CHAPTER V
A QUIET TALK
Frank and Nancy were on the platform at Kencote. The Squire, longing for his home whenever he was away from it, like any schoolboy detached from the dear familiar, was pleased to see their smiling faces. They were agreeably surprised by the warmth of his greeting, having expected him to reach home in even a worse state of mind than that in which he had left it, and not having realised that a dreaded ordeal has lost most of its sting when it has been gone through, even if its terrors have been worse than fancy had painted them.
"Well, young people," was his hearty greeting, "I hope you haven't been up to any pranks while we've been away."
Not a word about the police court proceedings; no black looks! They responded suitably to his geniality, and passed on to greet the other members of the family, looking on to the time when one of them could be detached to tell the story of what had happened.
There was no stint of carriages in the Squire's stables, nor of horses to draw or men to drive them. He himself invariably drove his phaeton from the station, enjoying, whatever the weather, the sense of being in the open air, doing one of the things that was a part of his natural life, after being cooped up for a couple of hours in a train. On this occasion there was also an open carriage, and the station omnibus for the servants and the luggage. This involved six horses, and five men, in the sober Clinton livery of black cloth with dark green facings, and a general turn out in the way of fine upstanding satin-coated horseflesh, gloss of silver-plated harness, mirror-like carriage varnish, and spick and span retainerhood that would not have disgraced royalty itself. It was indeed with a sense almost akin to that of royalty that the Squire took the salutes of his servants, and threw his eye over such of his vehicular possessions as met it. He was undisputed lord of this little corner of the world, and it was good to find himself back in his kingdom, after having been an undistinguished unit amongst London's millions, and especially to breathe its serene air after having had his nostrils filled with the sordid atmosphere of the police court. He took the reins of his pair of greys from his head coachman with a deep sense of satisfaction, and swung himself actively up on to his seat, but not before he had settled exactly who was to ride in which carriage.
Mrs. Clinton always sat by the side of her husband, and did so now. But all the rest had wished to walk. The landau, however, was there, and could not be sent back empty. At least, the Squire asked what was the good of having it sent down if nobody used it. So Humphrey and Susan sacrificed their desire for exercise to his sense of fitness, and Joan, Nancy, and Frank set out to walk the short mile that lay between the station and the house, well pleased to find themselves alone together.
The Squire had completely recovered his equanimity for the time being, and his satisfaction at finding himself at home again translated itself into an impulse of good will towards his wife, sitting by his side.
With her soft white hair and comely face, Mrs. Clinton looked a fitting helpmate for a country gentleman getting on in years, but still full of manly vigour. There was rather a splendid air about the Squire, with his massive frame and his look of health and vigour, as he sat up driving his handsome horses; and his wife did not share it. He had married her for love when he had been a young man who might be called splendid without any qualification whatever, the owner of a fine estate at the pitch of its fruitfulness, and an admitted match for all but the very highest. He had chosen her, the daughter of an Indian officer who lived in a small way on the outskirts of the neighbouring town, and had been considered by many to have made a misalliance. But he had never thought so himself. He had made of her a slave to his own preferences, kept her shut up from the time of her marriage, away from the pursuits and the friendships for which her understanding fitted her, and unconsciously belittled that understanding by demanding that in all things she should bring her intelligence down on a level with his. But he had trusted her more than he knew, and on the rare occasions on which she had quietly asserted herself to influence him he had followed her, and, without acknowledging or even feeling himself to have been in the wrong, had afterwards been glad of it. By giving way to him on an infinity of small matters, but not so small to her as to have avoided a sacrifice of many strong inclinations, she had kept her power to guide him in greater matters. Whatever it may have been to her, his marriage had brought him all that he could ever have desired. She had brought him, perhaps, more submission than had been good for him. His native capacity for domineering had thriven on it; because he had never had to meet any big troubles in his married life, he had always made much of little ones; because she had so seldom opposed him, he took opposition from any quarter like a thwarted child. But she had made him always beneath the surface contented with her; never once in the forty years of their marriage, when he had gone about angrily chewing a grievance, had she been the cause of it. Nothing that she might have struggled for and won in her own life would have outweighed that.
Now, with her own thoughts about what had happened strong in her, she had to sit and listen to his views, which were fortunately more cheerfully coloured than they had been for some days past.
"Well, that's over for the present," was the burden of his speech, but when he had so expressed himself with sundry variations, he found something else to comment upon.
Susan's tears! They had moved him. "I think she's all right at heart," he said. "She's had a shock."
"Yes," said Mrs. Clinton. "I am glad that she is to be with us for a day or two."
The Squire considered this. Without any remarkable powers of discernment, he was yet not entirely incapable of interpreting his wife's sober judgments.
"It will be a rest for her," he said. "She will want to forget it. Yes. That's all very well—if she's learnt her lesson."
Mrs. Clinton left him to make his own decision. "I shall certainly have a talk with Humphrey," he said, rather grudgingly.
"Yes, Edward. If you have a quiet talk with him, I feel sure that he will respond. He is in the mood for it."
A quiet talk was not exactly what the Squire had promised himself when he had summoned Humphrey and Susan to Kencote. But perhaps his wife was right. She often was in these matters. And he had worked off a good deal of his irritation already in the train. Yes, a quiet talk would be the thing; and Susan should be left out of it. She had been reduced to tears once, and it would be disturbing if that should happen again. She might be considered to have learnt her lesson, as far as a woman could learn any lesson. The wholesome influence of Kencote might be left to work in her repentant soul. He would deny himself the satisfaction of rubbing it in.
The quiet talk took place as father and son walked out together after tea to see the young birds. Frank had to be prevented from making a third in the expedition, and there was interruption from keepers, from dogs, and from the young birds themselves, whose place in the scheme of things it was to be discussed, in the month of June. But it was a satisfactory talk all the same, and the Squire was pleased, and a little surprised, at his own kindly reasonableness.
"I was sorry to make Susan cry in the train. At least I wasn't altogether sorry—it showed she took to heart what I had said to her."
"Oh yes. She took it to heart all right. The whole business has given her a bit of a shock."
"Exactly what I said to your mother. She's had a shock. Well, it isn't a bad thing to have a shock sometimes. It brings you to your senses if you've been going wrong. I don't want to be hard on you, my boy; but I shan't regret all the worry and unpleasantness I've been put to if it has the effect of making you think a bit about the way you have been going on, and changing your way of life—you and Susan both."
"Yes." Humphrey had not yet realised that the talk was to be a quiet one. It was not unusual for openings of this sort to develop into something that, however it might be viewed, could not be described as quiet. He was ready to be quiet himself; but he would give no handles if he could help it.
The Squire, however, could not altogether dispense with some sort of a handle, although he was prepared to grasp it softly.
"You feel that yourself, eh?" he said. "You do recognise that you've been going wrong, what?"
"Oh yes," said Humphrey readily. "We've been spending too much money, and I'm sick of it. It isn't good enough."
This was not quite what the Squire wanted. If Humphrey had been spending too much money, he must be in debt; and if he was sick of it, he would obviously want to get out of debt. He did not want the quiet talk to follow the path of suggestions as to how that might be done.
"Well, if you've been spending too much money," he said, not without adroitness, "you can easily spend less. You have a very handsome income between you, and could have anything anybody could reasonably want if you only spent half of it. The fact is, you know, my boy, that you can't live the life you and Susan have been living with any lasting satisfaction. Your Uncle Tom preached a capital sermon about that last Sunday. It was something to the effect of doing your duty in the world instead of looking out for pleasure, and it would be all the better for you, both here and hereafter. I don't pose as a saint—never have—but, after all, your religion's a real thing, or it isn't. I can only say that mine has been a comfort to me, many's the time. I have had my fair share of annoyances, and it has enabled me to get through them, hoping for a better time to come. And it has done more than that; it's made me see that a life of pleasure is a dangerous thing, by Jove, and the man's a fool who goes in for it."
"Well, it depends on what you mean by pleasure."
"That's not very difficult to see, is it? Dancing about after amusement all day and half the night; rushing here, rushing there; never doing anything for the good of your fellow-creatures; getting more and more bored with yourself and everybody else; never——"
"Is that what you would call pleasure?"
"What I should call pleasure? No, thank God, it isn't. I'd sooner break stones on the road than live a life like that."
"Well, there you are, you see. What you would really call pleasure is something quite different. I suppose it would be to live quietly at home in the country, just as you are doing. There's nothing dangerous in that."
"Of course there isn't. It's the best life for any man, if the Almighty has put him into the position of enjoying it. It's a life of pleasure in a way—yes, that's perfectly true; but it's a life of duty too, and stern duty, by Jove, very often. You can't be always thinking about yourself. You've got responsibilities, in a position like mine, and you've got to remember that some day you'll have to give an account of them. We'll just go in here and see Gotch; I want a word with him about his bill for meal."
Gotch's bill for meal, and the welfare of the young birds under his charge having been duly discussed, the walk and the quiet talk were resumed.
"Well, as I was saying—what was it I was saying?"
"You were pointing out that a big landowner had a jolly good time, but that he would have to give an account of all the fun he'd had by and by."
"Eh? Well, that wasn't quite how I meant to put it. But you say yourself you are sick of the life you've been leading—and I don't wonder at it—and I wanted to show you that you can gain much more satisfaction by living quietly in the country, and amusing yourself in a healthy way, and doing your duty towards those dependent on you, than by living that unhealthy rackety London life. Look at Dick. There's no fellow who lived more in the thick of things than he did; but he kept his head through it all, and now the time has come for him to settle down here he's ready to do it, and I should think enjoys his life as much as any man could. It was just the same with me, only I gave it up sooner than he did. I had my two years in the Blues, and then I married and settled down here; and I've never regretted it."
"No, I don't suppose you have. The life suits you down to the ground, and Dick too. It would suit me if I were in your place, or Dick's."
"Well, you could easily live the life that Dick lives, and you would find your money went a good deal further, if you made up your mind to do it. I wish you would. You would be a happier man in every way, and Susan would be a happier woman."
"I'm not sure of that. We might for a time, but we should miss a lot of things. You can amuse yourself in the country well enough half the year, but not all the year round; and we couldn't afford both."
"My dear boy, I've been trying to tell you. You are going on the wrong tack altogether if you are always thinking about amusing yourself. It isn't the way to look at life. Every man has duties to perform."
"What duties should I have to perform? I'm not a landowner, and never likely to be one. If I lived in the country I should hunt a bit and shoot a bit; and for the rest of the time I don't know what I should do."
"Well, if you lived near here, you could be put on the bench. There's a lot of useful work that a man living on the income you have can do in keeping things going. In these times the more gentry there are living in a place, the better it is for the country all round. What do you do as it is? It can't be satisfactory to anybody to live year after year in a whirl. There's not a single thing you do in London that's good for you that you couldn't do better in the country."
"I don't know about that. There's music for one thing, and pictures and plays. I'm not altogether the brainless voluptuary, you know. There's a lot goes on in London that keeps your mind alive, and you drop that if you bury yourself in the country."
"Stuff and nonsense!" exclaimed the Squire, but with persistent good humour. "Don't I keep my mind alive? You'd have the 'Times' and the 'Spectator'; and there are lots of clever people in the country. Look at Tom! He hardly ever goes near London. Hates the place. But I'll guarantee that he reads as much as any Bishop, and knows what's going on in the world as well as anybody. No, my dear boy, it won't do. I don't say there aren't people it suits to be in London. Herbert Birkett, for instance!" (This was Mrs. Clinton's brother, the Judge.) "But he's been brought up to it. He hasn't got the tastes of a country gentleman, wouldn't be happy away from the Athenæum Club, and all that sort of thing. And George Senhouse, with his Parliament and his committees and so on. That's a different thing. They've got their work to do. But don't tell me you are like that. Yours is a different life altogether. They spend theirs amongst sober, God-fearing people—at least George Senhouse does. Of course, Herbert Birkett was a Radical, and I shouldn't like to answer for the morals of all his friends, even now. But, anyhow, they're not the sort that would make a bosom friend of a woman like that Mrs. Amberley."
"Well, I don't know that I should make a bosom friend of her myself. But she's no worse than a lot of others. She's been found out—that's all—and, of course, the whole pack are in full cry after her now."
"My dear boy, you are surely not going to stand up for a woman convicted of a vulgar theft!"
"She hasn't been convicted yet. But even if she is guilty, as I suppose she is, one can't help feeling a bit sorry for her. You don't know what may have driven her to it. Amberley left her badly off, and it's a desperate thing for a woman to be worried night and day by debt. That's what Susan feels. She's known it in a sort of way herself. You know the dust-up we had a couple of years ago, when you kindly came to the rescue. Well, I suppose that brings it home to her. She doesn't care for Rachel Amberley any more than I do, but she can't take the line about this business that most people take; and I'm inclined to think she's right. After all—you were talking about religion just now—it seems to me that religion ought to prevent you judging harshly of people who have got into trouble."
The Squire's upper lip went down. "Flagrant dishonesty is not a thing that you can judge leniently, and no religion in the world would tell you to do so," he said. "You've got to keep to certain lines, or everything goes by the board. I don't like to hear you upholding such views."
"It is all a question of how you are situated. It would be impossible to think of you, for instance, stealing anything. You wouldn't have the smallest temptation to. But you might do something else that would be just as bad."
"I might do something just as bad—something dishonourable!"
"You never know. You might have a sudden temptation. Of course, it wouldn't come in any way you expected! You might act on the spur of the moment."
The Squire stopped and faced his son. "That's a very foolish thing to say," he said with a frown. "A man of principle doesn't act dishonourably on the spur of the moment. Doesn't honour count for anything with you?"
Humphrey walked on, and the Squire walked with him.
"I say you don't know what you'd do if an unexpected temptation came. You don't know how strong your principles are till they are tried."
"They are tried. They are always being tried, in little ways. A man leads an upright life, as far as in him lies, and if a big question comes up, he's ready for it."
"It depends on how much he is tried," said Humphrey. "I say you never know."