The Whirlpool
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Then came the memorable interview with his guardian on his twenty-first birthday. Harvey flinched and grew hot in thinking of it. What an ungrateful cur! What a self-sufficient young idiot! The Doctor had borne so kindly with his follies and vices, had taken so much trouble for his good, was it not the man's right and duty to speak grave words of counsel on such an occasion as this? But to counsel Mr. Harvey Rolfe was to be guilty of gross impertinence. With lofty spirit the young gentleman proclaimed that he must no longer be treated as a school-boy! Whereupon the Doctor lost his temper, and spoke with a particularly strong Hibernian accent—spoke words which to this moment stung the hearer's memory. He saw himself marching from the room—that room yonder, on the ground-floor. It was some small consolation to remember that he had been drinking steadily for a week before that happened. Indeed, he could recall no scene quite so discreditable throughout the course of his insensate youth.
Well, he had something like two thousand pounds. Whether he had looked for more or less he hardly knew, or whether he had looked for anything at all. At one-and-twenty he was the merest child in matters of the world. Surely something must have arrested the natural development of his common-sense. Even in another ten years he was scarcely on a level, as regards practical intelligence, with the ordinary lad who is leaving school.
He at once threw up his medical studies, which had grown hateful to him. He took his first taste of foreign travel. He extended his reading and his knowledge of languages. And insensibly a couple of years went by.
The possession of money had done him good. It clarified his passions, or tended that way. A self-respect, which differed appreciably from what he had formerly understood by that term, began to guard him against grossness; together with it there developed in him a new social pride which made him desire the acquaintance of well-bred people. Though he had no longer any communication with the good old Doctor, Amy frequently wrote to him, and in one of her letters she begged him to call on a family in London, one of whose younger members lived at Greystone and was Amy's friend. After much delay, he overcame his bashfulness, and called upon the worthy people—tailored as became a gentleman at large. The acquaintance led to others; in a short time he was on pleasant terms with several well-to-do families. He might have suspected—but at the time, of course, did not—that Dr Harvey's kindly influence had something to do with his reception in these houses. Self-centred, but painfully self-distrustful, he struggled to overcome his natural defects of manner. Possibly with some success; for did not Lily Burton, who at first so piqued him by her critical smile, come to show him tolerance, friendliness, gracious interest?
Lily Burton!—how emptily, how foolishly the name tinkled out of that empty and foolish past! Yet what a power it had over him when he was three and twenty! Of all the savage epithets which he afterwards attached to its owner, probably she merited a few. She was a flirt, at all events. She drew him on, played upon his emotions, found him, no doubt, excellent fun; and at last, when he was imbecile enough to declare himself, to talk of marriage, Lily, raising the drollest eyes, quietly wished to know what his prospects were.
The intolerable shame of it, even now! But he laughed, mocking at his dead self.
His mind's eye beheld the strange being a year later. Still in good clothes, but unhealthy, and at his last half-crown; four and twenty, travelled, and possessed of the elements of culture, he had only just begun to realise the fact that men labour for their daily bread. Was it the peculiar intensity of his egoism that so long blinded him to common anxieties? Even as the last coins slipped between his fingers, he knew only a vaguely irritable apprehension. Did he imagine the world would beg for the honour of feeding and clothing Mr. Harvey Rolfe?
It came back to him, his first experience of hunger—so very different a thing from appetite. He saw the miserable bedroom where he sat on a rainy day. He smelt the pawnshop. His heart sank again under the weight of awful solitude. Then, his illness; the letter he wrote to Amy; her visit to him; the help she brought. But she could not persuade him to go back with her to Greystone to face the Doctor. Her money was a loan; he would bestir himself and find occupation. For a wonder, it was found—the place at the Emigration Agency; and so, for a good many years, the notable Mr. Harvey Rolfe sank into a life of obscure routine.
Again and again his sister Amy besought him to visit Greystone. Dr Harvey was breaking up; would he not see the kind old man once more? Yes, he assured himself that he would; but he took his time about it, and Dr Harvey, who at threescore and ten could not be expected to wait upon a young man's convenience, one day very quietly died. To Amy Rolfe, who had become as a daughter to him, he left the larger part of his possessions, an income of nine hundred a year. Not long after this, Harvey met his sister, and was astonished to find her looking thin, pale, spiritless. What did it mean? Why did she gaze at him so sadly? Come, come, he cried, she had been leading an unnatural life, cloistered, cheerless. Now that she was independent, she must enjoy herself, see the world! Brave words; and braver still those in which he replied to Amy's entreaty that he would share her wealth. Not he, indeed! If, as she said, the Doctor meant and hoped it, why did he not make that plain in his will? Not a penny would he take. He had all he wanted. And he seemed to himself the most magnanimous of men.
Amy lived on at Greystone; amid friends, to be sure, but silent, melancholy; and he, the brother whom she loved, could spare her only a day or two once a year, when he chattered his idle self-conceit. Anyone else would have taken trouble to inquire the cause of her pallor, her sadness. He, forsooth, had to learn with astonishment, at last, that she wished to see him—on her deathbed.
He had often thought of her, and kindly. But he knew her not at all, took no interest in her existence. She, on the other hand, had treasured every miserable little letter his idleness vouchsafed; she had hoped so for his future, ever believing in him. When Amy lay dead, he saw the sheet of paper on which she had written the few lines necessary to endow him with all she left—everything 'to my dear brother'. What words could have reproached him so keenly?
His steps turned to the churchyard, where on a plain upright stone he read the names of his mother, of his father. Amy's grave was hard by. He, too, if he had his wish, would some day rest here; and here his own son would stand, and read his name, and think of him. Ah, but with no such remorse and self-contempt! That was inconceivable. The tenderness which dimmed his eyes would have changed to misery had he dreamed it possible that his own boy could palter so ignobly with the opportunities of life.
Upon these deep emotions intruded the thought of Alma. Intruded; for he neither sought nor welcomed his wife's companionship at such a moment, and he was disturbed by a perception of the little claim she had to be present with him in spirit. He could no longer pretend to himself that he loved Alma; whatever the right name for his complex of feelings—interest, regard, admiration, sexual attachment—assuredly it must be another word than that sacred to the memory of his parents, to the desires and hopes centring in his child. For all that, he had no sense of a hopeless discord in his wedded life; he suffered from no disillusion, with its attendant bitterness. From this he was saved by the fact, easy at length to recognise, that in wooing Alma he had obeyed no dictate of the nobler passion; here, too, as at every other crisis of life, he had acted on motives which would not bear analysis, so large was the alloy of mere temperament, of weak concession to circumstance. Rather than complain that Alma fell short of the ideal in wifehood, should he not marvel, and be grateful that their marriage might still be called a happy one? Happiness in marriage is a term of such vague application: Basil Morton, one in ten thousand, might call himself happy; even so, all things considered, must the husband who finds it just possible to endure the contiguity of his wife. Midway between these extremes of the definition stood Harvey's measure of matrimonial bliss. He saw that he had no right to grumble.
He saw, moreover, and reflected constantly upon it in these days, how largely he was himself to blame for the peril of estrangement which threatened his life with Alma. Meaning well, and thinking himself a pattern of marital wisdom, he had behaved, as usual, with gross lack of discretion. The question now was, could he mend the harm that he had done? Love did not enter into the matter; his difficulty called for common-sense—for rational methods in behaviour towards a wife whom he could still respect, and who was closely bound to him by common interest in their child.
He looked up, and had pleasure once more in the sunny sky. After all, he, even he, had not committed the most woeful of all blunders; though it was a mystery how he had escaped it. The crown of his feeble, futile career should, in all fitness, have been marriage with a woman worse than himself. And not on his own account did he thank protecting fortune. One lesson, if one only, he had truly learnt from nature: it bade him forget all personal disquietude, in joy that he was not guilty of that crime of crimes, the begetting of children by a worthless mother.
CHAPTER 2
Mrs. Morton felt a lively interest in Mrs. Rolfe's musical enterprise, and would have liked to talk about it, but she suspected that the topic was not very agreeable to her guest. In writing to Morton, Harvey had just mentioned the matter, and that was all. On the second day of his visit, when he felt much better, and saw things in a less troubled light, he wished to remove the impression that he regarded Alma's proceedings with sullen disapproval; so he took the opportunity of being alone with his hostess, and talked to her of the great venture with all the good humour he could command. Mrs. Morton had seen two notices of Alma's debut; both were so favourable that she imagined them the augury of a brilliant career.
'I doubt that,' said Harvey; 'and I'm not sure that it's desirable. She has made herself miserably ill, you see. Excitement is the worst possible thing for her. And then there's the whole question of whether professional life is right and good for a married woman. How do you think about it?'
The lady instanced cases that naturally presented themselves. She seemed to have no prejudice. Mrs. Rolfe appeared to her a person of artistic temper; but health was of the first importance; and then–
Harvey waited; but only a thoughtful smile completed the remark.
'What other consideration had you in mind?'
'Only a commonplace—that a married woman would, of course, be guided by her husband's wish.'
'You think that equivalent to reason and the will of God?' said Harvey jocosely.
'If we need appeal to solemn sanction.'
Rolfe was reminded, not unpleasantly, that he spoke with a woman to whom 'the will of God' was something more than a facetious phrase.
'I beg your pardon; let us say reason alone. But is it reasonable for the artist to sacrifice herself because she happens to have married an everyday man?'
Mrs. Morton shook her head and laughed.
'If only one know what is meant by the everyday man! My private view of him is rather flattering, perhaps. I'm inclined to think him, on the whole, not inferior to the everyday woman; and she—she isn't a bad sort of creature, if fairly treated. I don't think the everyday man will go very far wrong, as a rule, in the treatment of his wife.'
'You really believe that?' asked Harvey, with a serious smile.
'Why, is it such a heresy?'
'I should rather have thought so. One is so accustomed to hear the other view I mean, it's in the air. Don't think I'm asking your sympathy. I have always wished Alma to act on her own judgment; she has been left quite free to do so. But if the results seem worse than doubtful, then comes the difficulty.'
'To be settled, surely, like all other difficulties between sensible people.'
Mrs. Morton's faith was of enviable simplicity. She knew, as a matter of fact, that husbands and wives often found their difficulties insuperable; but why this should be so, seemed to her one of the dark and mournful enigmas of life. It implied such a lack not only of good sense, but of right feeling. In her own experience she had met with no doubt, no worry, which did not yield to tact, or generous endeavour, or, at worst, to the creed by which she lived. One solicitude, and one only, continued to affect her as wife and mother; that it could not overcome her happy temper was due to the hope perpetually inspired by her husband's love—a hope inseparable from her profoundest convictions. She and Morton differed in religious views, and there had come a grave moment when she asked whether it would be possible to educate her children in her own belief without putting a distance between them and their father. The doubt had disappeared, thanks to Morton's breadth of view, or facility of conscience; there remained the trouble in which it had originated, but she solaced herself with the fond assurance that this also would vanish as time went on. In the same mood of kindly serenity she regarded the lives of her friends, always hoping for the best, and finding it hard to understand that anyone could deliberately act with unkindness, unreasonableness, or any other quality opposed to the common good.
Rolfe had no desire of talking further about his private affairs. He had made up his mind on the points at issue, and needed no counsel, but the spirit of Mrs. Morton's conversation helped him to think tranquilly. The great danger was that he might make things worse by his way of regarding them. Most unluckily, Alma's illness had become connected in his imagination with the tragedy of the Carnabys; he could not keep the things apart. Hugh Carnaby's miserable doom, and the dark surmises attaching to his wife, doubtless had their part in bringing about a nervous crisis; why could he not recognise this as perfectly natural, and dismiss the matter? In spite of all reasoning, Alma's image ever and again appeared to him shadowed by the gloom which involved her friend—or the woman who was her friend. He knew it (or believed it) to be the merest illusion of his perturbed mind; for no fact, how trivial soever, had suggested to him that Alma knew more of the circumstances of Redgrave's death than she seemed to know. On the one hand, he was glad that Alma and Sibyl no longer cared to meet; on the other, he could not understand what had caused this cessation of their friendship, and he puzzled over it. But these idle fancies would pass away; they were already less troublesome. A long country walk with Morton, during which they conversed only of things intellectual, did him much good. Not long ago Morton had had a visit from an old Cambridge friend, a man who had devoted himself to the study of a certain short period of English history, and hoped, some ten years hence, to produce an authoritative work on the subject.
'There's a man I envy!' cried Rolfe, when he had listened to Basil's humorous description of the enthusiast. 'It's exactly what I should like to do myself.'
'What prevents you?'
'Idleness—irresolution—the feeling that the best of my life is over. I have never been seriously a student, and it's too late to begin now. But if I were ten years younger, I would make myself master of something. What's the use of reading only to forget? In my time I have gone through no small library of historical books—and it's all a mist on the mind's horizon. That comes of reading without method, without a purpose. The time I have given to it would have made me a pundit, if I had gone to work reasonably.'
'Isn't my case the same?' exclaimed Morton. 'What do I care! I enjoyed my reading and my knowledge at the time, and that's all I ever expected.'
'Very well—though you misrepresent yourself. But for me it isn't enough. I want to know something as well as it can be known. Purely for my own satisfaction; the thought of "doing something" doesn't come in at all. I was looking at your county histories this morning, and I felt a huge longing to give the rest of my life to some little bit of England, a county, or even a town, and exhaust the possibilities of knowledge within those limits. Why, Greystone here—it has an interesting history, even in relation to England at large; and what a delight there would be in following it out, doggedly, invincibly—making it one's single subject—grubbing after it in muniment-rooms and libraries—learning by heart every stone of the old town—dying at last with the consolation that nobody could teach one anything more about it!'
'I know the mood,' said Morton, laughing.
'I'm narrowing down,' pursued Harvey. 'Once I had tremendous visions—dreamt of holding half a dozen civilisations in the hollow of my hand. I came back from the East in a fury to learn the Oriental languages—made a start, you know, with Arabic. I dropped one nation after another, always drawing nearer home. The Latin races were to suffice me. Then early France, especially in its relations with England;—Normandy, Anjou. Then early England, especially in its relations with France. The end will be a county, or a town—nay, possibly a building. Why not devote one's self to the history of a market-cross? It would be respectable, I tell you. Thoroughness is all.'
When they were alone in the library at night, Morton spoke of his eldest boy, expressing some anxiety about him.
'The rascal will have to earn his living—and how? There's time, I suppose, but it begins to fidget me. He won't handle corn—I'm clear as to that. At his age, of course, all lads talk about voyages and so on, but Harry seems cut out for a larger sphere than Greystone. I shan't balk him. I'd rather he hadn't anything to do with fighting—still, that's a weakness.'
'We think of sending Wager's lad into the navy,' said Rolfe, when he had mused awhile. 'Of course, he'll have to make his own way.'
'Best thing you can do, no doubt. And what about his little sister?'
'That's more troublesome. It's awkward that she's a relative of Mrs Abbott. Otherwise, I should have proposed to train her for a cook.'
'Do you mean it?'
'Why not? She isn't a girl of any promise. What better thing for her, and for the community, than to make her a good cook? They're rare enough, Heaven knows. What's the use of letting her grow up with ideas of gentility, which in her case would mean nothing but uselessness? She must support herself, sooner or later, and it won't be with her brains. I've seriously thought of making that suggestion to Mrs. Abbott. Ten years hence, a sensible woman cook will demand her own price, and be a good deal more respected than a dressmaker or a she-clerk. The stomach is very powerful in bringing people to common-sense. When all the bricklayers' daughters are giving piano lessons, and it's next to impossible to get any servant except a lady's-maid, we shall see women of leisure develop a surprising interest in the boiling of potatoes.'
Morton admitted the force of these arguments.
'What would you wish your own boy to be?' he asked presently.
'Anything old-fashioned, unadventurous, happily obscure; a country parson, perhaps, best of all.'
'I understand. I've had the same thoughts. But one Ii to get over that kind of thing. It won't do to be afraid of life—nor of death either.'
'And there's the difficulty of education,' said Rolfe. 'If I followed my instincts, I should make the boy unfit for anything but the quietest, obscurest life. I should make him hate a street, and love the fields. I should teach him to despise every form of ambition; to shrink from every kind of pleasure, but the simplest and purest; to think of life as a long day's ramble, and death as the quiet sleep that comes at the end of it. I should like him not to marry—never to feel the need of it; or if marry he must, to have no children. That's my real wish; and if I tried to carry it out, the chances are that I should do him an intolerable wrong. For fear of it, I must give him into the hands of other people; I must see him grow into habits and thoughts which will cause me perpetual uneasiness; I must watch him drift further and further away from my own ideal of life, till at length, perhaps, there is scarce a possibility of sympathy between us.'
'Morbid—all morbid,' remarked the listener.
'I don't know. It may only mean that one sees too clearly the root facts of existence. I have another mood (less frequent) in which I try to persuade myself that I don't care much about the child; that his future doesn't really concern me at all. Why should it? He's just one of the millions of human beings who come and go. A hundred years hence—what of him and of me? What can it matter how he lived and how he died? The best kind of education would be that which hardened his skin and blunted his sympathies. What right have I to make him sensitive? The thing is, to get through life with as little suffering as possible. What monstrous folly to teach him to wince and cry out at the sufferings of other people! Won't he have enough of his own before he has done? Yet that's what we shall aim at—to cultivate his sympathetic emotions, so that the death of a bird shall make him sad, and the sight of human distress wring his heart. Real kindness would try to make of him a healthy ruffian, with just enough conscience to keep him from crime.'
'Theory for theory, I prefer this,' said Morton. 'To a certain extent I try to act upon it.'
'You do?'
'Just because I know that my own tendency is to over-softness. I have sometimes surprised my wife by bidding Harry disregard things that appealed to his pity. You remember what old Hobbes says: "Homo malus, puer robustus"? There was more truth in it in his day than in ours. It's natural for a boy to be a good deal of a savage, but our civilisation is doing its best to change that. Why, not long ago the lad asked me whether fishing wasn't cruel. He evidently felt that it was, and so do I; but I couldn't say so. I laughed it off, and told him that a fish diet was excellent for the brains!'
'I hope I may have as much courage,' said Harvey.
'Life is a compromise, my dear fellow. If the world at large would suddenly come round to a cultivation of the amiable virtues—well and good. But there's no hope of it. As it is, our little crabs must grow their hard shell, or they've no chance.'
'What about progress? In educating children, we are making the new world.'
Morton assented.
'But there's no hurry. The growth must be gradual—will be, whether we intend it or not. The fact is, I try not to think overmuch about my children. It remains a doubt, you know, whether education has any influence worth speaking of.'
'To me,' said Harvey, 'the doubt seems absurd. In my own case, I know, a good system of training would have made an enormous difference. Practically, I was left to train myself, and a nice job I made of it. Do you remember how I used to talk about children before I had one? I have thought it was the talk of a fool; but, perhaps, after all, it had more sanity than my views nowadays.'
'Medio tutissimus,' murmured Basil.
'And what about your girls?' asked the other, when they had smoked in silence. 'Is the difficulty greater or less?'
'From my point of view, less. For one thing, I can leave them entirely in the hands of their mother; if they resemble her, they won't do amiss. And there's no bother about work in life; they will have enough to live upon—just enough. Of course, they may want to go out into the world. I shall neither hinder nor encourage. I had rather they stayed at home.'
'Don't lose sight of the possibility that by when they are grown up there may be no such thing as "home". The word is dying out.'
Morton's pedantry led him again to murmur Latin–
'Multa renascentur quoe jam cecidere.'
'You're the happiest man I know, or ever shall know,' said Rolfe, with more feeling than he cared to exhibit.
'Don't make me think about Croesus, King of Lydia. On the whole, happiness means health, and health comes of occupation. In one point I agree with you about yourself: it would have been better if someone had found the right kind of work for you, and made you stick to it. By-the-bye, how does your friend, the photographic man, get on?'