VII YOUNG WOMEN

          Our own precedent passions do instruct us What levity is in youth.         
TIMON OF ATHENS.

YOUNG people must for ever be trying to fall in love, and in this ancient sport young women are every bit as active as young men. For the matter of that, the greater part of humanity remain adolescent in this affair, that is, hemmed in by a thick-set hedge of prejudice and unsatisfied emotion and convention and childish theory, so that they are for ever in a state of uneasy curiosity about love, always ready to put salt on its tail, but unable to come within reach of it. For that reason they are always confusing love with being in love, an active state of living which can be permanent with an emotional condition which must be transitory.

Mrs. Folyat had the most beautiful illusions about her household. She was not entirely deceived by them when she came face to face with herself, but in her relations with her husband, her friends and her daughters she always exhibited the most profound faith in them. Though her daughters were grown women she never troubled to discover the state of their minds, but assumed their innocence and purity, and she never referred back to her own state of mind at the same age and the same maiden condition. In short, she burked the difficulty and the responsibility, though she was secretly alarmed at their slowness in finding husbands. She had no notion of their finding any career outside marriage, and took no steps to prepare them even for that.

There was a constant stream of young men passing through the house, and they all seemed to do their best [Pg 59]to fall in love with Gertrude and Mary, but they either fell victims to Minna, who played with them and squeezed their young hearts dry between her finger and thumb, or they disappeared and were caught in the toils elsewhere. There were so many young women and so few eligible young men. They flirted, they danced, they paid visits to the theatres, and Gertrude sang and Mary played her violin, but nothing happened. It was very annoying. The Clibran-Bell girls did not marry either, but there was no comfort in that. They had such large noses; and they were not Folyats. They had not the charm of high gentility. . . . Neither Gertrude nor Mary was pretty, but they could be amusing and they seemed to attract attention. Minna was decidedly pretty, with a wide delightful grin and a mocking humour. The most serious and solemn young men were devoted to her. They were always proposing to her, but she always refused them or became engaged to them for about a week. Her betrothals hardly ever seemed to survive the visit to their families. She invariably seemed to see them in caricature, and had amassed quite a large collection of mental pictures of North-country families who received her at high tea and welcomed her with shy effusiveness.

Mrs. Folyat was fonder of Minna than of her other daughters. She was easier to get on with and much less expensive. Mary and Gertrude had acquired the habit of visiting relations in the South much richer than themselves, and every year they demanded an exorbitant outlay on clothes, and they came back rather scornful of life in Fern Square and rather rebellious at having to resume their household duties or work in the church and Sunday-school. Also, for a time, they would assume a lofty tone with the young men of their acquaintance, and they used to prick at Frederic and tell him he was becoming provincial. Minna used to lash them with her tongue, dealing out the wickedest malice with the most urbane good-humour, and deliberately annex any young men whom they brought to the house. She called Gertrude “Mother Bub” and Mary “Mottle-tooth.” From their superiority in years they affected to ignore her, but they lost no opportunity [Pg 60]of annoying her and upsetting her plans for her own comfort and enjoyment.

The money-cloud had grown darker over Francis. It seemed impossible to make his expenditure acknowledge even a bowing acquaintance with his income. He had credit with the tradespeople but it was abused. Fifty pounds had become a large sum of money to him, because the payment of it meant dislocation of his finances. Frederic was always sending in small bills that were too large for his slender earnings. The girls—Mary and Gertrude were still called “the girls”—were always wanting money. Annette in Edinburgh hardly ever wrote without wanting money, and Mrs. Folyat seemed to have no notion of the decreasing elasticity of his resources. It was perfectly clear to him that a change must be made, and quickly. He went into his accounts, found that he owed three hundred and fifty pounds—nearly a year’s stipend—and wrote the figures down on a scrap of paper and laid it before his wife.

“We owe that,” he said. “It’s a lot of money.”

Mrs. Folyat turned the piece of paper round and round in her fingers, and Francis stood above her pulling at his beard.

“It’s a big sum,” he said.

Mrs. Folyat pulled out her handkerchief and began to whimper, as she always did when Francis was masterful.

“I’m sure,” she said, “I’m sure it’s not my fault. I’m sure I wish we’d never come to this hateful pace. I don’t know why we did.”

Francis felt a gust of exasperation.

“We came here,” he said, “to marry the girls. They’re not married.”

Mrs. Folyat saw reproach in what was only a statement of fact, and she protested with some vehemence. The failure of her daughters hurt her. She felt it as keenly as Sarah, the wife of Abraham, felt her barrenness, for she saw life altogether in terms of marriage, romantic marriage. Her own life had fallen into the lines laid down by the fiction with which she refreshed herself—as a girl she had dreamed of a romantic lover—he had come—a parson, [Pg 61]a creature of noble birth—and she had married him. She had borne him a truly biblical number of children and looked for them to follow a similar destiny. She had regarded it as a thing that happened automatically, for she was in mind a child, and life was to her a toy presented to her by a beneficent Creator, already wound up and prepared to go indefinitely. When apparently it ran down she could do nothing but weep and make things as uncomfortable as possible for those nearest her. She hated facts, and Francis, her husband, had the most odious habit of plumping them down in front of her.

Always before when they had been presented with any financial difficulty they had sold a house at Potsham, for the reduction of their private income by twenty or thirty pounds had seemed no great matter. But they had already sold five houses, and the loss of one hundred and fifty pounds a year had, as Francis now pointed out, played a considerable part in bringing them to their present quandary. He was loth to sacrifice another house and more income, and nervously proposed that they should raise the required sum by selling some of their valuable china and perhaps a piece or two of Martha’s jewellery. She hardly ever wore her jewellery, but she loved to hoard it, and whenever she was particularly pleased with her women friends she used to reward them by displaying the contents of her treasure-drawers, jewels, old lace, silks and brocades and fans, acquired and inherited—things valuable and trumpery all lying higgledy-piggledy.

Her husband’s suggestion acted like salt rubbed into the wounds occasioned by his statement of fact. She asked why she should always be the sufferer for the delinquencies of her family, and almost persuaded herself that she was their scapegoat. She went back over the years and raked over the ashes of old resentments and grievances, even going so far as to disinter the sacrifice of her carriage at St. Withans.

“The fact remains,” said Francis, “that we owe a large sum of money. I am a clergyman, and my house should be free of the sordid troubles that beset the laity. It is not free of them and I am ashamed.”

[Pg 62]

“Very well, then,” said Martha, “Let us sell everything, spend everything—the girls will do that easily enough—and then go into the workhouse.”

“Please be reasonable,” rejoined Francis. “We must pay our debts and reduce our expenditure. If necessary, the girls must go out and earn what they can.”

“The girls!”

“There is no shame in honest work, whatever it may be.”

“But they will never marry if they work.”

“Half the women I marry are working women.”

“I won’t discuss it. You have never been the same since we came to this hateful place.”

“I was thinking chiefly of Mary. She could teach music. And Annette has had a better education than the others. She could . . .”

“What?”

“She could obtain a situation as a governess.”

“A governess! Annette! A governess!”

In Mrs. Folyat’s eyes to send your daughter out as a governess was a confession of poverty. There could be no glossing it over. Of course the clergy were miserably paid, but Francis had always risen superior to that reproach in public opinion by the general belief in the amplitude of his private means. It could be little short of disaster then to confess to inadequacy. And a governess! Poor Annette! though to be sure when she was a child her godmother had looked at her sadly and observed that she must assuredly be prepared for a convent. She was so plain—a remark which Minna had never ceased to brandish over poor Annette’s head whenever their wills clashed. . . .

Francis at length cut short his wife’s protestations with a sigh and said:

“My dear, I’m sorry. That’s the position. We have to swallow it. We can’t give the girls the opportunities they ought to have. We must let them fight their own way. At present anything is better than the sort of life they are leading. We’ll sell another house, but that shall be the last. We’ll make a fresh start. Be patient with me, my dear.”

[Pg 63]

“And am I to tell Mary?”

“No. I’ll do that, and I’ll find a family for Annette.”

Francis went away feeling that there was a great deal to be said for the celibacy of the clergy. Other men, of course, did not see so much of their families, and perhaps, for that reason, could understand them better, be better friends with them, and not so acutely conscious of their irritating peculiarities. The relation between a father and daughter should be a very beautiful thing, and indeed there were moments when the house in Fern Square was a place of happiness and affectionate unity. Only—only, there was the future. Martha growing more and more helpless, and the household duties and responsibilities devolving more and more upon Gertrude and Mary, and they losing their bloom.

Francis had a vague feeling of injustice which was harshly in disaccord with his professional teaching of acceptance—“Whatever is, is right” and “It’s all for the best.” At any rate there was still abundant laughter in his house, and that was better than the grim smile which was all these Northerners would for the most part allow themselves. The days of violent opposition were gone, but the Puritans still looked askance at the Proud Priest—for the nickname clung—and his family. The grocer with an off-licence round the corner spread tales of the large quantities of beer that were consumed in the parson’s house.

Mary took the suggestion very well, and soon she had five pupils, little boys and girls, whom she taught to fumble on the piano and to extract horrible noises from the violin. She went to their houses and enjoyed making new friends. Annette was brought home from Edinburgh at the end of the term and was found a situation with an ironmaster’s family named Fender. She had one pupil, a little hunchbacked girl who alternately adored her and bullied her. Annette was very happy. At home she had been so mercilessly teased by Minna that she was glad to get away. The Fenders lived in Burnley, ten miles away, and in summer they moved to a lovely house they had in Westmoreland, high-perched on a hill looking [Pg 64]down on Grasmere and Rydal. She read enormous quantities of novels, and devoured the pounds and pounds of sweets and chocolates that were lavished on her pupil. Once a week she wrote dutiful letters to her parents and surreptitiously she began to write a novel in the manner of Mr. James Payn. She wrote three chapters, and then found the labour of writing too exhausting and continued the story mentally in her many idle moments.

At home in Fern Square the conduct of Gertrude had been causing some astonishment and alarm. For five consecutive Sundays she failed to put in an appearance at morning service, and once she neglected her Sunday-school class. When questioned about it—she was a woman in years, but Mrs. Folyat was not the mother to relax her authority until it was wrested from her—she replied that she was making a tour of the High Churches in our town—with a friend. The answer was found satisfactory, but Minna looked into the facts and found that her elder sister had spent every one of those five Sundays in St. Saviour’s, where there was a young acolyte who had a beautiful profile and soulful eyes. He wore the most exquisite garments, and his expression was as near monkish as anything you can find in the Church of England. His face was lean and pale, and his whole bearing was mournful in the extreme.

For two Sundays after the inquisition Gertrude went to service in St. Paul’s. On the third she disappeared again, and Minna pleaded headache, watched the others go off with their prayer-books and Sunday clothes, and then hurried to St. Saviour’s, a little church built on a slag-heap above the Jewish quarter. She crept in just before eleven and found Gertrude sitting far up near the steps of the nave gazing in rapt and religious devotion at the young acolyte as with almost theatrical solemnity he performed his rites. If he was conscious of her he gave no sign. With an almost yearning intensity he crept noiselessly about ministering to the priest. Gertrude’s great moment came after the sermon when, the churchwardens and sidesmen moving lugubriously from pew to pew, the acolyte came down to the altar steps and stood [Pg 65]with a large brass plate in his hands waiting for the offertory. He stood there proudly with his pale face upturned, his whole soul seeming to be borne aloft on the hymn sung by the congregation. On this occasion it was:

    O God our help in ages past,

    Our hope for years to come;

    Our shelter from the stormy blast,

    And our eternal home.

Minna had come in a mischievous spirit, but even she was impressed. There was a soulfulness in the young man, the look of one hopelessly atoning for all the sins of the world, and, above all, there was artistry in his movements. Everything that he did seemed to be immensely important and pregnant with meaning. When he stooped and the churchwardens and sidesmen laid their little bags in the great brass plate, he did it with the air of one accepting a worthless gift for the grace of the giving. To him at least it did seem to be true that it is more blessed to give than to receive. His humility was so great, so moving, that Minna wished she had put sixpence into the bag instead of a penny.

She could not see Gertrude’s face, but she was familiar enough with her back to be able to gauge her feelings. Gertrude had rather a poor figure, with high shoulders and a very short waist. Now her shoulders were higher than ever, and she was leaning forward and her elbows were trembling ever so slightly. Minna smiled and thought maliciously of all she knew about Gertrude, and that was not a little.

Before the service was over she left the church, and was lying in the study with a wet handkerchief over her head and a volume of Tennyson on her knees when the rest of the family came home from St. Paul’s and Gertrude from St. Saviour’s.

“Where did you go to, my dear?” asked Mrs. Folyat.

“Oh! To St. Benedict’s,” replied Gertrude. “They have the most lovely altar-cloth I ever saw. But the curate intones very badly.”

“As badly as pa?” asked Minna.

[Pg 66]

“That’s impossible,” said Francis with a long chuckle.

There was some chatter, circulation of gossip got at the church door, and then with some anxiety Mrs. Folyat looked across the long table at her husband and said:

“Are you going to tell them, Frank?”

Francis had his mouth full and could only say “Hum! Ha!”

“What is it?” Frederic turned a little pale and wondered what was coming. His misdeeds, taken collectively, were very trivial, but he knew from experience that any one of them taken singly, robbed of its context and placed under the scrutiny of other eyes, would assume gigantic proportions.

“Have all the Folkestone Folyats died and left us all their money? Or has uncle William come back from India with a gigantic fortune?” Minna was rushing wildly ahead on all the strangest possibilities when Francis finished his mouthful and cleared his throat.

“No,” he said. “I have heard from your brother Serge.”

“Serge!” said Mary.

“Serge!” said Gertrude, snatched from her tender dreams.

“Is he rich?” asked Minna.

“I don’t know. He talks of coming home.”

“Where is he?” This came from Frederic.

“He wrote from Durban in South Africa.”

“Oh! Then of course he’s a millionaire. Hurrah! He’ll buy Frederic a partnership, and me a husband—catch me marrying a poor man—and Mary a genuine Strad, and Gertie a—an acolyte.”

Gertrude flushed hotly and looked daggers across the table.

“He merely writes that he is coming home, as though he had only been away a week.”

“Some of you children can hardly remember him,” said Martha.

Minna said she could just recollect his putting her into a bassinette and letting her go flying down a hill into a pond.

[Pg 67]

Francis went on:

“He sent your mother some water-colour drawings.”

“Any good?” asked Frederic.

“I think they’re quite good. But I don’t know anything about these things.”

“I’ll take them to old Lawrie. He’ll know,” said Frederic.

“Lawrie?” murmured Gertrude.

“Yes. D’you know him?”

“No. No.”

Minna winked at Frederic. He had often talked to her about old Lawrie, and she had discovered that the name of the young acolyte at St. Saviour’s was Bennett Lawrie, old James’ third son.

“I say,” said Frederic, “does Serge know we’re here?”

“No. The letter was forwarded from St. Withans.”

“Don’t you think you ought to let him know what he’s in for?”

“I can’t do that. He gave no address.”

“It won’t matter to him if he’s rich,” said Minna, and they all fell to and rummaged their memories for recollections of Serge as a boy. Minna invented lavishly and suddenly she shouted:

“Did he say whether he’d got a wife?”

“I bet it’s a blackamoor like old Nicholas Folyat,” said Frederic.

“Even if she is black,” said Mrs. Folyat solemnly, “if he is married to her she will be my daughter-in-law and I shall receive her.”

The conversation took on a broad complexion which is more permissible in the family circle than in the printed page.

That evening Frederic took Serge’s drawings with him and sought out old Lawrie in the Arts Club, where always on a Sunday evening there was a gathering of old warriors and choice spirits—Joshua Yeo, Elihu Beecroft, the painter, Peter Maitland, who wrote pantomimes, and Warlock Clynes, the photographer, and B. J. Strutt, the manager of the old theatre, where, as a young man, Henry Irving had been a member of the stock company. They [Pg 68]were smoking and drinking and yarning. They had vast stores of anecdotes of the great Bohemians in London. Beecroft had twice had pictures in the Academy, and B. J. Strutt had begun life as a call-boy at the Haymarket Theatre. Old James Lawrie had been to London three times and had shaken hands with J. L. Toole and Helen Faucit, and Clement Scott had sent him a copy of his Ballads, of which he had produced many gross parodies.

The club was simply three rooms in a dark block of offices—a bar, an eating room, and a smoke-room. Frederic was shown in by the grubby boy whom he found at the door reading a penny “blood,” and he stood foolishly in the middle of the room realising dreadfully that old Lawrie did not remember who he was.

“Mr. Lawrie. . .” he said.

“Eh?”

“I—I—My name’s Folyat. I—I acted. You asked me to—to look you up here some day.”

“Eh? Oh, yes. Come and sit down. What’ll you have? I can’t pay for your drink, but some one will.”

Frederic sat down, and the little group of old men were embarrassed by his presence.

“So. . . so you act, do you? Here’s B. J. Strutt. Get him to give you a job in his next pantomime.”

“I’m—I’m not a pro,” said Frederic. “I’m a solicitor.” And, as he said it, he felt that it was a small thing to be among these free men who practised the arts. Frederic was a chameleon who took his colour from his surroundings. He had a queer capacity for enthusiasm, which came and went and was altogether beyond his control. He drank a little whiskey and he felt that he was in the company of very wonderful beings. They talked of things and men that were glorious dreams to him, and they spoke of them with such ease and familiarity, like giants playing marbles with the mountains. His own little celebrity, which had been very dear to him, dwindled into nothing, and it was to protect himself that he produced Serge’s drawings and began to talk of his brother.

Beecroft took the drawings and looked them through. He had a huge red beard and a glistening bald head and [Pg 69]round spectacles that made him look like a benevolent spider. He clapped his hands to his bald pink head and with immense fervour said:

“By God!”

“Are they good?” rasped Lawrie.

“No. Damn bad.”

Frederic felt very small.

“I don’t know,” said B. J. Strutt. “I like that one all yellow in the foreground and blue in the distance. And I like that one with the niggers filing through the orange-trees with the pinky-white house beyond.”

“So do I,” cried Beecroft. “I like ’em all. The man can’t draw, but he can feel colour and big distances and lots and lots of air.”

Frederic began to feel better. The old men gathered round the drawings and gave grunts of satisfaction. (They had been very bored all the evening and were glad of something to interest them).

“Where is he?” said Beecroft. “This brother of yours.”

“In Africa. He’s coming home.”

“He’s a genius. Do you know that? A genius.”

“Be careful, Beecroft,” put in Lawrie. “There have been about twenty men of genius—real genius—in forty, or is it sixty?—thousand years.”

“A genius,” reiterated Beecroft. “We’ll give a show. You can ram him down their throats week by week, Yeo.”

“It’s no good running a genius in this place,” growled Lawrie.—He was always discovering poets and seeing them go to ruin.—“They don’t want genius. They’re so used to imitations.”

“At any rate,” protested Beecroft, “they haven’t had anything like this for years, and I don’t think we ought to let ’em off.”

“My brother’s coming home now. I’ll tell him what you said. It’s rather funny. I haven’t seen him since we were boys, and then he was much older than I.”

“We’ll have a show,” repeated Beecroft. “He’s a local man?”

[Pg 70]

“We weren’t born here. But my father’s been rector of St. Paul’s, Bide Street, for some years now.”

“That’s good enough. The stinking rotters here like to think they’ve had a hand in anything produced in the place—if people talk about it enough. Have some more whiskey?”

Frederic was beyond saying “no.” The drink went to his head, inflated him, and he offered to sing. Strutt played his accompaniments, and they kept him at it for an hour until he was hoarse, and they shouted the choruses in cracked, beery voices.

It was very late when Frederic left the club, after shaking hands all round and promising tearfully to bring his brother, the genius, as soon as he arrived. He forgot the drawings altogether, and old Lawrie, being the soberest of the party, gathered them together and took them home with him.