The Man Who Did the Right Thing: A Romance
sallow-like and thin; and the miller told old Mrs. Bunsby of the general
shop at Theale; and Mrs. Bunsby, wanting badly a supply of ginger beer,
for the weather was getting warm and Oxford undergraduates sometimes
pushed their walking tours as far as the Kennet Valley--Mrs. Bunsby
walked over to _John Baines & Co._ that very afternoon to give an order
for four dozen and mentioned the fact of "pore Master John's widow"
having come back to her home "with a noo 'usband."
The assistant who registered the order for delivery in their next round,
after Mrs. Bunsby left slipped into Mr. Baines's "libery," and
half-whispered the news of Lucy's return. When, soon afterwards, Mrs.
Baines came into the dining-room to preside over the tea table, he--(he
looked very aged--my astral body floating over the scene felt a twinge
of pity for him; in his own dull way he had been fond and proud of his
only son and worked to provide him with a competency--some day)--he,
with some preparatory clearing of the throat, said: "Er ... Hrhm.... Er
... Lucy's back, I hear...."
"Indeed?" replied his wife swiftly. "Where? Bridewell? That's where
she _ought_ to be...."
"I dare say, my dear, but she's at Church Farm, her parents', you
know.... P'raps she could tell you something about John?..."
"P'raps she could. But I won't have her name mentioned in _this_ house.
_Do you understand_?"
Mr. Baines did, and took this intimation as final.
The next day was Sunday. Mrs. Baines spent much of the day (as she had
decided she could not go to chapel) communing in prayer with her Maker
in the bedroom fastness. Some of the prayers heard by the frightened
Eliza through the keyhole sounded more like objurgations, and the
Scripture readings were the minatory passage directed by the Minor
Prophets against harlots and light women.
After two days of Aldermaston Lucy had quite recovered her spirits--she
had felt rather depressed at Hankey's Mansions and not at all lightened
at heart by her week of shopping under Aunt Pardew's furtive guidance
and rather checked congratulations. On the Monday morning she was
standing with her parents and Clara in front of the beautiful old farm
house, inhaling the scents of May, revelling with the eye over the
landscape beauty she had so often recalled to herself in Africa. Farmer
Josling had repeatedly given expression to the pleasure he had derived
from the looks, manner, and hand-grip of his son-in-law, and Mrs.
Josling still blushed and laughed at the remembrance of his having
kissed her cheek. They could not help the gratification of feeling that
their daughter's second marriage was into a social stratum worthy of her
looks, her superior education and their hopes for her....
Clara, walking away to glance at the bee-hives, called back to the
group, "Here's Mrs. Baines coming up from the road."
Instinctively the parents withdrew into the porch of the house, leaving
their daughter to meet Mrs. Baines for the first few minutes alone, with
no other listeners to the sad story she had to tell. Lucy, like the
bird fascinated by the snake, remained where she was, her fingers
playing with a pansy she had just picked. Mrs. Baines, all in black,
with black plumes to a large bonnet and black gloves, walked slowly and
consideringly up to the spell-bound Lucy. When she was close to her she
said: "_What ... have ... you done ... with ... my ... son?..._"
"Oh! I ... I ... haven't you heard?" stammered Lucy.
"I _have_ heard ... and I've guessed much _more_ than I've heard....
_You ... you harlot--you adulteress--you--you strumpet!_" roared Mrs.
Baines, who had been cooking her vengeance and rehearsing this scene
with a dictionary, during the last twenty-four hours. And forthwith
before Lucy could reply or any one intervene she had dealt her two
terrific boxes on the ears, first on one side and then on the other.
Lucy fell on to the pansy bed, temporarily stunned. Mr. Josling,
scarcely able at first to believe ears and eyes, rushed out with a roar
like a bull, picked up Mrs. Baines round her iron stays, as though she
weighed no more than a wisp, ran round to the other side of the house
where there was a great horse trough full of water, and soused in this
the head and huge plumed bonnet of the angry woman. And again, giving
her time to catch her breath, he plunged her head and bonnet beneath the
water. Then, standing her on her feet, he said, "_There! that'll_ cool
your hot blood. That is some return for your half-killing my
daughter--you _blasted she-tiger, you_ ... Be _off_! Or I'll set the
dogs on you.... I'll..."
"Father, _dear_," said Clara, crying for pity and rage over the hapless
Lucy, yet careful of appearances: "Father _dear, don't_ shout so! For
goodness' sake, let the old witch go, and don't attract everybody's
attention. What ever _will_ the neighbours think! Here!" she said,
thrusting on Mrs. Baines the umbrella she had brought and dropped on the
garden path at the moment of the assault, "be off with you, you wicked
old woman. It's a mercy father ain't killed you, he's that strong. And
if you've done any real harm to my sister, we'll soon let you know and
have you up before the courts, you _wicked old snivelling psalm-singin'
Methody_!"
Mrs. Baines said nothing to this counter-attack. She drained the water
from her plumes with her fingers, put her flopping bonnet as straight as
was possible, pressed the water from her shoulders, and made some
attempt to wipe her face with a handkerchief; and then, summoning all
her strength and resolution (for in reality she was much shaken and near
collapse), she walked firmly past them, uttering never a word, walked
slowly down the garden path, turned to the right and contrived not to
halt on her way back to the station till she was well out of their
sight. They were a little over-awed by her dignity.
It was decided--and Lucy when she could speak implored them to adopt
this negative course--not to write to Roger, and as far as possible not
to talk of this painful scene to any neighbour. But to keep it from
country gossip was an impossibility. This, that, or the other farm
servant had seen it, from the rafters of a barn in repair, from the
stables, from the dairy window; and so the treatment old Mrs. Baines had
served out to her former daughter-in-law became noised abroad,
penetrated from the kitchen and still-room of Engledene House to its
mistress's dressing-room. A vague rumour of it even reached the African
Department of the Foreign Office and Molyneux publicly shrugged his
shoulders in Sir Mulberry Hawk's room. The Carnarvons at Highclere heard
a perversion of it--rather a humorous one--from one of their farmer
tenants, and reconsidered their idea of asking Brentham and Mrs.
Brentham over to a week-end party to relate some of their extraordinary
experiences. The Vicar of Farleigh Wallop realized that something of
the kind had occurred to interrupt his musings on the arrangements of
the streets in Calleva Atrebatum, and when he drove over with Maud to
make the acquaintance of his daughter-in-law--now convalescent and
thankful to find the drum of the worst smacked ear had not been
split--he was merely coldly polite and expressed very little interest in
missionary questions. Indeed he took no interest in Christian Missions
after 700 A.D. Up to that time he reckoned--more or less--they had been
spreading the ideas of Imperial Rome, of Roman civilization.
Roger, however, though he commented little on the episode of the
assault, and felt in every way the least said, soonest mended, borrowed
his father-in-law's riding-horse and rode early one morning over to
Tilehurst. He entered the factory, of design, just as Mr. Baines was
about to take his seat in the office and run his eyes over the day's
orders. "Oh, don't be alarmed!" he said to Mr. Baines, who was
instinctively about to withdraw, guessing his visitor's identity. "I'm
not a violent heathen like your wife. Sit down and let us talk this
over like sensible men."
He then put the matter very plainly before Mr. Baines.
Mrs. Baines, summoned by half-fearful, half-exultant Eliza, had "locked
herself in her bedroom, she 'ave an' ast me to go for the police!"
"Then you, too," said Roger to the startled Eliza, "remain and hear what
I have to say. Since your termagant of a mistress refuses to come, you
shall repeat my words to her. You are, from what my wife tells me, an
old and trusted servant of the family" (Eliza bridled and pleated the
hem of her apron). "When she returns to sanity, you may get a chance of
saying a word to your mistress in season, even if her husband has not
the courage to do so. Tell her then, if she ever annoys or slanders or
upsets my wife in any way I will leave no stone unturned to punish her.
And if she appears at Church Farm or anywhere else again with the
intention of assaulting my wife I will knock her on the head like the
mad dog she is. Now you can leave us. But I trust also to you as an
honourable woman and one who was sincerely fond of poor John Baines, who
ought never to be connected with these hateful sayings and doings, not
to chatter about this business outside this house."
And Eliza did not. She was much impressed by Brentham's appeal. The
interview with John's father even ended in a kind of reconciliation. He
heard from Brentham for the first time the whole story, so far as it was
known, of the circumstances which led up to the attack on the station,
John's death, and Lucy's journey to the coast; of how her baby had died
and how ill she had been; of the Stotts, and of Ann Jamblin's obstinacy.
Roger purposely prolonged the interview. It was doing the miserable
father good, and was keeping Mrs. Baines a prisoner in her bedroom just
when she wanted to be busy at house-work.
Maud on her return from visiting the Joslings tightened her lips and
"went for" her father as he had never been truth-told before; so Mrs.
Baines, if she did harm to Lucy's good name and gave her nervous system
a nasty shock, also provoked good in other directions. A disturbance of
the kind seldom fails to clear the air and create a fresher atmosphere.
Maud reproached her father bitterly with his incivility to his eldest
son's wife; with his general indifference to the well-being of his
children, his selfish absorption in his archaeological work, his
unfairness to them in lavishing on it funds which should have been their
patrimony. She even issued a sort of ultimatum: the subsidies to the
Silchester Excavation fund must cease; the curate at Farleigh must be
given his conge and the Vicar--still able-bodied--carry out his own
Church duties: _or_ she would go away and earn her own living as a
secretary or something or other. And she was at once, and on his
authority, to ask Lucy to stay--with Roger, of course--for at least a
month. He gave in. Maud had deeper plans hidden under this surface
wrath. Roger was in difficulties with the Foreign Office, she guessed.
He had resigned from the Indian Army. He might at any time have to
forge a new career for himself and would want a little capital to start
with. She reckoned that her father having originally been a well-to-do
man and her mother having come to him with a substantial dowry, there
ought to be a least twelve thousand pounds to be divided between the
four of them. If that left her father almost entirely dependent on his
income--about five hundred a year--from the twin benefices of Farleigh
and Cliddesden, that would serve him right. He had no business to
squander his children's money--as it really was--on a work of excavation
which the County or the Nation should finance.
A little repentant and more than a little rheumatic--(besides, Roman