III
They were far more than justified. Three mornings after the first letter, to which she had made no reply, Mary received a second. It ran:
"DEAR MARY,—And what is more, I shall henceforth pay you three hundred instead of five hundred a year. If George has not made a position for himself it is quite time he had. The Gold Medal must make a lot of difference to him. And if necessary you must economize. I am sure there is room for economy in your household. Champagne, for instance.—Your affectionate uncle, SAMUEL PEEL.
"P.S.—I am, of course, acting in your best interests.
"S.P."
This letter infuriated George, so much so that George the younger, observing strange symptoms on his father's face, and strange sounds issuing from his father's mouth, stopped eating in order to give the whole of his attention to them.
"Champagne! What's he driving at?" exclaimed George, glaring at Mary as though it was Mary who had written the letter.
"I expect he's been reading that paper," said Mary.
"Do you mean to say," George asked scornfully, "that your uncle reads a rag like that? I thought all his lot looked down on worldliness."
"So they do," said Mary. "But somehow they like reading about it. I believe uncle has read it every week for twenty years."
"Well, why didn't you tell me?"
"The other morning?"
"Yes."
"Oh, I didn't want to worry you. What good would it have done?"
"What good would it have done!" George repeated in accents of terrible disdain, as though the good that it would have done was obvious to the lowest intelligence. (Yet he knew quite well that it would have done no good at all.) "Georgie, take that spoon out of your sleeve."
And Georgie, usually disobedient, took the porridge-laden spoon out of his sleeve and glanced at his mother for moral protection. His mother merely wiped him rather roughly. Georgie thought, once more, that he never in this world should understand grown-up people. And the recurring thought made him cry gently.
George lapsed into savage meditation. During all the seven years of his married life he had somehow supposed himself to be superior, as a man, to his struggling rivals. He had regarded them with easy toleration, as from a height. And now he saw himself tumbling down among them, humiliated. Everything seemed unreal to him then. The studio and the breakfast-room were solid; the waving trees in Regent's Park were solid; the rich knick-knacks and beautiful furniture and excellent food and fine clothes were all solid enough; but they seemed most disconcertingly unreal. One letter from old Samuel had made them tremble, and the second had reduced them to illusions, or delusions. Even George's reputation as a rising sculptor appeared utterly fallacious. What rendered him savage was the awful injustice of Samuel. Samuel had no right whatever to play him such a trick. It was, in a way, worse than if Samuel had cut off the allowance altogether, for in that case he could at any rate have gone majestically to Samuel and said: "Your niece and her child are starving." But with a minimum of three hundred a year for their support three people cannot possibly starve.
"Ring the bell and have this kid taken out," said he.
Whereupon Georgie yelled.
Kate came, a starched white-and-blue young thing of sixteen.
"Kate," said George, autocratically, "take baby."
"Yes, sir," said Kate, with respectful obedience. The girl had no notion that she was not real to her master, or that her master was saying to himself: "I ought not to be ordering human beings about like this. I can't pay their wages. I ought to be starving in a garret."
When George and Mary were alone, George said: "Look here! Does he mean it?"
"You may depend he means it. It's so like him. Me asking for that £200 must have upset him. And then seeing that about Heidsieck in the paper—he'd make up his mind all of a sudden—I know him so well."
"H'm!" snorted George. "I shall make my mind up all of a sudden, too!"
"What shall you do?"
"There's one thing I shan't do," said George.
"And that is, stop here. Do you realize, my girl, that we shall be absolutely up a gum-tree?"
"I should have thought you would be able—"
"Absolute gum-tree!" George interrupted her. "Simply can't keep the shop open! To-morrow, my child, we go down to Bursley."
"Who?"
"You, me, and the infant."
"And what about the servants?"
"Send 'em home."
"But we can't descend on uncle like that without notice, and him full of his election! Besides, he's cross."
"We shan't descend on him."
"Then where shall you go?"
"We shall put up at the Tiger," said George, impressively.
"The Tiger?" gasped Mary.
George had meant to stagger, and he had staggered.
"The Tiger," he iterated.
"With Georgie?"
"With Georgie."
"But what will uncle say? I shouldn't be surprised if uncle has never been in the Tiger in his life. You know his views—"
"I don't care twopence for your uncle," said George, again implicitly blaming Mary for the peculiarities of her uncle's character. "Something's got to be done, and I'm going to do it."