The Man Who Did the Right Thing: A Romance

Africa I'd go with you if you'd let me? I'm rather fed up with England and office work.... "However, about Sib.... She came down here last summer and _didn't_ have a house party. Lived quite alone with your kids. They've come to look upon Engledene as quite their home. Of course, when she couldn't put 'em up I had them here. Well, as I say, she seemed 'under the weather.' Once or twice when I rather bounced in on Estate business, I thought she'd been crying. Wasn't my business to ask what for. She wasn't an easy person to question and could lay you out with her tongue if you seemed to be meddling with what didn't concern you. Then all at once last October I had a note from her to say that she had gone into a nursing home to have an operation, that I wasn't to fuss about it or come to inquire, that if she was away at Christmas time your children were to come here from school just the same and I was to represent her as host...." _Roger_: "What was the operation for? All this is news to me." _Maurice_: "So I guessed. She made me promise not to write and tell you or Lucy ... said it would be all over, long before you were back, and turn out to be a fuss about nothing. As to what it _was_, why I suppose she had reached a certain stage in life when most women have complications and ten per cent. of 'em are operated on--glands, cysts, tumours.... "The operation took place--she was jolly careful to keep it out of the papers--I doubt if even Clithy knew anything till it was well over. He was travelling in Russia to study the Russian theatres and their arrangements about scenery.... After she recovered the doctors sent her to Aix and then to St. Tropez on the Riviera.... Clithy joined her there. I sent her the telegram about ... about ... Lucy's death. I dare say you noticed the perfectly magnificent wreaths they both sent for the funeral. Clithy's came down from some place in Regent Street and had a card on it 'To my dear Aunt Lucy.' ... Only human touch about him ... awfully fond of your wife ... always said he liked her much more than his mother.... But he needn't have said it so often, though Sibyl only used to laugh. Her wreath was made here from the very best things we had got in the hot-houses ... only because Sibyl wrote that Lucy so loved to walk in these houses and fancy she was back in Africa.... However, I had a letter from her three days ago...." (Takes it out and reads: "Tell Roger not to dream of coming out here, because I am just going away. I am writing him in a few days.") "There! Now she'll soon tell you everything about herself...." "What about _you_? Have you made any plans as yet?" _Roger_: "Lucy's death has cut my life in two; I shall have to alter all the programme we used, to plan out together, she and I and Maud. Of course there are the children to think about.... Where are the matches? I'll light a pipe and tell you my ideas...." (A silence ... puffs ...) ... "I've not done badly out of this Happy Valley Concession. I've sold my shares in it--all but five hundred, kept _them_ just to retain an interest, don't you know, get the Company's reports from time to time--I've sold my shares at two pounds a share to the Schraeders' group. That brings me in close upon L75,000. I haven't saved much besides ... purposely lived well out there and entertained a good deal, and gave ... Lucy ... and Maud all they wanted, and had to pay for the little 'uns' schooling at home. However, there I am at this moment with about L75,000 at my bank on deposit and twelve hundred or so outstanding to my current account.... I'm going first of all to give ten thousand pounds _down_ to Maud. I consider she has _earned_ it. "And then I must make a new will ... and I want to ask you, old chap, to be one of the executors. Will you? And p'raps Geoff the other. After all, it isn't Geoff we dislike, it's that confounded, pious doe-rabbit of a wife of his. However.... "Well then, about my plans. I suppose I ought to stay at home at Farleigh--I shall look out for a decent flat in London--and get to know my children. Somehow it's _that_ I can't take to. They have grown up so outside all my thoughts and schemes and interests. They don't care a hang about Africa. John has been making a young fool of himself at Sandhurst ... been betting and borrowing and getting into debt. I'm glad his mother didn't know.... Well, I shall square up all that, but I shall insist on his going in for the Indian Army--Staff Corps--same as I did.... A man if he's got ability couldn't have a better education.... He's a good-looking boy, John--I expect he thinks me an old fogey from the backwoods.... India's the school for him. And as to Ambrose, he must go to Cambridge, when he leaves Harrow, and I shall try and get him a nomination for the Consular Service.... That's the other good school for a British citizen. You'll think me jolly conceited, just because those are the two careers _I've_ followed. But..." (smokes and puffs). "Well then, there are the two girls. Fat Maud--she was furious because I revived the old name--says long ago 'Aunt Sibyl' agreed it should be compromised by her being called Fatima.... Fatima, I gather, is eighteen, and young Sibyl is fourteen.... For the present Maud will look after them, and I shall have 'em up to London every now and then for a few weeks. In course of time I suppose they'll want to be presented. Dare say old Sibyl will do that, or if she's away, Lady Dewburn. By the bye, _she_ wrote me an awfully sweet letter about Lucy..." (ponders and smokes). "In due time the girls'll marry, and if they pick up the right kind of husband I shall give 'em each a portion of my ill-gotten wealth. There! That's what I've planned out, and I dare say it 'ud ha' been quite different if my darling Luce had lived. I should have been reconciled then to settling down at home. As it is--I shall travel a bit--Go to Germany and try to find out what the Germans are up to.... Go back to Africa p'raps ... _I_ don't know...." A few days after this conversation, Roger received a letter from Sibyl: Villa les Pins, Grimaud, pres St. Tropez, Var, June 12, 1909. DEAR ROGER,-- Maurice will have given you all the news there is about me, except what I am going to add in this letter. I am not going to attempt any sympathy at present over your loss. Maud's telegram from Naples was forwarded on to me here and it gave me a horrid turn. I often used to tease Lucy: I am cat-scratchy to every one, I fear. Why? _I_ don't know: something to do with my internal organs, I dare say. But I became sincerely fond of her, after being perfectly horrid to her when we first met. She seemed to grow on one. I should have liked her always to stay at Englefield. Heigh ho! I am very much inclined to whimper about myself. I have, been through a _ghastly_ time.... Some day, if I live, I will tell you. Meantime, though I am _aching_ to see you I am going to postpone that happiness, and instead am going round the world with Vicky Masham. The doctors seem to think--I dare say it is only because they have nothing else to suggest--that if I went on a long sea voyage for about a year--I mean, kept constantly travelling on the sea--I should get quite strong again. Perhaps I shall. I want to give myself every chance--it seems _so stupid_ to die before you're seventy. Also it occurred to me the other day that for a woman to have raved for twenty years about the British Empire and yet never to have seen any part of it outside Great Britain, except Cape Town and Stellenbosch, and once when we went to Jersey from Dinant--was rather silly. So Vicky and I are starting from Marseilles next Sunday in a P. and O., bound for Ceylon, and after that Japan. Not that Japan is British--I believe--but of course we aren't going to be pedantic. Then I suppose we shall "do" Australia and New Zealand--only I'm afraid New Zealand is rather muttony, isn't it? Excessively worthy and all that, but lives chiefly on mutton and stewed tea. However, there are geysers and pink terraces, if you look for them. Then there will be a lovely cruise across the Pacific, and beach-combers and impossibly large oysters that would dine a family of six, and brown people with no morals and beautiful sinuous forms, and finally San Francisco and California. After that--however, sufficient for the day is the evil thereof. Vicky or I will bombard you with picture post-cards recording our progress, and when--and when I'm _quite_ well and look less like a doomed woman--I will let you know, and, dearest Roger, we will pass the rest of our lives together, or at least not far away from one another. Your children shall be the children of my old age.... Clithy is here, but as soon as I leave for Marseilles he is off again to Russia. He has promised me to look you up when he returns. You will find him now definitely fixed as to appearance. People of his stamp are like that. Between nineteen and twenty-one, they quite quickly assume the figure, face, style by which they are ever after going to be known. He will remind you most of Lord R----, though I assure you there is no innuendo in this. I dare say the L----'s are distant cousins of the Mallards. But Clithy is essentially the aristocratic young peer who may be a fount of wisdom or a hollow fraud with nothing inside an irreproachable exterior. He is a mystery to me. And I am of little interest to him. The only woman I ever heard him mention with anything like a kind look in his eyes was Lucy. The Anne of Denmark nose is still there, undulating and with a bump in the middle; but the rest of the face has grown up more and his hair is a nice dark chestnut brown.--Well, you will see him later, so why waste time in describing him? As to Vicky Masham.... Of course you want to know why, etc. Well: Vicky, at the death of her patron saint, Victoria the Good, was left with little more than her pension of L500 a year. She ought to have had ten thousand pounds of her own, but--I dare say you saw the scandal in the papers? She and her sisters gave up much of their means to save their shockingly bad brother from going to prison over some swindle that ... Again why waste words? Maurice could tell you all about it. Well, when I came to the South of France after Aix, last December, I was _dreadfully_ hipped, fighting a certain Terror--a much _worse_ terror than the one you used to write to me about who lived in a Red Crater (rather a distinguished address: "The Red Crater, Iraku"), and who went to Hell by the direct route. I came to Monte Carlo amongst other places and thought if I kept on a veil and wore blue glasses no one would recognize me. In the Rooms I saw Victoria Masham, looking very melancholy--and oh, so old--and quite alone. My heart was touched, I spoke to her and we went to sit on the terrace. I told her my troubles and she told me hers. Result: I struck a bargain. She is to live with me till we have our first quarrel; I am to board her, lodge her, wash her, pay all possible expenses, and give her a little pocket money, over and above. And d'you know, I think it's going to be quite a success! We haven't had a quarrel yet! I've had her teeth beautifully done by an American dentist at Cannes, so my nickname only applies a little--he was too clever not to give the new set a soupcon of horsiness. And I've made her buy a quite wonderful "transformation"--chez Nicole--reddish-brown, streaked with grey.--You'd never guess. She has plumped out a good deal, for although I've a wretched appetite myself I keep a good table, and upon my word when we get to the Colonies I shouldn't wonder if she had shoals of proposals.