Complete Novels of E Nesbit

by Edith Nesbit

  The ‘great proletariat,’ on whose behalf the Cleon met and discussed, was represented by one stonemason. Clare was surprised when she heard what his calling was, as there was nothing in his dress or bearing to distinguish him from the other men present. Perhaps that was why Mrs Quaid had specially invited him.

  There were about a score of other members who were less noticeable on account of any peculiarity. They formed the real strength of the society, and did all the work, owing to which it held a position in the Socialist movement altogether out of proportion to its numbers.

  The majority of the ladies gave a business-like aspect to the evening by severely retaining their outdoor garments. Some of these were of peculiar shape and make, a fact which Mrs Quaid explained in a whisper to be the result of their employment of inexperienced dressmakers, on the highest moral grounds.

  By the time Clare had noticed all this the room was pretty full, and as everyone talked at once, and very loud, one might, by shutting one’s eyes, have fancied oneself at an ordinary ‘at home,’ instead of at a serious gathering, whose note was earnestness, and whose motif was social regeneration.

  , She was just thinking something like this when Mrs Quaid touched her on the shoulder.

  ‘Clare, my love,’ she said, ‘you must let me introduce dear Mr Petrovitch to you. You know he has been so exceedingly good as to consent to read us a paper to-night.’

  Clare knew by experience that all her hostess’s male friends were ‘dear,’ and her female ones ‘ sweet,’ for at least three weeks after their first introduction, but when she turned to receive Petrovitch’s bow, it did strike her that the epithet was more than usually incongruous. He was about the last person, she thought, to whom terms of indiscriminate endearment could be applied.

  After the Continential manner, he had put on evening dress. The wide shirt-front showed off the splendid breadth of a chest that would not have disgraced a Life Guardsman in uniform. Miss Stanley, as she looked at him, admitted to herself that on some people the claw-hammer coat was not without its æsthetic attraction.

  As the people settled down into chairs he took a seat beside her, but in such a position that she could see his face without turning her own.

  Then, after a few business preliminaries, Petrovitch began to speak. He did not read, as had been announced, but spoke from notes, with a little hesitation, caused, perhaps, by his speaking in a foreign language. To most of his hearers what he had to say was well-known, no doubt; but to Clare all he said came as a revelation. She had come to be amused, to criticise, to ‘make fun,’ perhaps; but what she heard from this man beside her was not in the least amusing or funny. It seemed to her more like the gospel of a new religion. She listened intently, and after a while, unconsciously influenced by the interest and light in her face, he began to feel less and less as though he were talking to the room, and more and more as though he were speaking solely to the girl beside him. If he saw comprehension in her eyes, he did not trouble to explain a point further; if he saw a question there, he answered it; a doubt, he solved it. Some eyes are easy to read, and Petrovitch was a master of that art.

  The girl was no fool, and though the whole theory of Socialism was new to her, she was able to follow the rigorous train of logic with which he led up to his conclusions. He attacked all the stock ideas which she had been brought up to respect. It somehow did not seem like blasphemy. He flung scorn and derision on the social ideals which she had heard lauded from her cradle. Some things which she had been taught to consider admirable and desirable, grew, as he spoke of them, to seem mean and paltry. Life, as she listened, took new meanings, and became of deeper significance. Even the affairs of every day, the chance stories of misery, and the ‘painful’ paragraphs of the newspapers, which she felt, and shuddered as she felt, had hitherto seemed only occasions for the sprinkling of a little Radical rose-water — little stings of passing horror, which heightened rather than detracted from the pleasures of existence — seemed now to be worth considering in some other light.

  This was not the first time that Clare’s heart had been stirred and her sympathies quickened by a spoken discourse. More than once she remembered having left the doors of parish church or cathedral in a tumult of emotion when some specially earnest and eloquent preacher had succeeded in casting a new and fierce light into the inmost depths of her soul; but, she remembered, those feelings had been transient, and strong though the new convictions and resolutions had been when she left the sacred portals, the small things of life — the duties of school, the light worries of home, the social bagatelles, things trivial and tenuous enough in themselves — had soon settled down upon her like a thick atmosphere, and by their aggregate weight had crushed, not out of existence, but back to her soul’s remoter recesses, the new-born life.

  As Petrovitch finished speaking, and, folding up his notes, thanked his hearers for their patience and attention, she wondered to herself, so quick is thought, whether what had happened before would not happen again, and whether by this time to-morrow her mind would not be running with its accustomed smoothness in its accustomed channels. She hoped no; she feared yes. But somehow something seemed, to tell her that in these past experiences her emotions only had been affected, but that this time her reason also had been forced into life and action, and it would be harder to chloroform that, she thought.

  For some minutes after he had ceased she was so preoccupied with these thoughts that she hardly noticed the sharp fire of questions which was levelled at him from visitors in different parts of the room. When she did begin to listen to them, it was only to wonder how people could so have misunderstood what seemed to her so clear. There was one lady in particular who asked inconsequent questions in such a feebly deliberate manner, dropping her words out as though they were some precious elixir of which it was not well to give out much at a time, that Clare felt an insane desire to shake her words out of her, and at the same time a little sense into her.

  The genial young stockbroker wanted to know whether the best part of Petrovitch’s scheme was not included in the present Radical programme, but his suggestion was received with disapprobation by the large majority, and he hastily withdrew into obscurity. It struck Miss Stanley that all the questions and remarks were on side issues, and left untouched the main contentions.

  When the chairman of the evening announced that the discussion was at an end, everybody rose and began to talk at once — in most cases not about the paper. Perhaps they were all glad to get away from the larger questions of life’s possibilities, and to return to the trivial personalities which form the chief interest of most of our lives.

  ‘You are interested in these questions, Miss Stanley?’ Petrovitch said, as he turned to bid her good-night.

  ‘I — I — shall be.’

  ‘Yes, I think you will. Good-bye.’

  He left alone, and at once, telling his hostess he had an appointment to keep.

  Just outside the door he met Count Litvinoff’s visitor of the morning. Hirsch had evidently been waiting for him with some impatience. He turned, and they walked away together.

  ‘I’ve been here some time,’ he said. ‘ I thought you must have gone.’

  ‘I am sorry,’ said Petrovitch; ‘I could not leave earlier.’

  ‘Little good you’ll do in a house like that,’ grumbled Hirsch, knitting his brows. ‘ Casting pearls before swine.’

  ‘Not quite that, my good Hirsch. Casting seed upon stony ground, maybe, but I am much mistaken if some has not fallen upon virgin soil, and then my evening has not been wasted. How did it fare with you this morning?’

  Hirsch silently produced Litvinoff’s cheque, not quite so fresh-looking as when he had received it.

  ‘Ah, as I expected!’ said the other, glancing at it under a lamp. ‘Ten pounds is not illiberal. You see, he does not keep so tight a purse-string as you thought.’

  ‘Lightly won lightly spent. Donner wetter! he gained it easily enough.’

  ‘This i
s not spent — it is given. Don’t be unjust.’

  ‘Gott in Himmel! You’re a good man, Petrovitch. You seem to have no faults.’

  ‘Ah! so it may seem to you who have known me only three months, but I have known myself more than a score of years, and I know that I am full of them. Come home with me and have a smoke, and we’ll talk about something else.’

  ‘And how’ have you liked it, my dearest Clare? Have you been terribly bored — or puzzled perhaps — since you are not used to these discussions?’

  ‘I have never been more interested than I was by Mr Petrovitch,’ said Clare, with perfect truth.

  ‘Ah, yes,’ said Mrs Quaid enthusiastically; ‘so sweet, isn’t he?’

  Clare did not answer, but as she drove home it occurred to her that the principal ingredient in Petrovitch’s character was not exactly sugar.

  CHAPTER XVI. GOING HOME.

  THERE are people, we are told, on whom the rapid action of railway travelling acts as a soothing influence; but to the majority of us, when suffering from any loss or grief, a long train journey is simply maddening. The rattling of the windows, the vibration of the carriage, the banging of doors and shouting of porters at the stations, the prolonged and ear-piercing shriek of the whistle, occurring at such moments as to convince the thinking mind that it is not let off with any good intention or to serve any useful purpose, but simply to gratify the torturing instinct of the engine-driver at the expense of the passengers’ nerves and tempers — all these only aggravate any trouble which may be part of one’s invisible luggage. For all these together are not enough to distract one from the contemplation of one’s special skeleton, and each is in itself enough to keep one from contemplating it with any good result. And as for seeing the bright side of one’s troubles, that is quite impossible when one is moving at the rate of fifty miles an hour; the only wonder is that more people are not overcome by the peculiarly dismal aspect which one’s position assumes under these circumstances, and that we don’t hear of more suicides in railway carriages.

  The three o’clock Midland express was tearing through the quiet country. A faint mist lay over the fields and hedges, faint, but still thick enough to hold its own against the pale yellow sunbeams that seemed striving to disperse it.

  Richard Ferrier, idly gazing at the flying hedges and gates and squalid cottages, did not feel any less sad for the sadness of the outside world through which he was speeding home.

  He had spent the previous evening in a vigorous search after Alice — a search which had been unsuccessful, even though he had offered Mrs Fludger the best inducement to frankness. It had needed that golden token to mitigate the wrath with which she had received his first question. She had, indeed, hinted, not darkly, in the first flush of indignation, at worse designs on his part than even Bible-reading; but gold itself, though it had softened her asperity, had been powerless to extort from her any information of the slightest value. Having tried all he knew, and failed, to discover any trace of what he sought, Richard had given up the search. He had met Roland once on the hotel staircase. They had passed each other like strangers.

  As the train rushed on, he went over and over again all the circumstances of his quarrel with his brother. A fire of hate burned in him fiercely, a stern and deep indignation surged in his heart, and blinded his eyes to any possible palliation of his brother’s conduct. This state of mind was the outcome of months of heart soreness and suppressed bitterness of spirit, — months in which he had vainly tried to disguise from himself that if Clare Stanley did incline to one more than the other, it was Roland who was the favourite. During that month of Roland’s unexplained holiday Richard had fancied he made some progress in her good graces, but when his brother came back again she had turned on him just the same smiles and glances that had bewildered Dick. And from that time it had seemed to him that Roland was gradually elbowing him out. Miss Stanley had a taste for poetry, and Roland read poetry extremely well. Miss Stanley called herself a Radical, and Roland had been a shining light on that side in a small debating society at Cambridge. Miss Stanley liked to chatter about Art, and Roland always had a stock of the latest Art prattle at the tip of his tongue. Roland had grown fond of solitary walks, and in these was constantly meeting Miss Stanley ‘by accident’—’accident’ which Richard could not always bring himself to believe in. It was to be noticed, by the way, that in the walks of both these young men all roads led, not to Rome, but past Aspinshaw. Richard had borne all this, sustaining himself with a hope that Miss Stanley did not really feel interested so much in Roland as in the tastes he affected. He had still hoped that she might come to care for him, — for the man who loved her with such a passionate intensity. It is so hard, so very hard, to believe that the love that is everything to us is absolutely nothing to the beloved. Men have even dreamed that their passion could warm marble to life. How much easier to fancy that it can stir a heart to love.

  But the sting in the pain he had suffered while his lady smiled on Roland had been a half unselfish fear that these smiles of hers were being bestowed on a man unworthy of them. Now that he believed this unworthiness to be proved, all the latent doubts, distrusts, suspicions he had kept down ‘sprang full statured in an hour,’ and with them sprang a hatred of his brother, so fierce as to frighten himself; for however he might seek to deceive himself about it, he knew in his inmost heart that it was less as a heartless profligate than as a possibly successful rival that he had learned to hate him.

  But he knew that now this rivalry could not be successful. His great love for her prevented his seeing the realities that underlay the superficial side of her character, so that he actually believed her to be the last woman in the world one could dare to ask to share poverty. He knew that his own chance, such as it had been, was lost; but he knew, too, that his brother’s chance was also at an end. This did not make him less determined that the quarrel should be à outrance.

  ‘Cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face’ is such a wildly irrational act that one would never expect any reasonable being to be guilty of it, and yet hundreds of people do it every day. Dick was doing it now, practically, though he kept reminding himself that this was really the only honourable course open to him, and that he was influenced mainly by irreproachable motives.

  It was nearly eight o’clock when his journey ended at Thornsett Edge.

  He went straight into the dining-room, where Miss Ferrier sat filling in the groundwork of some canvas slippers, which she hastily pushed out of sight when she saw him. It was one of her habits, kept up since the days when they were children, to make some present for each of the brothers every year, and give it to them at Christmas as a ‘ surprise.’

  ‘My dear Dick, how’ ill you look! Why didn’t you write? Have you had any dinner?’

  ‘No, auntie,’ said he, kissing her. ‘Just order up something cold, will you? I want to run up to Gates this evening.

  I won’t wait for anything to be cooked.’

  Miss Letitia suppressed her curiosity as to what could be taking Dick to his father’s solicitor at this time of night, and hurried off to see about the meal herself. While he was busy with the cold beef and pickles he told her briefly that he had run down on business, which had been rather worrying lately.

  ‘That accounts,’ said the good lady, ‘for your looking so poorly. I hope you’ve not been keeping bad hours.’

  ‘Not I!’ said Dick, as he drew the cork of a bottle of stout. ‘Nor yet bad company, aunt — don’t you think it.’

  ‘And how is Roland?’ she asked, at last; but at the same minute Dick pushed his chair back, and rose.

  ‘I’m off to Gates now,’ he said. ‘I shall be back some time to-night. And I say, auntie, have my father’s room got ready for me. I should like to sleep there.’

  When he had put on hat and great coat, he put his head in again at the room door.

  ‘After all, I think I’ll have my own room.’

  He found Mr Gates sitting smokin
g very comfortably in the society of two of his bosom friends, with whom he had that day enjoyed some very good shooting.

  ‘Can I see Mr Richard Ferrier?’ he cried, when a servant took him the name. ‘I should think I could. Come in, Dick, my boy; you’re just in time to help finish the bottle Stevens is full already — he’s missed every bird he’s aimed at to-day — and Clark is too sleepy to appreciate good stuff.’

  The other men laughed, and all shook hands with Dick, and made room for him in the little circle which they formed round a splendid fire.

  ‘I suppose the Aspinshaw people will soon be down now,’ Gates went on; ‘in fact, I heard so from Stanley.’

  ‘I came down on business,’ said Dick, as the three other men burst out laughing.

  ‘Of course,’ said Gates; ‘you went to town on business just when they went.’

  The duet of less than half-sober laughter with which Mr Gates’s guests received this suggestion brought the colour to Richard’s cheeks.

  ‘I want to speak to you in private,’ he said, ‘if your friends will excuse us.’

  ‘Oh, they won’t mind,’ said Mr Gates, his cheerfulness unabated by the sharp tone in which Richard spoke. ‘Come along: let’s get the beastly business over.’

  Richard followed him into another room. Mr Gates set down on a table the brass candle-stick he had brought in; both men remained standing.

  ‘I have come up to ask you to take immediate steps to stop working the mill. I suppose we must give the men some notice?’

  ‘Have you gone mad, boy? What on earth should you close the mill for?’

  ‘It will be closed under the provisions of my father’s will, which, I believe, you drew up, Mr Gates.’

  Mr Gates sat down heavily on the nearest chair.

  ‘You don’t mean to say you’ve been quarrelling already? Richard made an impatient gesture of assent.

  ‘You’re both of you too old and too sensible to let a quarrel like this stand between you and your living,’ said Gates seriously. ‘What’s the trouble?’