The Man Who Did the Right Thing: A Romance
squeamishness.... Praed, the architect, should send them one or two of
his queer storiettes....
As to mother and father, they would spoil any circles with their
banalities and old-fashioned ideas ... and father's stories would never
be followed to their finish by the modern young man or woman. They
would devastate her circle. No. They must stop in the country. Mother
seemed to be developing some internal complaint--probably indigestion or
something which could be cured at Aix or Homburg--and she was becoming
very strait-laced and anxious-eyed. Sibyl would take Roger's advice: buy
up father's three hundred acres; it could be made a most profitable milk
farm. Father should stay on as tenant at a nominal rent, with a bailiff
to manage--perhaps that young Harden, the cricketer, who had married
Lucy's sister.
Sibyl resolved to send mother to Aix at her expense and have Aunt
Christabel to stay with her indefinitely as long as she wanted a
chaperon.
As to her sisters: thank goodness, _they_ were off her hands. They had
married and gone away with their husbands to those blessed colonies,
Clara to New Zealand and Juliet to British Columbia. Long might they
remain there! Relations--unless very distant--were like reproaches or
bad replicas of one's self. They sapped all one's originality....
These were some of the musings of Sibyl when having her hair brushed by
Sophie, or when undergoing Swedish massage under the firm but soothing
hands of a blonde giantess; when breakfasting in bed; or undergoing a
long train journey in a first-class compartment with a defective lamp.
There was no question in this year of Lucy's accompanying her husband to
Glen Sporran. She was starting another baby and was firm about not
wishing to go. Sibyl took this decision most amiably; said Lucy was
quite wise, and further proposed that she should have Maud with her and
care-take for Sibyl at Engledene House. Clitheroe was likewise to be
left behind. His life in the Highlands was one long succession of
dangerous colds and there wasn't enough accommodation for his retinue of
nurses; especially as every one you asked nowadays must have with them a
maid or a valet. Clithy had grown so absurdly fond of Lucy that Sibyl
suggested jocosely they should change babies. She thought little John a
perfect darling--so like Roger--why hadn't Lucy chosen her as god-mother
instead of Maud? No doubt Clithy would grow up more like a normal boy
when the rest of his features balanced Anne of Denmark's nose....
Meantime, it was very fortunate things were as they were. And Lucy
would oblige her enormously by looking after her boy while she was
entertaining all those horrid people in the North.
Not that the house-party was to be a large one. It ran away with so
much money, and people were never grateful. There would just be Stacy
Bream; the Honble. Victoria Masham, the Maid of Honour--old Vicky
Long-i'-the-tooth, Sibyl called her behind her back, and never imagined
the nickname could be repeated and counteract the expense of a month's
hospitality. _Must_ have Vicky to keep in touch, you know, with what
the old Queen was saying and doing--and an acolyte of Stacy's named
Reggie, something in the Colonial Office--he could flirt with Vicky--and
p'raps Arthur Broadmead. Then--for a day or two--that insufferable cad,
Elijah Tooley--"but he's so frightfully, frightfully rich and _might_ be
useful." Aunt Christabel, of course, would come, to keep order, and
Aggie Freebooter and Gertie Wentworth would make up the house-party.
Aggie Freebooter was that tiresome Lady Towcester's daughter--"one of
six girls, my dear"--but when she was away from her mother's eye she was
deliciously larky and awfully plucky, and didn't mind what you played
at; while Gertie Wentworth--or the Honble. Gertrude--thirty-five, lots
of money, dresses like a man, whisky and cigars, takes the bank at
Roulette and loses everything but her temper.
"Well, at any rate," said Maud, "I'm glad Willowby Patterne is not in
the party, _this_ time...."
"My dear!..." said Sibyl with a scream. "I've absolutely dropped him,
after that row in the City and that extraordinary case in the courts
which was compromised and hushed up. He's gone out to East Africa.
Haven't you heard?"
Maud had not heard and cared very little what had happened to the
spendthrift baronet. But Roger had, and was a little uneasy as to his
cherished Happy Valley. Willowby Patterne, mixed up once more with a
very shady Company to take over and boom a new mineral water--some
proposition of Bax Strangeways--and a matter of slander and a club-steps
whipping, settled out of court ... and pending proceedings of his wife's
for a separation; had decided abruptly to make "peau neuve" in East
Africa. He had depicted the thrills of big-game shooting to one of his
dupes just come of age and into possession of a pot of money. This
young man would stand the racket of the expense--L5,000--and Willowby
would put him up to all the dodges. And perhaps they might find
minerals and get a concession....
Whilst he was up in Scotland Roger did manage, with the aid of Arthur
Broadmead, to obtain an interview with Sir William MacNaughten on the
subject of East African developments and the Company's future
administration. But Sir William seemed vague, and much more interested
and definite in regard to another question: King Solomon's Temple. Had
Captain Brentham, as an Orientalist, ever given his mind to that
problem, the shape and structure of the Temple, its adornment, and the
hidden meaning of the Divine ordinances? No, Captain Brentham had not
... but ... er ... no doubt it was very interesting and full of meaning
... only ... East Africa?...
"Oh, East Africa--our Charter--Oh, yes! Well, come and see me about that
when I'm back in London. You know my address there? Westminster Palace
Hotel?"
The Glen Sporran party broke up with the rain and chill winds of the
equinox; but Roger stayed on there with Sibyl and Aunt Christabel:
nominally to examine the affairs of the estate and the installation of
the lobster fishery; in reality because his resolves had all dissolved
before her insistence, her tears, her threats to make a scene. Circe
triumphed; preened herself; became once more gay and debonnaire. But
her wretched lover felt indeed a pig. Aunt Christabel, the very
servants seemed to guess what Sibyl thought was kept wholly secret from
the rest of the world.
A month's absence in Staffordshire and London, and a shamefaced visit to
Engledene Lodge did something to restore his self-respect. He called on
Sir William at his hotel, resolved to broach the subject of the East
Africa Governorship, but found him out. Nevertheless, to his delight
there came a note to Pardew's Hotel from Sir William with these words in
it: "Come to breakfast to-morrow morning at nine. I have something very
interesting to discuss with you, and should value your opinion."
He arrived punctually. Lady MacNaughten was there--rather vinegary and
with pursed lips. She dispensed the tea and coffee with a very strong
Glasgow accent. The materials of the breakfast were--Roger
thought--rather meagre for such wealthy people, who could afford to
retain by the year this large suite of rooms. As no mention of East
Africa was made during breakfast it was clearly more tactful to wait
till the subject was introduced. Perhaps Sir William preferred not to
discuss business in his wife's presence. At last, however, he finished
his second cup of coffee, wiped his lips, said a grace of thanks for
"our bounteous meal" in which Lady MacNaughten joined; and then asked
Roger to accompany him to his sitting-room.
The folding doors were opened and shut behind them by an officious
waiter; the window of the sitting-room looking out on incipient Victoria
Street was also closed because the west wind was chilly. And Sir
William then turned and said with great heartiness, pointing to a
cardboard and _papier-mache_ contraption under a glass case:
"There! _That's_ what I wanted to discuss with you, who know the East
so well: a Model of King Solomon's Temple, made to my own design!"
* * * * *
The Governorship of the Mombasa Concession was shortly after conferred
on Lady MacNaughten's nephew.
*CHAPTER XVII*
*BACK TO THE HAPPY VALLEY*
Roger, ever since he returned from Scotland, resolved that a break with
Sibyl should come as soon as he could see before him the re-opening of
an African career. Only fortified with such a resolve could he face his
wife's candid eyes and her unquestioning trust in him--or Maud's more
quizzical gaze and occasional sardonic remarks.... "That old fox,
MacNaughten," he said to himself, "had determined all along to evade the
well-meant suggestions of candidates from the Foreign, Colonial, and
India Offices, and as soon as he got his Baronetcy (which came with the
New Year's honours) to take a line of his own."
However, Fate for once hastened the denouement by causing Roger's father
to catch cold over the excavation of the Basilica at Silchester, to
neglect his cold, and to die of double pneumonia in the week preceding
Christmas, 1890. Roger could not help being profoundly grateful to his
archaeological parent for dying _before_ rather than after Christmas,
because this decease, with the conventions in force, and Queen Victoria
behind the conventions, absolutely freed him from the obligation to
attend the elaborate Christmas and New Year festivities ordained by
Sibyl at Engledene. She had set aside a suite of rooms--bedroom,
sitting-room and office--at 6A, Carlton House Terrace, and would no
longer hear of his staying at Pardew's Hotel when in London to transact
business with her. There were times when he seriously considered
shooting himself--and strange to say, all through this period of
episodical infidelity he had never loved Lucy better, or found her
smiling silence or unimportant, unexacting conversation more soothing.
Her approaching confinement and his father's death together constituted
a barrier of reserve that even Sibyl was bound to respect. He therefore
utilized this respite to work assiduously at his plans for flight from
the enchantress. He was most anxious after he was gone that no one
should say with justification that he had let Lady Silchester down, had
treated her badly, got things into a muddle, and then bolted.
As far back as the preceding October he had brought his younger brother,
Maurice, the barrister into the Estate Office to be his assistant.
Sibyl could suggest no one else and told him he could make what
arrangements he liked--if _only_--if--_only_ he would not be _cruel_ to
her, not talk of going at the end of the trial year. As he had not
complete confidence in Maurice becoming efficient for the head post, he
had entered into a provisional arrangement for a first-class man to put
over Maurice, selecting him at the Institute of Land Agents'
recommendation...
So much therefore had been done to safeguard h employer's interests.
Then as to his own. The administration of his father's estate would
eventually secure a total sum of L4,300 to each of the four children of
the Rev. Ambrose Brentham, including the amount they had recently
received by deed of gift. This with other odds and ends of savings,
gave Roger a capital of L5,000 to draw on.
As soon as Lucy was well over her accouchement in January (1891), he had
several long and confidential conversations with Arthur Broadmead, that
friend in need to so many men who had fallen into holes of their own
digging, and who sought rectification by extending the bounds of empire