"Would it be possible to send him to a private tutor"s?"
"No," said Mr. Elliot, who had all the money. "Coddling."
"I agree that boys ought to rough it; but when a boy is lame and very delicate, he roughs it sufficiently if he leaves home. Rickie can"t play games. He doesn"t make friends. He isn"t brilliant. Thinking it over, I feel that as it"s like this, we can"t ever hope to give him the ordinary education. Perhaps you could think it over too." No.
"I am sure that things are best for him as they are. The day-school knocks quite as many corners off him as he can stand. He hates it, but it is good for him. A public school will not be good for him. It is too rough. Instead of getting manly and hard, he will--"
"My head, please."
Rickie departed in a state of bewildered misery, which was scarcely ever to grow clearer.
Each holiday he found his father more irritable, and a little weaker.
Mrs. Elliot was quickly growing old. She had to manage the servants, to hush the neighbouring children, to answer the correspondence, to paper and re-paper the rooms--and all for the sake of a man whom she did not like, and who did not conceal his dislike for her. One day she found Rickie tearful, and said rather crossly, "Well, what is it this time?"
He replied, "Oh, mummy, I"ve seen your wrinkles your grey hair--I"m unhappy."
Sudden tenderness overcame her, and she cried, "My darling, what does it matter? Whatever does it matter now?"
He had never known her so emotional. Yet even better did he remember another incident. Hearing high voices from his father"s room, he went upstairs in the hope that the sound of his tread might stop them. Mrs.
Elliot burst open the door, and seeing him, exclaimed, "My dear! If you please, he"s. .h.i.t me." She tried to laugh it off, but a few hours later he saw the bruise which the stick of the invalid had raised upon his mother"s hand.
G.o.d alone knows how far we are in the grip of our bodies. He alone can judge how far the cruelty of Mr. Elliot was the outcome of extenuating circ.u.mstances. But Mrs. Elliot could accurately judge of its extent.
At last he died. Rickie was now fifteen, and got off a whole week"s school for the funeral. His mother was rather strange. She was much happier, she looked younger, and her mourning was as un.o.btrusive as convention permitted. All this he had expected. But she seemed to be watching him, and to be extremely anxious for his opinion on any, subject--more especially on his father. Why? At last he saw that she was trying to establish confidence between them. But confidence cannot be established in a moment. They were both shy. The habit of years was upon them, and they alluded to the death of Mr. Elliot as an irreparable loss.
"Now that your father has gone, things will be very different."
"Shall we be poorer, mother?" No.
"Oh!"
"But naturally things will be very different."
"Yes, naturally."
"For instance, your poor father liked being near London, but I almost think we might move. Would you like that?"
"Of course, mummy." He looked down at the ground. He was not accustomed to being consulted, and it bewildered him.
"Perhaps you might like quite a different life better?"
He giggled.
"It"s a little difficult for me," said Mrs. Elliot, pacing vigorously up and down the room, and more and more did her black dress seem a mockery.
"In some ways you ought to be consulted: nearly all the money is left to you, as you must hear some time or other. But in other ways you"re only a boy. What am I to do?"
"I don"t know," he replied, appearing more helpless and unhelpful than he really was.
"For instance, would you like me to arrange things exactly as I like?"
"Oh do!" he exclaimed, thinking this a most brilliant suggestion.
"The very nicest thing of all." And he added, in his half-pedantic, half-pleasing way, "I shall be as wax in your hands, mamma."
She smiled. "Very well, darling. You shall be." And she pressed him lovingly, as though she would mould him into something beautiful.
For the next few days great preparations were in the air. She went to see his father"s sister, the gifted and vivacious Aunt Emily. They were to live in the country--somewhere right in the country, with gra.s.s and trees up to the door, and birds singing everywhere, and a tutor. For he was not to go back to school. Unbelievable! He was never to go back to school, and the head-master had written saying that he regretted the step, but that possibly it was a wise one.
It was raw weather, and Mrs. Elliot watched over him with ceaseless tenderness. It seemed as if she could not do too much to shield him and to draw him nearer to her.
"Put on your greatcoat, dearest," she said to him.
"I don"t think I want it," answered Rickie, remembering that he was now fifteen.
"The wind is bitter. You ought to put it on."
"But it"s so heavy."
"Do put it on, dear."
He was not very often irritable or rude, but he answered, "Oh, I shan"t catch cold. I do wish you wouldn"t keep on bothering." He did not catch cold, but while he was out his mother died. She only survived her husband eleven days, a coincidence which was recorded on their tombstone.
Such, in substance, was the story which Rickie told his friends as they stood together in the shelter of the dell. The green bank at the entrance hid the road and the world, and now, as in spring, they could see nothing but snow-white ramparts and the evergreen foliage of the firs. Only from time to time would a beech leaf flutter in from the woods above, to comment on the waning year, and the warmth and radiance of the sun would vanish behind a pa.s.sing cloud.
About the greatcoat he did not tell them, for he could not have spoken of it without tears.
III
Mr. Ansell, a provincial draper of moderate prosperity, ought by rights to have been cla.s.sed not with the cow, but with those phenomena that are not really there. But his son, with pardonable illogicality, excepted him. He never suspected that his father might be the subjective product of a diseased imagination. From his earliest years he had taken him for granted, as a most undeniable and lovable fact. To be born one thing and grow up another--Ansell had accomplished this without weakening one of the ties that bound him to his home. The rooms above the shop still seemed as comfortable, the garden behind it as gracious, as they had seemed fifteen years before, when he would sit behind Miss Appleblossom"s central throne, and she, like some allegorical figure, would send the change and receipted bills spinning away from her in little boxwood b.a.l.l.s. At first the young man had attributed these happy relations to his own tact. But in time he perceived that the tact was all on the side of his father. Mr. Ansell was not merely a man of some education; he had what no education can bring--the power of detecting what is important. Like many fathers, he had spared no expense over his boy,--he had borrowed money to start him at a rapacious and fashionable private school; he had sent him to tutors; he had sent him to Cambridge.
But he knew that all this was not the important thing. The important thing was freedom. The boy must use his education as he chose, and if he paid his father back it would certainly not be in his own coin. So when Stewart said, "At Cambridge, can I read for the Moral Science Tripos?"
Mr. Ansell had only replied, "This philosophy--do you say that it lies behind everything?"
"Yes, I think so. It tries to discover what is good and true."
"Then, my boy, you had better read as much of it as you can."
And a year later: "I"d like to take up this philosophy seriously, but I don"t feel justified."
"Why not?"
"Because it brings in no return. I think I"m a great philosopher, but then all philosophers think that, though they don"t dare to say so. But, however great I am. I shan"t earn money. Perhaps I shan"t ever be able to keep myself. I shan"t even get a good social position. You"ve only to say one word, and I"ll work for the Civil Service. I"m good enough to get in high."
Mr. Ansell liked money and social position. But he knew that there is a more important thing, and replied, "You must take up this philosophy seriously, I think."
"Another thing--there are the girls."
"There is enough money now to get Mary and Maud as good husbands as they deserve." And Mary and Maud took the same view. It was in this plebeian household that Rickie spent part of the Christmas vacation. His own home, such as it was, was with the Silts, needy cousins of his father"s, and combined to a peculiar degree the restrictions of hospitality with the discomforts of a boarding-house. Such pleasure as he had outside Cambridge was in the homes of his friends, and it was a particular joy and honour to visit Ansell, who, though as free from social sn.o.bbishness as most of us will ever manage to be, was rather careful when he drove up to the facade of his shop.