The haunted house
at the suggestion that his son would not have to leave him permanently
just yet, or have to attempt to rejoin him during the holidays under
the very difficult conditions of war-time. Of course, John would go to
school a little late, but he comforted himself by remembering that,
after all, he would have the boy with him so much longer, and that was
a great delight. The delay postponed for the lad one great advantage,
but it gained him others. It was a very good thing for a young
Englishman to have known other countries and other languages well as a
boy, and things would right themselves somehow.
So it went on through the better part of ’fifteen. Remittances came
sufficiently often and of sufficient amount to keep things just barely
going; but no more. Victory was due almost any day—though, it’s true,
it was getting late. Towards the end of the year Henry Maple began
to feel he knew not what difference in his gentle vigour and in his
hopefulness. It was as though the world were losing its taste.
He put it down to the war—but it was not the war. 1916 went by, and
that internal enemy, whatever it was, took more and more of the man’s
life. Yet he put it down to nothing but the restrictions and fatigues
and anxieties of the time. The progress of the disease was slow, his
son hardly noticed it. To boys of his age a man of over fifty seems
very old, and that his father should now no longer be able to take the
long walks he had, or to read quite so long at a time, seemed to him
nothing but the natural process of age.
So it went on for two years more. Twice Henry had made the resolution
to get back home to see if—late as it was—the boy couldn’t be got to
his school. Twice he had abandoned that resolution. The increasing
difficulties of travel appalled him, and it must be admitted that a
stronger motive was his clinging to John’s companionship. His brother’s
urgent appeals to him not to move, the assurance that he was better
where he was, and sundry hints in the letters, hints which escaped
the censorship, that England might not be quite secure confirmed his
lethargy. His increasing weakness did the rest. He would wait till the
war was over—still confident that it would be over “almost any time
now,” and over in the right way.
* * * * *
On the 2nd May, 1918, not for the first time, but hardly for more than
the second time in Henry Maple’s life, he was pulled up sharply against
reality. A telegram came from Hilda, saying that William had died
suddenly—a letter would follow.
The shock fell on a man much nearer death than either he or his child
had imagined. He went down a further step in the descent out of this
life. He had been really fond of his brother; too grateful for a
generosity that had been very much more like an investment; and he was
bound—as such natures are—by the common memories of childhood.
But there was a good side even to that, and it put some light into the
mind of the dying man—for dying he now was, though slowly. After all,
John was the heir. William had died childless. John was the heir: not
only to dear Rackham and its impoverished fields, but to that solid
fortune which William had created—always subject, of course, to Hilda’s
life-rights: that was only just.
Henry honestly admitted to himself that he had never liked Hilda; she
was too loud for him. He used to say to himself, that she was not quite
a lady. But he would be just; of course she ought to have the usufruct
of the greater part as long as she lived. It was only right. Never
mind: John was the heir. Henry knew of himself, by this time, that he
was dying: but John was the heir, and all was well. The boy was nearly
eighteen, they must be thinking of the University soon: the war could
not go on for ever; and in a way it was a sort of providence, was it
not, that poor William should have gone when he did? And yet, no, that
was a thought he must put away. William would have looked after the
boy, anyhow.... It had better be Oriel. He did not know how Oriel stood
now, but he had been at Oriel himself, and that was reason enough.
Oriel it should be. He had everything arranged.
He made no doubt at all as to what William’s will would be, though he
had been too delicate to discuss it with him those five years before,
when they had last met; it would be the normal will of an enriched,
childless younger son standing thus in a landed family; there would be
the life interest for Hilda—perhaps large—but the rest of the income
would accumulate for the boy until he was of age; and meanwhile there
would be an allowance for his education. Perhaps Hilda would be made
guardian; he would regret it, but he did not mind. He could not think
long on these things: he could not concentrate. He awaited the papers.
Instead of the papers, only a couple of rare letters came through
from his sister-in-law, but all that late summer of 1918 went by,
with the war now at last manifestly closing, the turn of the tide,
the Armistice. At the end of the year Hilda herself, too soon after a
message announcing her coming, was in the sick man’s room.
She stayed exactly two days in the little house on the slope of the
Jura, just gracious to her nephew, just sufficiently affectionate to
her brother-in-law, and no more. Mrs. William Maple was a business
woman, and she had come to talk business.
And the business was this. William Maple had left everything to her
absolutely. That was the first point. Yes? (putting up her hand) surely
he did not suspect her? She would do her duty, and she knew what her
duty was. But so far as the legal terms of the will went, there it was.
That was how it stood. It was not her doing. She had known nothing
about it till it was read. Henry must remember it was her husband’s
money, and, for her part, she thought he had done rightly.
So much for that. Now about Rackham.
She changed her tone somewhat when she came to this. She was not
exactly ashamed, but she was just a trifle embarrassed. She owed it
to herself to do what she had to do, but she did not like doing it.
However, these things have to be done, and she was as brief as she was
clear.
Rackham was gone; hopelessly gone; William had spared his brother the
worry of too much detail. He had very generously provided much more,
really, than the difference between the rents and the interest could
possibly have covered; she had all the papers in due order, and she
had brought with her the accountancy document with a mass of other
papers, which her sick brother-in-law had neither the energy nor the
clearness of mind to follow. He listened patiently as she spoke—yet not
despairingly. He still had something of that hopefulness in him which
had been at once the curse and the alleviation of his not unhappy but
most unfortunate life: for such men trouble rather their descendants
than themselves.
Hilda made the position plain enough. If she had been—what she thanked
God she was not—a cold, calculating sort of person, there would have
been nothing for it but to sell Rackham; it was not entailed, and even
so, she would have lost thousands on the deal. But she was not like
that. She assured him she was not like that. She was willing to lose
and to take Rackham over as it stood in cancellation of all debts. She
was glad to make the sacrifice. She would not dream of disturbing his
illness with pressure of any kind. A will of his in her favour was one
way. If he disliked that, she wished to be generous; she would make it
a purchase. She would accept it against the debt.
Henry heard her, and he saw no way out.
“You will do the right thing by the boy,” he said. “He’s the only
child. Hilda, you will do the right thing, of course?”
She assured him of that; but what the right thing meant was left vague,
as everything had been left vague in Henry Maple’s life. It mattered
little anyhow, she thought; Rackham was hers to dispose of, and there
was still long life before her. The right thing by the boy meant, let
it be hoped, some regard for his proper upbringing: then, of course, he
would stand somehow vaguely at Rackham, so long as Rackham was their
home, as the heir. So let it stand at that.
* * * * *
When the end came (it was the foul winter of ’19 that killed him) it
came rapidly enough. But just before that end Henry Maple rallied
singularly in intelligence and decision. It was like that little return
of the flood in certain heavens before the final ebb. It was as though
he had a task to perform.
Such men postpone: but now there could be no postponement. He spoke to
the boy.
“John,” he said, “you know that I have been very ill, and you have
seen me getting worse.” He looked at the tall boy—the tall young man,
he seemed, for the first time, in his father’s eyes; strong in
his eighteen years—and understood how true it is that children are a
mitigation of the memory of death. Something far stronger than his own
youth was there: as tender, but more sturdy, and (he secretly hoped)
more obstinate.
“Yes, Papa,” said John. He took his father’s hand where it lay upon the
rug of the invalid chair, as a woman might have done. “But you will get
better.”
Henry Maple slightly shook his head.
“I have not told you—I have not allowed any of these good people here
to tell you—the doctor was quite right; he knew all about it from the
beginning, and he tells me that it is coming to the end.”
For the first time in his young life John Maple felt that shock of
emotion which suddenly whitens the face, and he knew that his heart
had stopped beating for the moment. He could not prevent a convulsive
clutch at his father’s hand. The old man looked at him with all the
affection of the past in his eyes.
“Sometimes, John dear,” he said, “I think I have not given you a fair
chance. Then I say to myself that, after all, it was the war, and we
were wiser to stay where we were. It has been very happy here.”
“It has, Papa,” said John.
“You have not been lonely, boy?”
“Never,” answered John, truthfully enough. “I like our friends here,
and the two Englishmen as much as any. Charles is going to Oxford next
term....” Then he stopped abruptly. It was amazing to him that he had
forgotten in those few words the blow that had fallen, and suddenly, in
spite of himself, he began to cry. His father stroked his hand.
“It does no harm to cry, boy. It’s all the better. You will feel it
less later. It had to come. But I have a great deal to tell you. You
know we have become much poorer?”
“Well, yes, of course, Papa. I don’t know much about these things, but
we have lacked nothing.”
“No, dear boy, but it is not Rackham. Do you remember Rackham well? You
must—you were over thirteen, and big for your age, when you left it.”
“Yes, Papa,” said John, still sobbing. “I remember Rackham!”
“Well, John, it is very difficult to say, but I will try and say it.
Technically—legally—I suppose that is the right word—Rackham is not
mine any more.”
The boy looked bewildered. That Rackham had been theirs, his father’s,
and his father’s father’s, and so on, and would be his in his turn,
this was a thing he had taken for granted as part of the universe. That
idea had no connotation of wealth in his mind. It was the very stuff
of his thoughts. The Maples and Rackham were one thing.
“It could not be helped. I did my best. You know, land went to
pieces.... Your uncle was very generous; he was, really. We should not
have been here, even, but for him. Honestly, John, your Aunt Hilda has
been generous too. I can’t deny that.”
“What do you mean by generous, Papa?” said the young man, a little
hardly.
“Why, my dear,” the other answered, sighing, “I owed her husband, and