The Man Who Did the Right Thing: A Romance
Out of fear of Queen Victoria, Sibyl thought to make friends at Court
and attest at the same time the "smallness" and "quietness" of her house
party by inviting for a week a lady of the Royal Household who was off
duty and at all times not unwilling to eat well and sleep softly at some
one else's expense. But she, also, was disconcerting (though no doubt a
pyramid of flawless chastity). She wore a single eyeglass through which
everything and everybody was scanned. At first she was disposed to be
very much interested in Roger, until she gathered he might not be
returning to Africa. She had friends who were casting in their lots
with Cecil Rhodes's ventures. To her mental vision, Africa was about
the size of an English county. A man in East Africa ought at any moment
to run up against that perfectly delightful creature, Rhodes, ... "the
dear Queen is getting _so_ interested in him" ... "was there gold by the
bye where Captain Brentham had been employed?" But when she learnt that
Sibyl's cousin was probably not resuming his post there and that this
very dull, oddly dressed woman was not Sibyl's secretary but Roger's
wife, a former missionary in East Africa, she quietly gave them both up
as much too much outside her own track through life ever to be of use or
interest again.
Another guest for a brief time was the Rev. Stacy Bream. Mr. Bream even
in those distant days was not--and did not behave like--the conventional
clergyman. He was the incumbent of some Chapel Royal or Chaplaincy
somewhere, wholly in the Royal gift and generally bestowed on some one
who had been for a brief period a bear-leader or College tutor to a
princeling going through a make-believe course of study at Oxford or
Cambridge. Mr. Bream, in order to take a line of his own, plunged
boldly into the world, even the half-world, for his congregation and his
confidants. He confessed and absolved the leading ladies of the stage
when they reached that period of ripe middle age in which husbands began
to be unfaithful and lovers shy and the lady herself felt just the
slightest dread of a hereafter. He came forward to marry, when
re-marriage was legal but not savoury--sooner than that the poor dears
should live in sin. He dealt--I dare say very kindly and
considerately--with scabrous cases of moral downfall that no one else
would touch. He was a well-known first-nighter and his evening dress so
nearly unclerical that you might have been pardoned for not spotting him
at once, in the crush room, for a parson, and he would have been the
first to pardon you. He always went where Society did in order to be
able at once to render first aid where morals had met with an accident.
He left town consequently in time for the grouse, occasionally handled a
gun--quite skilfully--and was very fond of games of chance in the
evening if the stakes were not too high.
Bridge had not then reached Great Britain. Where they would have played
Bridge ten years ago they played Baccarat, or Unlimited Loo, or Nap, or
Poker. Lucy only knew "Pope Joan" and had a horror of losing money over
cards and no capacity for mastering any card game, not even Snip Snap
Snorum. The Rev. Stacy Bream--who as much as any cleric might, stood in
lieu of a Spiritual director to Lady Silchester--called Lucy once or
twice "My dear che-ild" and then found her so uninteresting and
inexplicable that he ceased to study her any more.
So Lucy at last, in dread of snubs if she entered the battledore and
shuttlecock conversation or of revealing her utter ignorance of the ways
of smart society, fell silent at meal-times and after meals. When the
others played cards or roulette on a miniature green table, she would
read a book in a corner or steal away up to bed before the maids had
done her room for the night. And gradually she developed the red, moist
nose that comes to a woman who cries in secret, and there were wrought
other changes in good looks and figure attend ant on her condition. And
then one day, early in September, Roger, returning to his dressing-room
for a cigarette-case and to ascertain if Lucy was ready to start on an
excursion, found her on her bedroom sofa in a crisis of weeping. Sibyl
had summed up her makeshift costume--for a day's yachting--in one short
phrase.... This on top of having completely overlooked her existence at
yesterday's picnic lunch, and left her cupless and tealess at the late
tea which followed their return. "R--Ro--ger, oh dear Roger, _let_ me
go home! I'm only in _every one's_ way here. I never felt so stupid in
my life before. _I can't_ think what's the matter with me--it's the
feeling they all _despise me_--and--and--pity you for having made a fool
of yourself. Let me go home to mother--and Maud!..."
Roger consented at once. He felt full of remorse and pity, promised
soon to join her in the south, escorted her as far as Carlisle, and
arranged that kind Maud should meet her at Euston and take her home to
Aldermaston. The others were too utterly uninterested in her to listen
much to his explanation with its discreet allusion. She was a bore and
a wet blanket out of the way, and they could now settle down to enjoy
themselves. Sibyl, to keep up the fiction of being in mourning, wore
black and absented herself from most of the pleasure outings; going
about instead alone with Roger, to show him the ins and outs of the
estate and enable him to formulate plans for its profitable development.
Early in October, Captain Brentham saw young Lord Tarrington (heir to
the Earldom of Pitchingham and precis-writer to Lord Wiltshire). He was
told that Lord W. had given careful attention to his case. His Lordship
thoroughly appreciated his painstaking work for a year or more as Acting
Consul-General, but thought that under the circumstances it was better
he should not return to the scene of his former labours on the mainland.
H.L., however, though Captain Brentham had scarcely been more than an
officer selected for special service in Africa, would be pleased to
consider him favourably for the consular posts of Bergen or of
Baranquilla.
"I suppose you know where Bergen is?" added Lord Tarrington. "A little
bit near the North Pole--or is it North Cape? I always mix the two.
But it's in _Norway, very_ bracing climate, _awfully_ good sea-fishing,
and L350 a year. Or if you prefer heat, there's Baranquilla, northern
South America, _not_ a good climate, but the last man stood it for two
years before he succumbed to yellow fever ... and it's L550 a year and
two years count for three in service. Which is it to be? Make up your
mind soon, 'cos lots of fellows are on the waiting list--snap at
either."
Tarrington's tone, for all its bluff good nature sounded final. Roger
seeing his dreams of an African empire fade in that dingy room, all its
tones having sombred with twenty years' fog and smoke into shades of
yellow white and yellow brown, felt at first inclined to refuse
haughtily either consolation for the loss of Zangia. But a married man
and prospective father with very slight resources cannot permit himself
the luxury of ill-temper. So he replied civilly that he would think if
over and let Lord Tarrington know.
As he left the first floor of the building he crossed the path of the
august Secretary of State himself walking probably round the quadrangle
to the India Office. There was no look of recognition in his deep-set
eyes. How different from two and a half years ago when he had been
hailed by this statesman as an authority on East Africa far better worth
listening to than Mr. Bennet Molyneux, now noting down complacently in
his room below the fact that the Consulate at Zangia with its seven
hundred pounds a year was to be offered to the acting man, Mr. Spencer
Bazzard.
Brentham went down that evening--pretending he didn't care in the least
for this definite set-back--to Reading, and, chartering a fly, drove out
to Engledene. A rather late little dinner with Sibyl and Aunt Christabel
was followed by a long consultation with Sibyl in the Library.
Lady Silchester's plans had long been ready, though she seemed to
develop them as she spoke. "Become my agent, Rodge-podge, in place of
old Parkins. He's an out-of-date duffer. I'll either pension him off,
or better still send him to live on the Staffordshire property. He's
let that go down very much; it ought to yield twice its present rents.
I'll give you L700 a year, and there'll be all sorts of legitimate
pickings as well. You can have the Lodge at Englefield to live in. I'll
do it up for you. Lucy can live there and go on having babies for the
next ten years. I'm sure _I_ don't want to ask her to dinner or to
anything else, if she doesn't want to come. She needn't curtsy to me if
we meet, if it's _that_ she dislikes....
"But you've _great_ abilities, Roger. You've been _shamefully_ treated
by Lord W.... He's always tried to snub _me_ ... _I_ don't know why ...
I'll tell you _what_. I'll _run_ you. After all, I am a rich woman ...
now. You shall get into Parliament ... and be a great Imperialist, as
that seems to be going to become the fashion. What ... _what_ ... WHAT
a pity you married like that, all in a hurry! And you see it's done you
no good with the Nonconformist conscience and those stuffy old things at
the F.O. However, it's no good crying over spilt milk. _I'll_ make a
career for you!" And she looked at him with shining eyes, betraying her
palpable secret....
"This is awfully good of you, Syb," said Roger, not meeting her look.
"But do you think it is fair on others? Why not put in your father----?
Or one of your brothers?"
"_Rubbish_! Dad would make just as great a mess of the Silchester
estates--only on a far bigger scale--as he is doing over his three
hundred acres at Aldermaston. I think we'll send him up to care-take at
Glen Sporran and make him sell up the Aldermaston place. Helping him
with loans is like pouring money into--what do you pour it into when it
runs away? A sieve? And the two boys have both got jobs and are none
too bright, at that. Besides, it's no fun working with brothers, and
I'm going to throw myself heart and soul into the development of the
Estate. It'll be ... it'll be ... what's two and a third from
twenty-one? Well, at any rate, more than eighteen years before Clithy
comes of age. In that time we'll have raised the annual value of the
property to twice what it is now, and incidentally we'll have a glorious
time, influencing people, don't you know, getting up a new opposition in
Parliament, and making ourselves felt...."
"Well, in any case, it's awfully good of you ... _awfully_ ... somehow I
don't deserve it...."
"You don't, after the way you threw me over. But stick to me now,
through thick and thin, and"--she was going to have added impulsively,
"Oh, _Roger_, I _do_ love you, I can't help it," and perhaps have flung
herself on to a sofa with a burst of hysterical tears to salve all his
scruples, but quickly thought better of this and added rather tamely,
"And we'll make a great success of our partnership. And now we must go
and play backgammon or bezique or something with Aunt Christabel, or she
will come poking her nose in here to see what we're up to. How tiresome
the old are! It's only on account of what the Queen would say that I
keep her on here. She thinks you're 'dangerous' to my peace of mind,
Roger. But if I had mother here instead she would be equally boring,
and father can't bear to be separated from her, and the two of them
would be _unthinkable_."
Though some instinct told Roger Sibyl's scheme would never work, without
damage to his peace of mind and his conjugal relations, he felt her
Circe influence already. He accepted her offer--at any rate for one