CHAPTER XXIX
Simon Prior had come out to Fairmeadowes to beg. It was not the first time he had begged from Richard Meadowes, and he had little shame about doing it. He even assumed a slightly bullying air as he made his modest demand for £100—he had not gone so high with Philip.
Meadowes sat by the fire in his usual easy lounging attitude. He did not look like a man inclined to dispute anything, and he listened quietly to Prior’s demand. But after he had considered it for a moment he spoke with the greatest decision of tone.
‘No, Prior; I have decided to give you no more. You’ve been bleeding me these twenty years, now you’ll bleed me no longer.’
Prior stood aghast, and Meadowes continued, ‘Angry, I suppose? Well, take what revenge you will. Mine is an old story now. Your own character, such as it is, will suffer full as much as mine should you make it public.’ He paused and drew his hand slowly across his eyes. ‘The fact is, I care no longer: I have nothing to lose: life is done—I would it had never begun for me. Mistake upon mistake; and now a dead heart. D’you remember the old torment? They used to build living men into a wall slowly with bricks and mortar; every day the tomb closed more and more round them. Well, I am alive still, but the wall is closing round me; it hath reached the heart now and presses sore upon it—well-nigh hath pressed the life out of it. I have built myself into this living tomb with my own hands too—there’s the special torture.’ He paused, wondering if Prior understood one half of his meaning. He did not; the higher feelings had been left out of his nature; he did not even guess at his friend’s mood.
‘What ails you to-day, Meadowes?’ he said; ‘truly this country life is too quiet for you by half. Come, we shall return to town, play high, and forget care.’
‘I have no care,’ said Meadowes.
‘What then?’
‘A dead—rather a dying—heart, I tell you, only you do not understand.’ Then, as impulsive men will often do, Meadowes told out all his sorrow to this man, just because he did not understand—it was the same relief as it would have been to talk aloud to himself. ‘Phil loves me no more; there’s the fact on’t—I doubt if ever he hath loved me. I’ve borne a measure of disgrace for him, I’ve renounced marriage for his sake, I’ve nurtured him delicately, and willed half my fortune to him. I’ve loved that boy foolishly all his days, and now he turns and tells me he doth not love me. Where doth the advantage lie of loving aught but oneself? There’s no return for love, and a fool I’ve been to sacrifice myself for any man. ’Tis the last lesson I needed. All these fine theories we dealt in in our youth, theories of “love” and “sacrifice” and so on, are purest moonshine. But with the last shreds of belief I had in them, goes my last shred of caring for life.’
‘Tush, Meadowes! I must reason with you,’ said Prior. ‘A man at your time of life to speak thus! Come, Philip hath treated you shamefully, like the young scoundrel that he is. Let me advise you on this point. Bring him to his senses by some judicious coldness, and indeed this is not the first time I have urged you to marry. Now is the time; let no sentiments for a thankless knave like Philip keep you from it now; turn him off with a shilling—he deserves no more.’
Prior spoke earnestly, delighted to find some way of repaying the insult he had received at Phil’s hand. He flattered himself that he was making an impression, for his listener sat and listened to it all in silence. ‘Now, on the score of our old friendship—’ he went on, but Meadowes suddenly interrupted him.
‘There, I hate the very sight of you,’ he cried. ‘No friendship hath been betwixt us, only the bonds of iniquity, and heavy they’ve been. I’ll have it no more; I’ll go to hell alone—not in your company.’
Prior stood dumb with surprise; so long they had held together for evil, he could scarcely credit that the rupture had come at last.
‘But——’ he began.
‘No more, no more,’ said Meadowes, and he rose from his seat, and stretched out his hands in a sudden agonised way. ‘Don’t you know me yet, Prior? I can’t be true. Sooner or later I turn upon every man that leans on me. Man, I know myself—cruelly well; this is but the old story. You’ve served my turn, I need you no more, so I leave you. Yes, sink or swim for me. . . . You should have known better than to trust me.’
‘I’ve done your dirty work these twenty years,’ said Prior, with unblushing veracity, ‘and now you forget it all.’
‘Yes, I mean to forget.’
‘But I am indeed hard pressed for money.’
‘Well, find it elsewhere.’
‘Is this final?’
‘Quite.’
Prior moved towards the door, but he paused for a moment on the threshold and looked back. ‘They call you Judas in the Clubs,’ said he, ‘and they are right—no man ever yet trusted you but he was betrayed.’ He walked out, slamming the door behind him, and Meadowes listened to hear his footsteps die away along the passage.
‘A bad man,’ he meditated, ‘but not as bad as myself, though the world takes him to be worse. He’ll end on the gallows—the world will blame him; but the blame will lie with me—I who made him what he is—and I shall sleep with my fathers in the chapel like a Christian.’
Prior meantime walked away through the quiet winter woods—a figure which accorded ill with rural scenes, he so carried with him the savour of towns, the atmosphere of dissipation. A miserable man—to be moral,—pressed for money and at an end of his resources, at an end of pleasure and beginning to realise it; angry, baffled, rejected. He stood to take a last look at Fairmeadowes, lying so peacefully among its wooded fields, with the placid river flowing past it, and then, overpowered by anger, he shook his fist in the air and cursed aloud in that silent place.
‘By ——!’ he cried, ‘you’ll pay me yet for all I’ve done these twenty years! I’ll have your money, or’—his raised right hand fell—‘wanting that, I’ll have your blood.’