CHAPTER VI
MISS BANCROFT BEARDS THE OGRE
Miss Bancroft had not made her solemn declaration lightly. She never made any announcements of her intentions without weighty consideration; consequently she was a woman who meant what she said, and meant it thoroughly. Moreover, she never procrastinated; she thought in a straight line, and she acted in a straight line.
Like most women, she took a healthy human delight in "interfering"; but, unlike the majority of her sex, she indulged very rarely. When, however, she had made up her mind on the point of allowing herself to concern herself in other people's business, she experienced the exquisite relish of a strictly self-controlled gamester, who allows himself to play only rarely so that he may enjoy his sport with that peculiar zest which only long abstinence can whet.
On a sunny, warm September day, mellow with the promise of an Indian summer, Miss Bancroft, smart, though rotund, in lavender linen, set out on her pilgrimage to the house of Thomas Prescott.
"I see that you aren't above the traditional wiles of your sex, Aunt," commented George Arnold, looking up from his book, and surveying her with twinkling eyes, from the long wicker porch chair, where he had been dozing in the sun. "You've rigged yourself out in full panoply. That's a jaunty little parasol you have."
Miss Bancroft, standing on the broad steps, put up her parasol at this, to shade the fine texture of her gaily beflowered straw hat from the sun, and then glanced around at her nephew with a demure smile.
"I make a point of looking my best always when I'm going to see Tom Prescott. Of course he thinks me a sensible woman, a remarkably reasonable woman, and all that nonsense; but I like to leave him with at least a half-formed notion that I'm surprisingly well preserved, even if I have rather lost my waist-line. There was a time, you know——" the demure smile quirked the corners of her big, mobile mouth, and sparkled impishly in her eyes; then with a little wag of her head, she ran down the steps like a fat, jolly schoolgirl.
George Arnold, leaning back against a chintz cushion, watched the portly, festive figure that moved away under the trees of the long drive. Miss Bancroft usually seemed to roll slowly, but efficiently, along on wheels as ponderous and impressive as an old-fashioned stage-coach. He caught a last glimpse of lavender and white through the shrubs that bordered the end of the lawn. He felt a good deal of interest in this pilgrimage of his aunt's, although he had no very clear idea of the purpose of it. It had something to do with two very pretty young girls whom he had seen at an otherwise stupid dance the night before. One of the girls looked like a Dresden doll, the other had dark eyes, and a direct, shy, almost boyish smile. Her name was Anne—Nancy. Nancy suited her much better. He had thought about her several times. For no particular reason—she was hardly eighteen, and he was, well, he was thirty-three, though that was neither here nor there. It was simply that he liked her rather better than one likes most girls of that age. She had a way of listening to a man without that stupid, flustered expression, as though she was only wondering what in the world she should say when it should be her turn to talk. She liked books. He wondered if she knew that he wrote them. Of course he wasn't world-famous, but it might interest her to know that he was the George Arnold whose collections of exquisitely delicate children's stories had already been translated into six foreign languages, "including the Scandinavian."
He smiled to himself at the naïve vanity which had prompted this thought; and chastised it by telling himself that it was only too likely that her ignorance or knowledge of what he did or was were matters of like indifference to her.
Meantime, Miss Bancroft, puffing a little under the combined difficulties of avoirdupois and a beaming September sun, was looking with an almost pathetic anticipation at the rich cool shadows beneath which slept the rambling mansion of Thomas Prescott.
"I shall order some tea. A man is always so much more amenable to reason over a tea-table—and for my part, I'll not survive half an hour without a little light refreshment. I suppose I'll have to listen to a long discourse on the origin of the Slavic races or the religious customs of the Aztecs, until I can get him down to argue with me on his duty toward his fellow creatures. I hope to Heaven that his principles are drowsy to-day. I can't bear it if I have to combat a lot of principles. It's absolutely heathenish to have principles in warm weather anyway. Of course they are the proper things to have, but, dear me, they are such nuisances. It's all right to have them about yourself, I suppose, but to have them about other people is priggish, and quite useless, so far as I can see. My observation has taught me that if you like a person it makes no difference whether their principles coincide with your own or not, or even if they have none at all; and if you don't like a person, it's downright irritating to have to approve of them." Miss Bancroft's mental grammar, like much of her spoken grammar, was inaccurate, of course; as in other matters, she held rule to scorn, when the rule interfered with her personal conception of what she was trying to make clear to other people or to herself.
Under the vigorous thrust of her plump, direct forefinger, the door-bell pealed clearly in the cool remote regions of the house. Standing under the arch of the Norman doorway, she surveyed the broad, shade-flecked lawns with interest and a sort of irritable appreciation. Somewhere under the trees a gardener was raking the drive and burning neat piles of warm, brown leaves, from which the pungent smoke ascended in sinuous blue spirals, like languorously dancing phantoms of the dead leaves; and the pleasant, rhythmic sound of the rake on the gravel intensified the sober peaceful silence peculiar to that bachelor's domain.
The door was opened.
"Tell Mr. Prescott that it's Miss Bancroft. Nonsense, I shan't sit down in the drawing-room at all—it makes me feel like a member of the Ladies' Aid come to petition a subscription for a new church carpet or something. Tell Mr. Prescott that I'll be out on the porch."
"Will you come through this way, then, madam?" suggested the old butler, meekly.
Miss Bancroft followed him, sighing a little with relief as the coolness of the great hall, with its smell of old, polished wood and waxed floors, closed about her.
"And, William," she called pathetically after the retreating butler, "do put the kettle on!"
On her way through the house she passed a stately succession of large rooms. A handsome drawing-room, with a polished parquetry floor, fit for the dainty crimson heels of a laced and furbelowed French coquette; its great glass chandelier shrouded in white tarlatan; the dining-room, with high-wainscoted walls, on which hung three or four astonishingly valuable and even beautiful pictures by masters of the eighteenth century English school. For all its impressive grandeur, the long table, covered with a rare piece of Italian brocade, was, with the single carved chair set at the distant end, a barren table, indeed, for a man whom Miss Bancroft knew to be possessed of one of the warmest, tenderest and most affection-craving hearts in the whole world.
"Principles—fiddlesticks!" she observed aloud. "Tst!"
A living-room, in which no one ever lived, a writing-room, in which no one ever wrote, and long halls, wainscoted in dark oak and quiet as those of a college library, whose silence was never broken by the light staccato footsteps of gay feet, or the murmur of roguish voices. But the air of pathos which all these things wore seemed to rise from the fact that they had been planned and secured not for the enjoyment of a lonely old man, but for some happy purpose that had never been realized. They seemed to wear an expression of disappointment, even of apology for existing so uselessly.
"Tut! How can anyone be patient with a man of principles," again commented Miss Bancroft; but her face had grown a little sad.
She was rocking gently back and forth in the shade of the cool stone porch, when the sound of footsteps at last reached her ears, and she looked up with the warm smile of a guest who knows she is always welcome.
"Elizabeth! This is a very great pleasure. I thought you had forgotten me!"
"You deserve to be forgotten, my dear friend. Ah, now you've disarmed me, though. I've just conscience enough to have to tell you that I've come this time with ulterior motives."
"I can find fault with no motives of yours, so long as they prompt you to visit me. I look forward to my little chats with you as a child looks forward to his Saturday treats."
"My dear Tom, your gift of saying delightful things is one of the wonders of the age. Here you never see a woman from one year's end to the other, and yet you can turn a compliment as charmingly as though you practised on the fairest in the land every evening of your life."
"'In my youth, said the Father——'" quoted the old gentleman with a twinkle. "However, let's hear your ulterior motives first, my dear Elizabeth, so that afterwards we can chat with unburdened minds."
"No—no, I refuse to beard you until we have some tea. Thank goodness, here's William bringing it now. I took the liberty of ordering it, Tom."
"You took no liberties at all—you merely assumed your privileges. Tut-tut! Tea. You women, with all your notions and your injurious habits—how very delightful it is to be near you!"
"To hear you talk, Tom, how could anyone suspect that you were a man of principles!" cried Miss Bancroft. "How could anyone dream that you were hard, and austere and—and unimaginative!" He looked at her in mild astonishment.
He was a small old man, rather delicate in build, with the blunt broad hands of a worker, and a high, smooth, massive forehead, from which his perfectly white hair fell back, long and almost childishly soft and fine. His eyes, set deep under the sharply defined bone of his projecting brow, wore the gentle, far-away expression noticeable in many near-sighted people; but his chin contradicted their softness, and there was a hint of obstinacy in his close-set mouth and rather long upper lip. He was dressed negligently, and indeed almost shabbily, and he made no apologies for his appearance; since he never gave a thought to it himself, he could not consider what other people might think of it. His greatest hobby, lingering with him from earlier years, was chemistry, and he spent virtually all his time in the laboratory which he had fitted up in one of the odd towers that decorated his house. His coat and trousers would have given a far less observant person than Sherlock Holmes a clue to this favorite occupation of his, stained and burned as they were with acids.
"Do you eat your dinner in those clothes?" demanded Miss Bancroft.
"Why? What's the matter with them? Why not eat dinner in 'em? My dear Elizabeth, surely at this late date you haven't taken it into your head to reform my habits?"
"I don't know but that I have," replied Miss Bancroft with a touch of grimness.
"Is that your ulterior motive? I suspected it. Tell me what you meant when you accused me just now of being hard and austere and unimaginative. Why unimaginative?"
"No really intelligent woman would ever try to explain anything so subtle to a man. I mean that you are unimaginative because you allow yourself to be rigid——"
"Rigid? Rigid about what?"
"About your principles. I like you, Tom—you know how much. I admire you more than any man I have ever known, and I have known a good many remarkable men. But one thing I cannot forgive you is your principles."
"My principles? When did I ever offend you with principles?"
Miss Bancroft poured herself another cup of tea, and laid a second piece of bread-and-butter neatly on the side of her saucer.
"Come," said Mr. Prescott, with a keen glance at her. "Come, it's not like you, Elizabeth, to beat about the bush. What can this matter be which you find so difficult to broach in plain English?"
Miss Bancroft hesitated a moment. It touched her vanity to be accused of beating about the bush, since she took an especial pride in her reputation of being a woman who never minced matters, and who always made a direct and fearless attack.
Then she said, simply:
"I came to talk to you about—George's daughters, Tom."
There was a short silence.
"It's not like you, Elizabeth, to—to touch upon a matter so very delicate," remarked Mr. Prescott, quietly, his lips tightening slightly. "Of course I can understand how my attitude in regard to them must appear to you, but I fancied that there existed between you and me a silent agreement that this was one subject which was never to be mentioned."
"My dear Tom, you know that under ordinary circumstances I am not an interfering woman; therefore you must realize that I should never have spoken of this to you without the best of reasons for doing so. But I feel that you are allowing certain principles, excellent no doubt in themselves, but wrong in your particular application to them, to thwart your own happiness; to say nothing of depriving others of the advantages which it is in your power to bestow." Miss Bancroft was very serious now. As she spoke she leaned over and laid her fat little hand earnestly on the old man's shabby sleeve. He said nothing, and she continued:
"There are two young girls, charming—beautiful, indeed—the daughters of a man you loved far more even than most fathers love their first-born sons——"
"Don't!" exclaimed Mr. Prescott, sharply, almost fiercely. "Don't speak to me of that, Elizabeth. Can't you realize that just to mention my—George recalls all my old rancor against that little, heartless spendthrift who ruined him—killed him——" his voice rose hoarsely, then making an effort to control himself, he went on in a quieter tone:
"It's very difficult for me to discuss this with you, Elizabeth."
"I'm sorry, Tom. But you have no right to—it's a matter of your own happiness as much as theirs—and I would be no friend of yours if I were not willing and anxious to risk your anger for the sake of righting this mistake you are making."
"My nieces are not in want. And familiarity with a certain degree of poverty is the source of a wisdom that safeguards men and women from follies that lead to many of the greatest miseries on earth."
"Want, my dear Tom, is a purely relative condition," said Miss Bancroft. "There are needs, which to certain natures are more intolerable than physical hunger. To deprive a young girl of simple, innocent delights—companionship of her own kind, dainty clothes, harmless enjoyments—is like robbing a plant of sun and rain."
"Do you mean to tell me that poverty need deprive any girl of such things? Nonsense, Elizabeth! I have seen girls who had but two dresses to their name, who worked and struggled and economized, and who nevertheless had as much pleasure—indeed more, I'll wager—than the most petted heiress in the land. And what's more, they made better wives and better mothers and better citizens. They knew how many cents make a dollar, and how many dollars their men could make in a week by the sweat of their brow, working not eight hours a day, but ten and twelve. One never heard this sickly whine from them—this talk that women must be coddled and pampered, and that men can eat their hearts out to provide the 'sun' in which they bask like pet lizards! They didn't ask for 'sunlight'—they asked only that they might work and save with their husbands—that they could be fit partners, and they found their joy, not in 'dainty clothes' and 'harmless enjoyments' but in giving their strength and their courage for their husbands and their children!" Mr. Prescott had risen to his feet in the vehemence of his feeling, and was walking back and forth, his hands locked behind his back, and his head lowered and thrust forward between his hunched-up shoulders.
"Good heavens, I've got him roused for fair," thought Miss Bancroft, with a mixture of amusement and dismay. "And of course, theoretically he's dead right. Now why is it that so many things which, theoretically, are dead right, practically, are all wrong? That's what I've got to prove to him—and I don't know whether I shall succeed after all. I must take care not to be sentimental—that rouses him dreadfully."
Aloud she said, in a quiet voice:
"Listen, Tom—under ordinary circumstances I should agree with you absolutely. But a short time ago I spoke of want being relative. You said that your nieces are not in want. You meant, of course, that they had food and clothes and shelter. If they were girls who lived in an absolutely different plane of life that would be sufficient for their happiness. They could have pleasure with their two dresses and their one best bonnet, because everyone else of their class would have no more. But take one of them out of that class; put her where her only companions would have to be sought for among men and women who lived on a scale of comparative wealth, where, to make friends, she would have to appear well, and so on—then, what in the first case was at least a sufficiency, now becomes tragically inadequate. There is no cure but for that girl to recede from the class to which by birth, breeding and instinct she belongs.
"You have built up a great fortune. You yourself are what you boast of being—a self-made man—a man originally of the people. But you made your nephew a gentleman—understand that I am using the word in the commonest sense. Consequently his children belong to a class in which needs must be measured by a different scale from that used for working women. They live—as you do, and most likely because you do—in a very rich community. They suffer from wants that girls of a different class would never know. They are deprived of things which your working girl would not be deprived of. They are poorer on their two thousand a year, or whatever it is, than a peasant woman would be on two hundred, because their particular needs are more expensive."
"They will be very rich—after I die," said Mr. Prescott in a low voice, after a short pause. "But I won't let them even suspect it. That little wife of George's—I never want to see her again—she is a great little gambler. If she felt sure that in a few years her daughters were coming into a fortune of several millions, Heaven only knows but that she'd have the last cent of it spent in advance. You seem to have gleaned an immense amount of information concerning my nieces—perhaps you know what her plans for them are."
"You know, Tom, that I was as much opposed—indeed more opposed, perhaps, than you were to George's marrying Lallie. But that is neither here nor there now. I am afraid that she is—well, attempting things for her girls that lie beyond her income. You must not blame her. She isn't a wise woman, but I am sure that she is one who suffers more for her mistakes than she causes others to suffer. Of course I am no judge of that.
"She is a little gambler, no doubt, as you said—but a gallant one. She is playing against rather desperate odds—and she cannot be blamed if she plays foolishly. As I understand it, I believe that her object is to give her girls, by hook or crook, advantages that lie beyond her means, the goal being that one of them or both will marry—well. If she wins—well and good——"
"Well and good—fiddlesticks! Nonsense! Good Heavens!" shouted Mr. Prescott. "Whatever are you driving at, Elizabeth? I can't make head or tail of all this talking. You come to me, telling me that my nieces are in want of some kind or other, that that mother of theirs is living beyond her means in her attempt to put them on a footing with the daughters of millionaires, so that they can marry some mother's son whom they fancy can stand their extravagance, and as far as I can make out, you want me to defray their expenses, so that the business of ruining some other man's boy as mine was ruined will be less difficult for them. Have you gone clean daft?"
"I see I haven't made myself perfectly clear," said Miss Bancroft, patiently. "I should have told you that I saw both of your nieces last night. It was because of the older one that I came here to-day—Nancy. She looks enough like George to make your heart ache. And she is facing poor George's problem. She is a very remarkable young girl—I don't cotton to the average young miss very readily, as you know, but there was something in that bright, eager young face that went to my heart. She was at the Porterbridges'. They came in an old hack that they were ashamed of. Do you like to think of George's daughters doing that?
"She is a girl who deserves a fair chance, and she's not getting it. But she isn't the sort that whimpers. She struck me as being full of a fine courage—and an independence of spirit that made one member of the family the very troublesome person he is. She is a girl who has her teeth set against circumstance, and her own cool, sober views of life. But she is very young—too young to have to cope with the difficulties that face her, and far too proud to accept any help with strings tied to it. Remember that. And in my opinion, it is a sin and a shame that you, who could give her the help she needs, and who could get a great deal of happiness in return—you won't even see her. I'm not asking anything but that you see and talk to Nancy sometime." Miss Bancroft rose, and shook out her skirt.
Mr. Prescott stood, looking straight ahead of him, with his under lip thrust forward, a characteristic trick of that same grand-niece Nancy, if he but knew it.
Presently he turned, and held out his hand with a queer, almost shy smile.
"Do forgive me, Elizabeth, for bellowing at you as I have. You know, my dear girl—and you have often agreed with me—that, while at my death my nieces will become very rich, it has been my purpose to allow them to know poverty, with all its sorrows and harassments, so that they can use my fortune wisely for their own happiness and for the happiness of the families that they will have in time. My theory is right—but circumstances alter cases. I shall think over what you have said—but I shall promise nothing."
Miss Bancroft accepted his hand and pressed it affectionately.
"Well, then, good-bye. No, don't bother to open the door for me; I'll go this way."
He smiled at her again as she went down the steps.
"I always feel lonely when you have gone, even when we have been quarrelling," he remarked, with a wistful look.
"Of course you feel lonely. You roll around in that huge house of yours like a hazelnut in a shoe," returned Miss Bancroft, quickly. He caught her meaning, and as quickly replied:
"Nonsense—I like plenty of room. Never could bear to have a lot of people hanging around. No man can accomplish anything with an army of women and things hanging to his coat-tails!"
"Tst!" observed Miss Bancroft, and because there was no answer to that, she could retire with the satisfaction of having had the last word.