XV WALKING HOME

          He that covereth a transgression seeketh love; but he that repeateth a matter separateth very friends.         
          PROVERBS XVII.         

YOU may walk out of a house and yet carry it with you, just as you may cross the Channel and yet always take England with you among your baggage.

Francis carried James Lawrie’s house with him on his back like a snail’s shell. He could not get the thought of Bennett out of his head, and the thought of Bennett made him sensitive as he had never been to the squalor through which he had to pass on the way home. Everything in him was disturbed. His comfortable good-nature rather than his religion had made him accept the world as good in essence, and he had always done what he could to alleviate poverty and to comfort distress when they had come knocking at his door, but moral distress such as he had found in old Lawrie and divined in old Lawrie’s son he had never looked for and never seen. One thing only in his life had so disturbed him, the episode, years and years ago, of the murder in Potsham, but that he had not grasped so fully; it had been so easy to conventionalise it, to watch the man be swallowed up by the machinery of punishment and forget, to pass on to—what had he passed on to? He was dismayed to find himself thinking of his wooing. Even then he had not taken the trouble to understand what he was doing; and the result? Would it have been different if he had taken the trouble to understand? Old Lawrie seemed to take an immense amount of trouble to understand, and look at the pass to which he had brought himself.

He passed the end of a dismal trough of a street—there [Pg 157]were hundreds like it in his parish—and the sight of it led him to the thought of poverty. Perhaps, he told himself, perhaps his disasters and old Lawrie’s were due only to the fact that they were poor men, too poor for the responsibilities of wife and children they had taken upon themselves. . . . But that must be nonsense. There would soon be an end of everything if the great processes of the world were to be screwed down to the money standard, if . . . But that was too difficult. He must see old Lawrie again. Quite obviously he must think things out, but he was incapable of doing so alone, and admitted it to himself. He liked walking and resented this intrusion of thought upon his pleasure. He had been a fool and supposed that he must pay for his folly, and only hoped that the price asked would not be more than he could pay. He had a feeling that he was only at the beginning of some stupendous change, and on the whole he was excited by it, until he began to think, and then it all lay so far beyond his grasp that he was depressed. One thing relieved him—the knowledge that he had no regret for the fleshpots and the fat glebes of the two Cornish livings of his early manhood.

Then his thoughts took another turn. After all, what did it matter? He did his work conscientiously, and nothing else was greatly his concern. He was only interested in Bennett Lawrie in so far as he was going to be Gertrude’s husband. He had promised to see what could be done towards making the young man a clergyman. He had fulfilled the promise, but apparently nothing could be done. The garden roller had passed over that aspiration and squeezed it out flat as a shadow. So be it. Gertrude’s husband would continue in commerce, take an active though lay interest in Church matters, and probably be ten times more prosperous, probably also a more satisfactory husband and father, than if he were to take Orders. There was a great deal to be said for work which took a man away all day and every day from his home, a good deal from both sides. It needed a strong affection to withstand the strain of full community of existence and interest.

[Pg 158]

Finding himself beginning to think critically of marriage, Francis brought himself up with a start. There had been a time when he had given a great deal of thought to it, his thought had necessarily driven him to attempted discussion with his wife, but on the first hint of what was at the back of his mind she had cried scandal and shame upon him and so scared and wounded him that he had never returned to the subject. He had hoped to break down the wall that had grown up between them, but she put up two bricks for every one he removed. Did she know what she was doing? Did she suffer from it?—He did not know. He would never know. She amused him. He told himself that she was more like Mrs. Nickleby than he had conceived it possible for a woman in real life to be. At any rate she was not hard, armoured against even a joke, like Mrs. Lawrie.

That brought him back to Bennett, and he had a gust of anger against the young man—not a violent gust. Francis never could be violent in anything. His anger turned on himself and twinged his conscience with the realisation that he was giving more thought to Bennett and Bennett’s affairs than he had to any of his children. The point of it all was the establishment of Bennett in a career superior to that which had been forced upon him, but then which of his children had been established in a career of any sort? Serge had gone his own way; Leedham had taken things into his own hands; Frederic had a profession, but he (Francis) had no notion how that profession was answering or what prospect it held out. Unfortunately Francis had never been able to take Frederic seriously, and the thought of him was enough to set his mind working in caricature. He thrust aside all that had been troubling him—with considerable relief—and the seed of irony planted in him by his conversation with old Lawrie grew like a magic beanstalk, and he saw himself in the absurd position of having obliged a world hungry for population—(Was it not? Did not everybody agree in saying so?)—with, for one man, a large supply of human beings, produced quite legitimately after due notice given, only to find that one after another the world [Pg 159]rejected them, or at any rate refused to provide the males with worthy work or the females with husbands. He was walking along Miller Street as this new perception came to him, between fifty little houses on one side and fifty little houses on the other, and half-way down the street the door of a house opened and Frederic came out and stopped him. He had no hat on and he was a little nervous. He said:

“Have you had a letter?”

“Several. You don’t write letters to me.”

“No. It’s from Mrs. Lipsett. She lives here. She said she’d written to you about me. You’d better come and see her. She lives here.”

“Friends of yours?”

“Not exactly friends. I’ve only known her a fortnight. It’s about her daughter.”

“Oh!”

Francis turned and followed Frederic into the house, and down a narrow little passage into the kitchen at the back. This was a little dark room looking into a backyard. Both kitchen and yard were full of washing, for it was Monday. The remnants of a meal were on the table, walled in with piles of damp linen. From the cellar door just outside the kitchen came clouds of steam.

Mrs. Lipsett was a little, faded woman, very thin, very untidy. She was sitting in a hard Windsor chair gazing into the fire, as though she were hypnotised by it. She did not look up as the father and son entered. Frederic placed a chair for his father, introduced him to Mrs. Lipsett, and without worrying as to whether she heard him or not hurried away and shut the door. Mrs. Lipsett turned to Francis and said:

“My husband left me with five children and went off with a theatre woman. He takes young girls and trains them for the dancing. He’s a rich man now, but I don’t have a penny from him. It’s hard work making a living with the lodgers, and you can’t do it when there’s illness.”

“No, I suppose not. I’m very sorry,” replied Francis uneasily. “If I can do anything. . .”

“Do anything!” Mrs. Lipsett was scornful. “As if [Pg 160]you could. I’ve worked my fingers to the bone. Two of the girls are in a shop. It wouldn’t have been so bad if it had been them, though it would have been bad enough. But Annie’s stayed at home helping me, and I don’t see what’s to be done. I don’t see what’s to be done. He’s owned up to it. There’s that much to be said for him. But that doesn’t help much, does it?”

“Who? . . . I don’t know. . . . I’m in the dark . . .”

“You’ve not had my letter . . . !”

“Letter?”

“Yes. That tells you.”

“Tells me what?”

“What you ought to know.”

“About whom? About what?”

“Him.”

“Your husband?”

“No. Him and her.”

Francis had learned patience in dealing with his parishioners, who were incapable of a direct statement. Mrs. Lipsett had no intention of being mysterious. It only showed that she could not bring herself to the point of open discussion of her affairs with a stranger. She had flung a certain amount of anger into her letter, all the anger she was capable of feeling, and she was not equal to the task of whipping it up again now that she was in the presence of the man to whom she had written in her first desire to injure Frederic. She made an effort and went on:

“I can’t have it in the house. I can’t lose my lodgers. It would frighten the lodgers.”

“What would?”

Mrs. Lipsett looked desperate.

“Don’t you know?”

“No, I don’t,” replied Francis, rather petulantly.

Mrs. Lipsett had risen to her feet. Now she sank back again into her chair and began to cry. Francis preferred that to her incoherence.

“My good woman,” he said. “You seem to be in some trouble. If I can give you any consolation . . .”

“I am in trouble,” moaned Mrs. Lipsett. “I’m always [Pg 161]in trouble. I’ve never been out of trouble since I was born. Some people are like that you know.”

These reflections cheered her up perceptibly, and she asked Francis if he would mind if she began to cook the first floor’s tea.

Francis began to feel exasperated.

“My good woman,” he said, “will you kindly explain what my son has to do with all this, and why he has brought me here?”

Mrs. Lipsett had moved to the table and taken up an armful of linen.

“Didn’t he tell you?”

“No.”

Mrs. Lipsett dropped her linen, ran to the door and screamed “Annie!”

A voice answered her.

“Come here!”

Mrs. Lipsett turned to Francis, folded her arms and with her lips tight pressed she worried out her words:

“Not told you, hasn’t he? Leaving me to make a nice fool of myself! I’ve heard of you, Mr. Folyat! That innocent you are that you don’t know you’re born yet. . . .”

Annie came in and cut short anything else she might have to say.

“Yes, mother?”

“Isn’t Mr. Folyat with you?”

“No. I thought he was here with you.”

“Sloped, has he? Sloped!—This is Mr. Folyat’s father.”

“Good evening,” said Annie.

An awkward silence came on the three of them, and all three thought of Frederic with varying degrees of wrath.

“My daughter . . .” began Mrs. Lipsett.

“Mother!”

“Tell him yourself then.”

Annie blushed.

“I can’t.”

Mrs. Lipsett dropped into the vernacular.

“Eh! I am vexed!”

Francis took his hat and rose with some dignity.

[Pg 162]

“I am sorry,” he said, “but as neither of you seem disposed to enlighten me . . .”

Annie stood between him and the door. She blurted out:

“It’s Fred, Mr. Folyat. It wasn’t fair of him to leave you alone with mother like that. We saw you going by and he said he’d go and tell you. I suppose he didn’t. He’s like that. He means well.”

“Means well!” This from Mrs. Lipsett.

“Please, mother!” Annie went on. “Fred ought to have told you, Mr. Folyat. I’m as much to blame as he is. I suppose I’m very wicked, but there’s some things you can’t help. We didn’t think, I suppose. But it’s come to that, that we’ve got to think. I’m going to be a mother in three months, and Fred wants to help as much as he can.”

Francis sat down again.

“Frederic!”

“Yes. The beauty! Ain’t you proud of him?”

Frederic! Francis was not so much shocked as amazed. He was only too accustomed to irregularity, large and small, but he had always regarded the victims of it as creatures of another clay. Automatically by their offence they passed from one compartment of his mind to another. Where possible they were given benefit of clergy, but only as one finds a home for a stray dog. . . .

Mrs. Lipsett said:

“I say he ought to marry her.”

Francis did not hear her. He was still trying to grasp the fact, but once more he found himself confronted with the difficulty that he could not take Frederic seriously. That Frederic should be, regularly or irregularly, on the point of becoming a father struck him as comic and grotesque, and yet (he said to himself) it was only to be expected that in course of time the fate that had overtaken himself should overtake his son also. But also a man was usually given time to get accustomed to the idea. In the ordinary course a man introduced a young woman to his father and mother—(with a pang he thought of Mrs. Folyat’s reception of this event!)—they were engaged, [Pg 163]married, and as bluntly as possible the Church service announced the probable consequences. Everything went smoothly and one hoped for the best. But Frederic, the buffoon, the play-actor, had dispensed with all this; had, by a sort of conjuring trick, inveigled him into a strange house, and left him with a very cool and collected young woman with a strong accent and an angry mother whose speech was of the broadest, and without a word of marriage, he was told—he was told—what was he told? With a start Francis realised that he was not in the least angry, as he ought to have been, as he had every right to be, and that he was thinking of the thing without the least reference to morality. He could not fit the formula he used for ordinary offenders to the case of his son, and, being honest, though slow and sluggish of mind, he admitted to himself that his one desire was to avoid having his wife know. He looked from the young woman to her mother and saw what a serious matter it was to them and gave up his unprofitable attempt to see the thing in connection with Frederic—(who threw it all out of perspective)—and, with a very real feeling for the two women, he said:

“I’m sorry. What do you want me to do?”

“You’re not angry?”

Francis fell back with some relief on formula:

“I am deeply pained and grieved. . .” But then the new little conscience there was developing in him cried out on his insincerity and he was silent.

Mrs. Lipsett repeated:

“I say he ought to marry her. I say . . .”

“He doesn’t want to marry me,” said Annie. “He says he knows he couldn’t make me happy.”

“What’s right is right,” said Mrs. Lipsett. “Can he afford to marry her, Mr. Folyat? Can you make him marry her?”

“Can I?” thought Francis; and his mind flew to the idea of this young woman being presented to his wife as her first daughter-in-law. Then he said to himself:

“It is not I who am to be considered, but these two women. Frederic is least of all to be considered.”

He did his best to think of Frederic as a husband, but it [Pg 164]was quite hopeless. Frederic was more than ever elusive. It was impossible to conceive him in any responsible position. That made Francis see that it was quite useless to stay any longer. He could only go on repeating that he was sorry. He saw no method of coercing Frederic into marriage (or anything else). The most he could do was to be parentally angry, and he saw the futility of that. If necessary, in the cause of good morals, he could turn Frederic out of doors, but that would necessitate a scene and explanations, and from that he shrank. Only one thing was now clear—that there was nothing to be gained by further discussion with Mrs. Lipsett and her daughter. He rose to his feet again and said:

“I am sorry, very sorry, extremely sorry. I will see my son. I will do what I can. I promise you that everything that can be done will be done.”

“Promises,” said Mrs. Lipsett, “are like pie-crusts—made to be broken.”

“Not mine,” returned Francis, as he bowed himself out.

Annie took him to the door and said:

“I only want to get away, sir. I only want to get away.”

Francis looked into her eager face. She was almost very pretty, and her eagerness was very touching. He was moved and a lump came into his throat, and tears filled his eyes, and he said:

“God bless you, my dear. You shall.”

She bowed her head as he passed out, and as he heard the latch click he said to himself:

“Surely she has suffered enough.”

And he felt a purely masculine anger against Frederic, anger which oozed and trickled away on the instant, for, as he turned up the street, he saw his son waiting for him at the corner. As he walked up the street he called Frederic poltroon, scoundrel, blackguard, lecher, debauchee, wastrel, but none of these words could revive his anger. As he came face to face with his son he found another word—play-actor, and if he had sympathy for Annie, the betrayed, he had pity for Frederic, her betrayer. [Pg 165]She could suffer, had suffered. Frederic could feel nothing at all.

“After all,” thought Francis, “he is my son. I have had my share in making him what he is.”

He looked clean through Frederic and made no sign of recognition, but passed on with his heavy rolling stride. Frederic fell in by his side like a terrier trying to attract the attention of a Newfoundland.

“I wonder what they’ve said to him. I suppose he’s devilish angry.”

And he fell to counting up his income and his debts, and wondering exactly how cheaply he could live in lodgings.

They walked for about half a mile in that fashion and it was Frederic who broke the silence.

“I didn’t mean to leave you like that. I meant to have it all out in one grand scene. I didn’t jib at it. I’m not a coward. Only suddenly it seemed to me so absurdly melodramatic. I couldn’t stand it so I cleared out . . .”

“I don’t think any explanation is necessary,” replied Francis in a curious toneless voice.

“By George! He is angry!” thought Frederic.

“I only want to know one thing,” said Francis. “Did you seduce the young woman with a promise of marriage?”

Frederic stole a glance at his father. It was such an odd question coming from him!

“There was never anything said of marriage from beginning to end. There never is in these cases. It’s so casual, you know. It seems to me jolly unfair that it should have the same result as when you are in dead earnest . . .”

“Silence.”

“Sorry.”

They walked on for a quarter of a mile.

“Does anybody know?”

“Only our two selves, Annie and her mother—oh! and Annette.”

“Annette!”

Francis was really angry. The thing had touched his new affection, the treasure of his life, and by that test he [Pg 166]saw it in its ugliness and sordidness. For the first time he was wholly human. His one thought was to protect Annette.

“Are you going to marry this girl?” he asked.

“No.”

“Are you going to provide for her?”

“I’ll do my best.”

“After this do you expect me to allow you to stay in my house?”

“I’ll clear out if you like.”

“I do like.”

“Very well then. Only you lose the right to interfere in the matter, or in my affairs in any way.”

“I never have interfered in your affairs.”

“No. . . . You’ll let me come and see my mother?”

That brought Francis up short. (Frederic knew it would.) Frederic was his mother’s favourite. His absence from the house or presence in it made an extraordinary difference to her mood. Lately she had grown very jealous of Annette. . . . Francis fumbled for some means of withdrawing the decree of banishment, and he said a little pompously:

“The young woman told me that she was only anxious to get away. I must help her to do that.”

“I can’t let you do that.”

“I must.”

“I’m not going to have you interfering . . .”

“You will not marry her. I can conceive of no greater misfortune befalling her than marriage with . . .”

“I quite agree,” said Frederic.

“All the same I must see that she is not . . .”

“In short, you are going to connive at her immorality.”

“I refuse to discuss the matter with you any further.”

“I’m glad of that. I’ll leave it in your hands and neither of us will say a word about it to anybody.”

“No,” said Francis, profoundly ashamed.

Frederic began to hum, and they walked on until they came to the Park.

Frederic said:

“I had a sort of feeling you’d take it like that. You [Pg 167]never let us know much of what you’re thinking and all that. I suppose you think I’m an infernal scoundrel. I’m not that. You can’t despise me half as much as I despise myself, but what I most despise is the way I’ve let you take the thing out of my hands. I’m very grateful.”

“If there is one thing in the world I don’t want,” said Francis, “it is gratitude from you.”

“I knew I should say the wrong thing,” replied Frederic, more to himself than to his father. They were passing the little muddy pond inhabited by a few grimy ducks and a black swan, and Frederic stopped and amused himself by throwing bits of paper to the birds, who for some moments were excited by the hope that they were bread. Francis passed on, relieved to find himself once more alone. The nervous irritation caused in him by Frederic’s presence at his side had exhausted him. Victory lay with Frederic, but he felt no resentment about that. Hundreds of times in his life the words Judgment is Mine, saith the Lord had been on his lips—(one of his sermons had them for text)—but now he seemed to see them in a new light and for the first time to read a real meaning into them.

He was very tired. He felt as though he had been engaged in a long, long fight with shadows, no tangible enemy, but only an evil presence.

As he passed the children’s playground he saw some of his choir boys playing tipcat. He turned in through the little gate and stood watching them. They were entirely engrossed in their game, keenly excited about it, and they did not notice him. Their cheeks were aglow and their eyes were sparkling with their healthy activity, and he began to be interested in their play. An exceptionally good shot from one of the boys made him cry out “Bravo!” At once they became self-conscious and uneasy. He tried to talk to them for a little but they assumed an unnatural spryness, and he knew that he had spoiled their game.

He went away unhappier than ever, hurried home to Fern Square and went straight to his study. There he sat in silence and suffered under the tyranny of his thoughts, which went round and round in a silly circle and would not [Pg 168]be controlled. With tragic whimsicality he began to run the events of the day together, to merge the Lipsett and the Lawrie households, and he began to think what Mrs. Lawrie would have made of Frederic. She would not have relieved Frederic of the consequences of his folly; she would have pushed him into the morass, forced him down to the common Lipsett level or left him to drown with his paramour. The use of the word paramour struck Francis as particularly absurd, and he smiled. His dislike of Mrs. Lawrie swamped everything else. Decidedly any course of action which could seem right to her must seem wrong to him. The impression left on his mind by Mrs. Lawrie and her dark room was one of grinding effort to make life as like death as possible. To Francis life was—what? The joy of boys at play, health physical and spiritual, the struggle to reach and maintain health; colour and light and sweetness; all things that for want of any other outlet he had expressed, or sought to express, in the services in his Church. . . . The first consequence of it all had been that his wife was a querulous old woman before her time. He had faced that long ago. The second tangible consequence was this affair of Frederic’s, and this also he had faced, and the worst that was demanded of him was that he should for the first time deliberately withhold a fact, a new development in his life, from his wife. There was an extraordinary ironic justice about it all. The sins of the fathers are visited upon the children for the castigation of the fathers. . . . Francis found himself on the verge of reflections so unclerical that he flung himself back, and to save himself from further thought took down his Bible. He was familiar with almost every word of it, but now to his dismay he found himself finding in it practical wisdom bearing on the brief life of man here below rather than prophesy and gorgeous promises of the life to come which should be everlasting. It was amazingly comforting to read the book in this (to him) new fashion and to let himself be excited by its call to action. He wearied a little of the savagery and dark pessimism of the Old-Testament, and turning to the Gospels found in them one stirring [Pg 169]principle of active love, and hatred only for hypocrisy and fraud and slovenliness.

“Verily I say unto you, whosoever shall not receive the Kingdom of God as a little child shall in no wise enter therein.”

He put down the Bible and took up “Tom Jones,” and remembered an Irishman, a student in Dublin, who had shocked him by maintaining that Tom Jones had certainly entered into the Kingdom of God and was rewarded with an angel, to wit Sophia Western. Curiously that seemed to Francis to be something more than a profane joke.

“All the same,” he said, “it is a long stride from Tom Jones to Frederic.”

With that he fell to thinking of the student in Dublin and the men of old days, and wondered what might have become of them all and if they had fared better or worse than himself.