumstance in the family, Sir Michael.”

“This has surely become public.”

“It could hardly fail to in the end, Sir Michael.”

“So it would be no good to deny it.”

“It is hardly a case for actual suppression, Sir Michael,” said Galleon, as he moved away.

“Ah, Joanna, ‘a prophet is not without honour'. We can see that Hereward has too little in his home. I caught a glimpse of myself in Galleon. And I felt ashamed and resolved to do better.”

“He sees the disgrace in honest work, though he had to deny it. And how did the saying arise, if no one saw it? And how can it be seen, if it is not there? I wonder if I could see it, if I dared.”

“Well, I cannot and will not see it. If I were not proud and grateful, I should be less than a man. And I wish I did some honest work myself. I have come to wish it. I should be glad to be of help to someone. I envy Galleon, and he can hear me say it. Do you hear me, Galleon? I envy you for doing useful work in the world.”

“Work can only be done in the world, Sir Michael. There is no other locality for it. And you would envy a good many people, the larger number. Myself among them, as you say.”

“I see you don't believe me.”

“I know you believe yourself at the moment, Sir Michael.”

“Do you ever envy anyone?”

“Envy is one of the seven deadly sins, Sir Michael,” said Galleon with a smile. “I hope I should not yield to it.”

“Do you like to be envied yourself?”

“I might like a position that involved it, Sir Michael. It has not fallen to me. I have remained below it.”

“I have always felt that people below me must envy me,” said Joanna, in an undertone. “Of course I know they are not below. I wonder who ever thought they were. Again I think someone must have.”

“Do you take any interest in our actual life?” said
Zillah, as though her own interest in the other matters had failed.

“Oh, in Hereward's marriage?” said her father. “The hint of it has come before and meant nothing. And now there is no word of the woman. He can't be married without a wife, any more than the rest of us.”

“That is true. It is why it will make a difference.”

“Ah, it would to you, my poor girl. Your father knows it would. You would be the first to suffer.”

“Or the last,” said Joanna. “Or the one not to suffer at all. Hereward will marry without a wife as far as anyone can.”

“Well, I hope he will marry in one way or another. It would be a step forward for him and all of us. I should welcome his wife as a daughter. I should rejoice in his fulfilment. I have not got so little out of marriage myself, that I should regret it for my son. And it would be good to have descendants, Joanna, to have our own kind of immortality. I know you think we have no other. I leave the question myself as something beyond me.”

“I should be glad to have the descendants. I don't mind about the immortality. It is not of a kind that matters.”

“Well, well, the generations pass. We have to play our part. What do you feel about these questions, Galleon? Do you ever wish you were a married man?”

“Well, I see there is something to be said for it, Sir Michael. Perhaps more on the other side.”

“You would not like to have descendants?”

“I hardly know what they would do for me, Sir Michael. And I should have to do much for them. More than my resources warranted.”

“Why, they would grow up and work for you, Galleon.”

“They would grow up at my expense and work for themselves, Sir Michael. There would be no alternative. And so it would go on.”

“To think that we are all descendants!” said Joanna.
“I am sure I am above the average. I have never worked for myself. It does sound egotistic.”

“Well, I have worked for myself and others in managing things,” said Sir Michael. “I think it is a just claim.”

“Yes, Sir Michael. Though most work is for others,” said Galleon, leaving the matter there.

“I think all claims are just,” said Joanna. “That is why they are made. I have never met an unjust claim. I suppose it is because there are not any.”

“Now would aunt Penelope approve of this idleness, Emmeline?”

“No. Nor approve of anything. She cannot feel approval.”

“She wants you to get on. She is thinking of your future. With such neighbours as the Egertons we must keep our wits alive. Or we shall not hold our own with them.”

“I don't know what my own is. And it is better not to know. Then I shall not have to come into it.”

“You know Father wants you to be educated.”

“But then I should be different. And he seems to like me as I am.”

“So do we all. We don't want our little one altered. We want her to grow into her full self.”

“I believe I am that already. But it is best for people not to know it. They think more of me.”

“Oh, I can't think what to say to you. You must be a changeling. And you will have to live in the world, like everyone else.”

“No, not like everyone. Only like myself. That is all I shall try to do.”

“It may not be so easy. You won't always be sixteen.”

“I feel as if I should. And I think in a way I shall.”

“I am sometimes afraid you will.”

“You set me a good example. You won't always be twenty-five. You have already ceased to be it.”

“I forgot my age when Mother died. It was the only thing, if I was to remember yours. Oh, I know Aunt Penelope came to take her place. And has done so with Father, as far as it could be done. But it ended there,
and other things devolved on me. Oh, I don't mean I am not grateful to her. She takes Father off my mind. She does for him what I could not do. He does not see me as on his mental level. How can he, when I am not? We must be content to be ourselves. I did hope to be his right hand in other ways, and to be seen by him as such. But it was not to be. Aunt Penelope loomed too large. Not of set purpose; as the result of the difference between us. I am the first person to recognise it. Though Father's recognising it so soon made me a thought rueful I admit.”