CHAPTER VI.
Robert Trenholme had a lively wit, and it stood him many times in lieu of chapel walls for within it he could retire at all times and be hidden. Of all that he experienced within his heart at this time not any part was visible to the brother who was his idle visitor; or perhaps only the least part, and that not until the moot point between them was touched upon.
There came a day, two days after the old preacher had been buried, when the elder brother called out:
"Come, my lad, I want to speak to you."
Robert was lying on a long couch improvised for him in the corner of his study. The time was that warm hour of the afternoon when the birds are quiet and even the flies buzz drowsily. Bees in the piebald petunias that grew straggling and sweet above the sill of the open window, dozed long in each sticky chalice. Alec was taking off his boots in the lobby, and in reply to the condescending invitation he muttered some graceless words concerning his grandmother, but he came into the room and sat with his elbows on the table. He had an idea of what might be said, and felt the awkwardness of it.
"That fellow Bates," he observed, "is devouring your book-case indiscriminately. He seems to be in the sort of fever that needs distraction every moment. I asked him what he'd have to read, and he said the next five on the shelf—he's read the first ten."
"It's not of Bates I wish to speak; I want to know what you've decided to do. Are you going to stick to your father's trade, or take to some other?"
Robert held one arm above his head, with his fingers through the leaves of the book he had been reading. He tried to speak in a casual way, but they both had a disagreeable consciousness that the occasion was momentous. Alec's mind assumed the cautious attitude of a schoolboy whispering "Cave". He supposed that the other hoped now to achieve by gentleness what he had been unable to achieve by storm.
"Of course," he answered, "I won't set up here if you'd rather be quit of me. I'll go as far as British Columbia, if that's necessary to make you comfortable."
"By that I understand that in these ten months your mind has not altered."
"No; but as I say, I won't bother you."
"Have you reconsidered the question, or have you stuck to it because you said you would?"
"I have reconsidered it."
"You feel quite satisfied that, as far as you are concerned, this is the right thing to do?"
"Yes."
"Well then, as far as I am concerned, I don't want to drive you to the other side of the continent. You can take advantage of the opening here if you want to."
Alec looked down at the things on the table. He felt the embarrassment of detecting his brother in some private religious exercise; nothing, he thought, but an excess of self-denial could have brought this about; yet he was gratified.
"Look here! You'd better not say that—I might take you at your word."
"Consider that settled. You set up shop, and I will take a fraternal interest in the number of animals you kill, and always tell you with conscientious care when the beef you supply to me is tough. And in the meantime, tell me, like a good fellow, why you stick to this thing. When you flung from me last time you gave me no explanation of what you thought."
"At least," cried Alec, wrath rising at the memory of that quarrel, "I gave you a fair hearing, and knew what you thought."
When anger began he looked his brother full in the face, thus noticing how thin that face was, too thin for a man in the prime of life, and the eye was too bright. As the brief feeling of annoyance subsided, the habitual charm of the elder man's smile made him continue to look at him.
"And yet," continued Robert, "two wrongs do not make a right. That I am a snob does not excuse you for taking up any line of life short of the noblest within your reach."
The other again warned himself against hidden danger. "You're such a confoundedly fascinating fellow, with your smiles and your suppressed religion, I don't wonder the girls run after you. But you are a Jesuit—I never called you a snob—you're giving yourself names to fetch me round to see things your way."
It was an outburst, half of admiring affection, half of angry obstinacy, and the elder brother received it without resentment, albeit a little absently. He was thinking that if Alec held out, "the girls" would not run after him much more. But then he thought that there was one among them who would not think less, who perhaps might think more of him, for this sacrifice. He had not made it for her; it might never be his lot to make any sacrifice for her; yet she perhaps would understand this one and applaud it. The thought brought a sudden light to his face, and Alec watched the light and had no clue by which to understand it. He began, however, defending himself.
"Look here! You suggest I should take the noblest course, as if I had never thought of that before. I'm not lower in the scale of creation than you, and I've had the same bringing up. I've never done anything great, but I've tried not to do the other thing. I felt I should be a sneak when I left school if I disappointed father for the sake of being something fine, and I feel I should be a sneak now if I turned—"
"You acted like the dear fellow I always knew you were in the first instance, but why is it the same now? It's not for his sake, surely, for, for all you know, from where he is now, the sight of you going on with that work may not give him pleasure, but pain."
"No; I went into it to please him, but now he's gone that's ended."
"Then it's not the same now. Why do you say you'd feel like a sneak if you changed? There is, I think, no goddess or patron saint of the trade, who would be personally offended at your desertion."
"You don't understand at all. I'm sick—just sick, of seeing men trying to find something grand enough to do, instead of trying to do the first thing they can grandly."
"I haven't noticed that men are so set on rising."
"No, not always; but when they're not ambitious enough to get something fine to do, they're not ambitious enough to do what they do well, unless it's for the sake of money. Look at the fellows that went to school with us, half of them shopkeepers' sons. How many of them went in with their fathers? Just those who were mean enough to care for nothing but money-making, and those who were too dull to do anything else."
"The education they got was good enough to give them a taste for higher callings."
"Yes"—with a sneer—"and how the masters gloried over such brilliant examples as yourself, who felt themselves 'called higher,' so to speak! You had left school by the time I came to it, but I had your shining tracks pointed out to me all along the way, and old Thompson told me that Wolsey's father was 'in the same line as my papa,' and he instructed me about Kirke White's career; and I, greedy little pig that I was, sucked it all in till I sickened. I've never been able to feed on any of that food since."
In a moment the other continued, "Well, in spite of the fact that our own father was too true and simple ever to be anything but a gentleman, it remains true that the choice of this trade and others on a level with it—"
"Such as hunting and shooting, or the cooking of meats that ladies are encouraged to devote themselves to."
"I was saying—the choice of this trade, or of others on a level with it, be they whatever they are, implies something coarse in the grain of the average man who chooses it, and has a coarsening effect upon him."
"If the old novels are any true picture of life, there was a time when every cleric was a place-hunter. Would you have advised good men to keep out of the church at that time? I'm told there's hardly an honourable man in United States politics: is that less reason, or more, for honest fellows to go into public life there?" (Impatience was waxing again. The words fell after one another in hot haste.) "There's a time coming when every man will be taught to like to keep his hands clean and read the poets; and will you preach to them all then that they mustn't be coarse enough to do necessary work, or do you imagine it will be well done if they all do an hour a day at it in amateur fashion? You're thoroughly inconsistent," he cried.
"Do you imagine I'm trying to argue with you, boy?" cried the other, bitterly. "I could say a thousand things to the point, but I've no desire to say them. I simply wish to state the thing fairly, to see how far you have worked through it."
"I've thought it out rather more thoroughly than you, it seems to me, for at least I'm consistent."
They were both offended; the elder biting his lip over sarcastic words, the younger flushed with hasty indignation. Then, in a minute, the one put away his anger, and the other, forgetting the greater part of his, talked on.
"I'll tell you the sort of thing that's made me feel I should be a sneak to give it up. Just after I left school I went back to visit old Thompson, and he and his wife took me to a ball at the Assembly Rooms. It was quite a swell affair, and there weren't enough men. So old Thompson edged us up to a grand dame with a row of daughters, and I heard him in plethoric whisper informing her, as in duty bound, just who I was, 'but,' added he, as a compensating fact, 'there isn't a finer or more gentlemanly fellow in the room.' So the old hen turned round and took me in with one eye, all my features and proportions; but it wasn't till Thompson told her that father was about to retire, and that I, of course, was looking to enter a higher walk, that she gave permission to trot me up. Do you think I went? They were pretty girls she had, and the music—I'd have given something to dance that night; but if I was the sort of man she'd let dance with her girls, she needn't have taken anything else into account; and if I was decent enough for them, it was because of something else in me other than what I did or didn't do. I swore then, by all that's sweet—by music and pretty girls and everything else—that I'd carve carcases for the rest of my days, and if the ladies didn't want me they might do without me. You know how it was with father; all the professional men in the place were only too glad to have a chat with him in the reading-rooms and the hotel. They knew his worth, but they wouldn't have had him inside their own doors. Well, the worse for their wives and daughters, say I. They did without him; they can do without me. The man that will only have me on condition his trade is not mine can do without me too, and if it's the same in a new country, then the new country be damned!"
The hot-headed speaker, striding about the room, stopped with the word that ended this tirade, and gave it out roundly.
"The thing is," said Robert, "can you do without them—all these men and women who won't have you on your own terms? They constitute all the men and women in the world for you and me, for we don't care for the other sort. Can you do without them? I couldn't." He said the "I couldn't" first as if looking back to the time when he had broken loose from the family tradition; he repeated it more steadfastly, and it seemed to press pathetically into present and future—"I couldn't." The book that he had been idly swinging above his pillow was an old missal, and he lowered it now to shield his face somewhat from his brother's downward gaze.
"No, you couldn't," repeated Alec soberly. He stood with his hands in his pockets, looking down half pityingly, perhaps with a touch of superiority. "You couldn't; but I can, and I'll stand by my colours. I should be a coward if I didn't."
Robert coloured under his look, under his words, so he turned away and stood by the window. After a minute Robert spoke.
"You haven't given me the slightest reason for your repeated assertion that you would be a coward."
"Yes, I have. That's just what I've been saying."
"You have only explained that you think so the more strongly for all opposition, and that may not be rational. Other men can do this work and be thankful to get it; you can do higher work." His words were constrainedly patient, but they only raised clamour.
"I don't know what you profess and call yourself! What should I change for? To pamper your pride and mine—is that a worthy end? To find something easier and more agreeable—is that manly, when this has been put into my hand? How do I know I could do anything better? I know I can do this well. As for these fine folks you've been talking of, I'll see they get good food, wherever I am; and that's not as easy as you think, nor as often done; and there's not one of them that would do all their grand employments if they weren't catered for; and as for the other men that would do it" (he was incoherent in his heat), "they do it pretty badly, some of them, just because they're coarse in the grain; and you tell me it'll make them coarser; well then, I, who can do it without getting coarse, will do it, till men and women stop eating butcher's meat. You'd think it more pious if I put my religion into being a missionary to the Chinese, or into writing tracts? Well, I don't."
He was enthusiastic; he was perhaps very foolish; but the brother who was older had learned at least this, that it does not follow that a man is in the wrong because he can give no wiser reason for his course than "I take this way because I will take it."
"Disarm yourself, old fellow," he said. "I am not going to try to dissuade you. I tried that last year, and I didn't succeed; and if I had promise of success now, I wouldn't try. Life's a fearful thing, just because, when we shut our eyes to what is right in the morning, at noon it's not given us to see the difference between black and white, unless our eyes get washed with the right sort of tears."
Alec leaned his head out of the window; he felt that his brother was making a muff of himself, and did not like it.
"If you see this thing clearly," Robert continued, "I say, go ahead and do it; but I want you just to see the whole of it. According to you, I am on the wrong track; but I have got far along it, and now I have other people to consider. It seems a pity, when there are only two of us in the world, that we should have to put half the world between us. We used to have the name, at least of being attached." He stopped to find the thread, it was a disconnected speech for him to formulate. He had put his arm under his head now, and was looking round at his brother. "I have never misrepresented anything. For the matter of that, the man who had most to do with putting me in my berth here, knew all that there was to be known about my father. He didn't publish the matter, for the sake of the school; and when I had taken the school, I couldn't publish it either. All the world was free to inquire, but as far as I know, no one has done so; and I have let the sleeping dog lie."
"I never said you ought to have been more talkative. It's not my business."
"The position you take makes it appear that I am in a false position. Give me time to get about again. I ought at least to be more frank with my personal friends. Wait till I have opportunity to speak myself—that is all I ask of you. After that do what you will; but I think it only right to tell you that if you set up shop here, or near here, I should resign my place in this college."
"I'm not going to stay here. I told you I see that won't work."
"Don't be hasty. As I said, it's hard lines if this must separate us. I can keep the church. They can't be particular about my status there, because they can't pay me."
"It's mad to think of such a thing; it would be worse for the college than for you."
"If I knew it would be the worse for the college it might not be right to do it" (he spoke as if this had cost him thought), "but there are plenty who can manage a concern like this, now it is fairly established, even if they could not have worked it up as I have."
"I'd like to see them get another man like you!"—loudly—"H'n, if they accepted your resignation they'd find themselves on the wrong side of the hedge! They wouldn't do it, either; it isn't as if you were not known now for what you are. They can't be such fools as to think that where I am, or what I do, can alter you."
"It is not with the more sensible men who are responsible for the college that the choice would ultimately lie, but with the boys' parents. If the numbers drop off—"
"Then the parents are the greatest idiots—"
There was a world of wrath in the words, but the principal of the New
College, who felt his position so insecure, laughed.
"Yes, you may fairly count on that. A clever woman, who kept a girls' school, told me once that if she had to draw up rules for efficient school-keeping they would begin:—'1st. Drown all the parents!'—My own experience has led me to think she was not far wrong."
Alec stood looking out of the open window with a thunderous face. For several reasons, some of which he hardly understood, he did not want to leave Chellaston; but he had no intention of ruining his brother. It annoyed him that Robert should seriously propose to retire, and more, that he should let jokes and laughter fall on the heels of such a proposal. He did not know that there are hours to some men, coming not in the heat of party conflict, but in the quiet of daily life, when martyrdom would be easy, and any sacrifice short of martyrdom is mere play. And because he did not know this, he did not believe in it, just as the average man does not. His cogitation, however, was not on such abstruse matters, nor was it long, but its result was not insignificant.
"Put your money into it," he said, "and fight it out! Put part of my money into it, if you like, and let us fight it out together."
Perhaps the sentiment that actuated the suggestion, even as concerned part of his own inheritance, was nothing more than pugilistic; the idea, however, came to Robert Trenholme as entirely a new one. The proceeds of his father's successful trade lay temporarily invested, awaiting Alec's decision, and his own share would probably be ample to tide the college over any such shock to its income as might be feared from the circumstances they had been contemplating, and until public confidence might be laboriously regained. The plan was not one that would have occurred to his own mind—first, because the suggestions of his mind were always prudent; secondly, because such a fight was shocking to that part of his nature which was usually uppermost. It would be far more agreeable to him to turn away from the averted eyes of correct taste than to stand brazenly till he was again tolerated. Still, this very thing he disliked most might be the thing that he was meant to do, and also there is nothing more contagious than the passion for war. Alec's bellicose attitude aroused party spirit in him. He knew the power of money; he knew the power of the prestige he had; he began to realise that he could do this thing if he chose.
"You are a piece of consummate conceit," he mocked. "Do you imagine that with a little money, and a very few personal graces, we two can brow-beat the good judgment of the public?"
"The fun of the fight would be worth the money almost," observed Alec parenthetically. Then he jeered: "Brace up, and put on more style; put your groom in livery; get a page to open your front door; agitate till you get some honorary degrees from American colleges! And as for me, I'll send out my bills on parchment paper, with a monogram and a crest."
"Do you so despise your fellow men?" asked Robert sadly.