The Man Who Did the Right Thing: A Romance
an agreeable gentleman of agricultural and sporting tastes, who, because
of his occasional remonstrances and enforcement of discipline, was known
as "Snarley Yow or the Dog Fiend." Then there were "Rosie" Walrond and
Ted Parsons. (The others do not matter in this narrative: they merely
served as chorus and acclaimers of the witticisms of the elder boys.
They were all nice to look at, all well-mannered and all well-dressed.)
"Rosie" Walrond was a young man--older than he looked--with wavy flaxen
hair and mocking grey eyes, and an extremely cynical manner overlying an
exceedingly kind heart.
_Walrond_: "Hullo! Here's _Brentham_, the rescuer of beleaguered
Gospellers. We've got a grudge against you. You came here months ago
and were closeted with Spavins and never gave us a look-in. And we were
dying to hear all about the elopement and its sequel. We were prepared
to subscribe to a wedding present for a teller of good stories...."
Then he added: "D'you admire my grotto?"
Brentham, after the necessary greetings and introductions, strode up to
"Rosie's" desk. Its ledges and escarpments were piled with rock
specimens on which tattered, brown, and half-decipherable labels had
been pasted.
"_My mineral specimens_ ... from" (he checked himself) ... "from East
Africa! Then you _never_ sent them on?"
"My _dear_ chap! Where was I to send them to? The Consular Mail
bags--two of them--arrived here all right, addressed to me, but nary a
letter with them or any directions. Also two skulls which, as you see,
decorate our mantelpiece, and which I am proposing to have mounted in
silver at Snarley's expense for our Departmental Dinner. Meantime, I
have arranged my desk as a grotto, in spite of the office cleaner's
objections...."
_Brentham_: "I suppose the letter of directions went astray. I asked
you to send the rocks to the School of Mines and the skulls to the
Natural History Museum. However, I'll take them all away presently in a
cab."
"But _not_ the skulls, I beg, just as we were being initiated into Devil
worship by Snarley, who has learnt the Black Mass...."
"Yes, the skulls, too. They're most important----"
"But so are _we_," said Parsons.
Then followed half an hour of chaff, out of which Roger gleaned no grain
of information as to his own probable fate and was too diffident to ask
outright if any decision as to his return had been arrived at. He
accepted an invitation to dine with the Department at the Cheshire
Cheese and meet Arthur Broadmead; then drove to the School of Mines in
Jermyn Street, handed in his rocks and asked the Curator for a report on
them, at his leisure. After that, Professor Flower and the skulls;
which were those of two men of that Hamitic race colonizing the Happy
Valley. He had found them lying about on the outskirts of a village and
had received the careless permission of the villagers to take them away.
They might serve to determine the relationships of this incongruous
type.
*CHAPTER XVI*
*SIBYL AS SIREN*
In August, 1889, Lucy conveyed to Roger her belief that she was going to
have a child.
"But that is no reason you should not come down with me to Sibyl's place
in Scotland. You can't be going to have a baby till--till well on in
the winter, and meantime a stay in the Highlands will brace you up. Of
course as Sibyl is in mourning she can only have a very small house
party--just two or three men like myself to shoot the grouse, rabbits
and stags. I don't suppose there will be any women there except her
aunt and you." Lucy acquiesced unwillingly.
She was living once more with her parents, while Roger's plans were so
unsettled. The rooms at Hankey's had been given up, and on his frequent
journeys to London--mainly on Sibyl's business--he slept at Aunt
Pardew's Hotel in Great Ormond Street, where they made him very
comfortable. He had taken Lucy over to Engledene twice in July--once he
had left her there a whole afternoon, _tete-a-tete_ with the still
languid young widow. On that occasion he had purposely ridden over to
Tilehurst to see Mr. Baines with more news--sent on by Callaway from
Unguja--about Ann Anderson and the restoration of Hangodi station, and
what the Mission proposed to do in regard to a memorial grave-stone. It
tickled his sense of humour that he should improve his acquaintance with
John's father and thus allay any local feeling against Lucy: his visits
there not only cheered the Aerated Waters' manufacturer, but they
enraged Mrs. Baines.
She was obliged all the time to keep locked up in her bedroom, and this
caused Eliza to get out of hand.
But so far, the hope of a friendship growing up between his wife and his
one-time sweetheart had little encouragement from either. Sibyl, not
wishing to fall out with Roger, declared she _tried_ to like Lucy. Yet
when other people were present she somehow brought out her rusticity and
simplicity, or she adopted towards her a patronizing manner which was
evident even to the not very acute senses of Roger's wife.
The visit to Glen Sporran Lodge did not improve their relations. Lucy
in matters of dress was by no means without taste or discernment, but
she was quite ignorant of the modernest modes. She had no idea that a
stay in the Highlands--even in 1889--involved a special wardrobe: short,
kilted skirts and high-buttoned leggings, boots, or spats for the day's
adventures--going, to meet the guns, tramping over the moors, picnics
when the wet weather permitted, and all the shifts for facing a good
deal of rain without looking forlorn or ridiculous. Trailing skirts and
wet weather were irreconcilable; so were yachting and a silk dress.
Perpetual sitting indoors in a town dress, over a turf fire, and reading
novels provoked sarcasms not only from Sibyl but from the tart tongue of
Aunt Christabel; who wasn't at all inclined to spare Lucy.
What had that good-looking Roger with _such_ a career before him had in
his mind that he should throw himself away on this village
schoolmistress? She did not care, either, for Sibyl's new infatuation
for Roger; would have liked to keep them well apart. The distant
cousinship was not through her or her sister, Mrs. Grayburn, but through
Roger's mother and Colonel Grayburn. Sibyl, when her year of mourning
was up, had much better marry again into the peerage; and if she wanted
a smart man as Agent--for land-agents of the middle-class-bailiff type
were "passes de mode" on all _big_ estates ... well, there was Willowby,
Willowby Patterne (a nephew-in-law of Aunt Christabel), who really might
very well do for the post. Willowby had been very wild, had run through
much of his own money and his unsuitable wife's--they were never asked
out together. But he was a first-class shot, had been to Canada with
the Duke of Ulster, knew a lot about blood-stock, had tried farming and
ranching and would be quite all there helping Sibyl entertain her house
parties and giving an eye to the manly education of James--Aunt
Christabel did not countenance Sibyl's silly freak of imposing the name
of "Clitheroe" on the little Lord Silchester.
Lucy had the greatest regard for economy and always wanted to save Roger
from any unnecessary expenditure. She remembered that she had come to
him without a dowry and that his future financially was very uncertain.
So that she had not taken him at his word, "Spend what you like," at the
Sloane Street shops when they were last up in town together. She had
only brought two evening dresses with her to Glen Sporran, and one of
them a plain black silk. After they had become familiar to the eye,
Sibyl had offered to lend some of _her_ gowns, but had done it in such a
way that Lucy's pride was touched and she declined, with an unwonted
sparkle in her eye and a turning of the rabbit on the stoat. Sibyl
then, half amusedly, dropped this method of annoyance and openly praised
Mrs. Brentham for her simplicity of life and regard for economy.
All this was rather amusing to the speculative and speculating Sir
Willowby Patterne who arrived at Glen Sporran a fortnight later than
Roger and Lucy. He must then have been about thirty. As you surmise
from his name, he was descended from a famous mid-nineteenth century
baronet. His grandfather (in diplomacy) married a Russian lady of the
Court after the Napoleonic wars when Russians were in the fashion. But I
think it wholly unfair to attribute to this alliance the curious vein of
cruelty which ran through his descendants and which in Willowby's father
was slaked by the contemporary British field sports. This father died
from the envenomed bite of an impaled badger, and in Willowby's case
there was a long minority; so that he started at twenty-one--already a
subaltern in the Guards--with quite a respectable fortune to "blue." He
had been a vicious, tipsy boy at Eton and did not improve as he grew
older. One thing that developed with him into a mania was the love of
killing. He had seen a little service in the Sudan, but disgusted his
brother officers by his exultation over the more gory episodes in
skirmishes (he generally kept out of battles), and by his interest in
executions and floggings. Owing to family influence he was for a very
brief time in the suite of a travelling Royalty; but an episode in the
garden of a Lisbon hotel, when he with a friend was seen worrying a cat
to death with two bull-terriers--and laughing frenziedly the while--put
an end to that appointment. He had had some success on the turf and in
steeplechase riding, and over shooting pigeons at Monte Carlo; had
betrayed quite a number of trusting women--including his wife; but
nevertheless was rather popular still in Society, especially the society
of rich, idle women, seeking after sensation without scandal. What
there was about him, save his faultless tailoring and evil reputation to
attract women, a man like Brentham could not understand. His face was
thin and he had those deep ugly lines around the mouth, that tightness
of skin over the temples and jaw, the thin lips and thin hair, aquiline
nose, and thin capable hands that go with cruelty and pitilessness. But
that women _did_ run after him, there was no denying; though at this
time his wife was shudderingly seeking grounds for divorce, or at any
rate separation, which would satisfy a male judge and jury.
Roger enjoyed the shooting with rifle and shot-gun, and his dislike of
Willowby was a little tempered by the latter's unwilling admiration of
his marksmanship. I forget whether in August-September you fish for
salmon in Scotland with a rod and line, but if so you may be sure
Captain Brentham, to whom field sports of all kinds came as second
nature, displayed no less prowess in that direction. Moreover Willowby
tried to be civil to his deputy host because he was very much drawn to
big-game shooting in East Africa and thought Roger could put him up to
the right place, right time of year, and right strings to pull.
But when the day's sport was done and they had bathed and changed and
laid themselves out for a jolly evening, Roger began to be nervous and
sensitive about Lucy: sometimes to wish she would not open her mouth; at
others to yearn for her to show some brilliance in conversation. Her
little naivetes of speech and turns of phrase which seemed so amusing
and even endearing in Africa, or to an admiring, bucolic audience at
Aldermaston, or an indulgent sister-in-law at Farleigh Vicarage, here
withered into imbecilities under the mocking glance or the bored
incomprehension of Sibyl, and the cool, eyeglass stare of Willowby
Patterne. Sibyl, also, was afflicted with deafness when Lucy ventured
her inquiries at breakfast as to health or the state of the weather.