XXII
MRS. BUNDY PHILOSOPHISES
"I can't see what your father wanted to do it for. He had no call to do it. It's a most extraordinary piece of perversity."
The speaker was Bundy, and the scene was his new house in Kensington. After his many wanderings and adventures, Bundy appeared to have found permanent anchorage at last. His final apotheosis had begun, and a prophetic eye perceived that it was likely to include all the elements of eminent British respectability. He had begun to collect pictures again, was planning a library, drove daily in the park, was already known as a generous patron of many well-intentioned charities, and had even lectured in a parish-room on the wonders of the Yukon. There was ground to believe that in course of time he might even become a churchwarden, and it was only a total fluidity of opinion on local politics which denied him a seat upon the Borough Council.
Even the boys had suffered a transformation into something rare and strange. They no longer lassoed dogs upon the plains of Texas in the back-garden, and their interest in Indians had declined. They wore white collars which were fresh every morning, practised a difficult propriety, and walked gravely to church on Sundays, top-hatted and circumspectly clothed. There could be no manner of doubt that the short-lived glory of irresponsible poverty was fast fading into the light of common day, and that shades of respectability were closing round these growing minds.
And as for Mrs. Bundy—dear, slovenly, warm-hearted Mrs. Bundy—the historian relates with sadness that even she was tamed. Her force of speech remained, her sincerity, her lovableness; to the end of her days she would remain the sort of woman who addresses angry umbrella-emphasised allocutions to drivers who flog their horses, who gives hospitality to stray dogs, and opens her impulsive heart to the sorry fabrications of every histrionic beggar. But she had returned to unoccupied woman's first love, which is dress. Exiled from her kitchen, she had plunged recklessly into the study of fashion-papers. To hear her disputing with dressmakers, upholsterers, and house-decorators, to follow her in her many animated controversies with servants and a long succession of nefarious butlers, gave assurance that the wonted fires still burned ardently in her veins. But she was tamed. Wealth had riveted upon her golden fetters. She submitted to them, not without reluctance. Perhaps, if the entire truth was told, she was much happier as the mistress of the kitchen in the old house in Lion Row than as the mistress of a mansion in Kensington.
It was in the library of this house at Kensington that Arthur sat discussing the situation with his old friends. It was a spacious room, furnished after a plan which a celebrated firm had described as mediæval. The mediævalness of the room appeared to consist mainly in an imitation stucco ceiling, and in modern oak-panelling which declared its newness by uncanny loud explosions, as the wood cracked under the influence of heat. Before the open hearth Bundy stood oracular, with his hands behind him spread out to the warmth; and Mrs. Bundy sat at the table, mending socks—an example of the survival of primeval instincts.
"No, I don't see it at all," said Bundy. "Your father's wasting himself. There are plenty of men who would have helped him to recover his position. I would have given him anything he liked to ask, and been glad of the chance."
"I know you would," said Arthur. "And he knows it too."
"Then, why won't he let me?"
"I suppose because, as you say, he's too proud. But there's something else too, something deeper, I think."
"And what's that, pray?"
"Well, I don't know how to describe it, but it's more than mere pride and perversity. I think it's a kind of return to type. He began life as a workman, and he's gone back to it. It's his way of showing the world he doesn't care what it does to him."
"And what's that but pride?"
"Perhaps so," said Arthur wearily. "I've long ago given up judging my father. I only know that I never thought so well of him as I do now."
"Well done!" cried Mrs. Bundy. "That's what I think too."
"Well, I can't see it," said Bundy. "Tell me again how he's living."
"He's taken a small house at Tottenham, almost a cottage. Grimes gives him two pounds a week. He works from six in the morning till six at night. Next week I'm going to live with him."
"Yes, that's the worst part of it!" cried Bundy. "Your life is to be sacrificed too. With your splendid education you ought to be making a figure in the world. At all events you ought to be back upon your ranch, if that's the kind of life you mean to live. You must know that."
"Yes, I know it. But I can't go back as long as father lives. I have to make amends to him for past unkindness. And, remember, he has no one left but me."
"What about Helen?" said Mrs. Bundy.
"That's one of the things I came over to tell you about. I have a letter from her. You had better read it."
The letter was dated from Paris, and read as follows:
"DEAR ARTHUR:
"I hear that you are back in London, so you know all about the mess father has made of his affairs. You were lucky to be out of it, for it was a dreadful disgrace. I thought I should have died of shame. Just, too, when he was going to be knighted, for that's come out since, you know. He must have known all about it—I mean the disgrace—long before it came. And yet he never told me one word, but let me think things were all right, and was always talking to me about the house he meant to build, and the place in society I was to have. I can see now that it was all lies, and I will never forgive him. I suppose you will say I ought to sympathise with him, and all that kind of rot: you always did pretend to be so mighty good. Well, I don't, and I won't forgive him. And I dare say you'll say I ought to have stayed with him, and all that kind of thing. A pretty idea! As if I could have put my head out of doors, with everybody talking about us, and father's name in all the papers. I did go out once, and the Collinson girls, proud, conceited things, cut me dead, though I went to school with them. I wasn't going to stand that, so, after mother's funeral, I went away to one of my true friends in Paris. I didn't tell her what had happened, you may be sure. And she doesn't read the English papers, thank God. Her name is Adèle Siedmyer. She went to school with me, and her father is rich. She gave me a good time, I can tell you, and not a word said. The Siedmyers live in a beautiful house, much better than that old Eagle House, which I always detested. Well, now, I've something to tell you, which is quite important. There was a nice old gentleman who used to come to dinner at the Siedmyers', and I soon saw that he was very fond of me. They told me he was seventy, but he doesn't look more than fifty, for these Frenchmen know how to dress and keep young, which Englishmen never do. He told me all about his life—he'd been twice married, but his wives had treated him abominably—and I felt very sorry for him. I forgot to say he's something in the Stock Exchange—the Bourse, they call it here—and the Siedmyers thought no end of him. Well, I dare say you'll guess the rest. He asked me to marry him. I thought he put it so cleverly; he said it was the entente cordiale. I laughed at first, and then I cried a good deal; for it seemed hard that I should have to marry an old man, even if he is only fifty and a good figure. But what was a poor girl to do? Adèle and the Siedmyers persuaded me, and really it did seem to me quite providential, just in the midst of this disgrace; and it's not as though he didn't love me, for he's perfectly infatuated over me. I know you'll sneer, you always were good at that. But I don't care. There's one thing I always made my mind up to—it was that I wouldn't be poor. And, as I said, it did really seem quite providential, just when I couldn't hope to marry well in England, because of father's wickedness, that M. Simon—that's his name—should fall in love with me. I was dreadfully afraid at first that he'd ask awkward questions about father, but he never did, though he must have known something. Of course I didn't tell him—not likely. So the upshot of it is that we were married last week. So now you know. I thought I ought to tell you, and you can tell father, if you like. You needn't expect me ever to come to London again—horrid, hateful city! If you like to come over to Paris some time, of course I'll see you; but I won't see father! I draw the line at that. And I am sure he won't expect it after all the cruel wrong he's done me. I should think he would be too ashamed. If you can find any of my little knick-nacks in my drawers I wish you would pack them up and send them over. But I dare say they're gone—very likely the servants took them; and it doesn't really matter, for I've everything I need. Thank God, I shall not be poor now, in spite of father's wickedness.
"Your sister,
"HELEN.
"P.S.—We are living at the Hotel Continental, for the present. If you were only sensible I would say come over, and meet Adèle Siedmyer. She will have lots of money when her father dies. But I suppose you prefer digging like a labourer in that nasty Canada. There's no accounting for tastes, is there?"
Arthur, who, of course, was familiar with the letter, turned his face away while Mrs. Bundy read it, for he was heartily ashamed of it. Its complete selfishness and shallowness, its spite, its rancour, its hard worldliness, above all, its nauseous pietism, had filled him with disgust. He was surprised therefore when Mrs. Bundy put it down, with the exclamation, "Poor child!"
"Why do you say that?" he cried. "A letter like that puts its writer beyond pity."
"Ah, Arthur! I see you've not yet got out of the bad habit of judging people harshly. My laddie, don't let your heart grow hard against your sister, even though she is to blame. I'm not saying that that isn't a bad letter, and it comes from a hard, cruel heart. But I mind Helen as a little girl, as sweet and bright a child as you might meet in a day's march. It wasn't her fault that she was shallow; that's the way she was made. Yes, she was shallow, and only meant to sail in shallow waters, and when the deep waters overtook her, she was frightened to death. That's the letter of a poor, terrified girl who doesn't know what she's saying."
"I didn't think of it like that."
"No; it wasn't to be supposed you could. It isn't a boy that understands the heart of a poor, terrified girl."
"But it's the meanness of it—no word about my father but cruel accusation."
"Yes, it's mean; fear makes weak people mean."
"That's right," interjected Bundy. "I've seen a man, when thoroughly frightened, pour out all the black things in his heart, without the least idea of what a cad he looked to other people."
"Ah! and that's not all," went on Mrs. Bundy. "You think she's beyond pity. Why, she never had a better right to pity than now. She's sold her youth to that old Frenchman—I never did believe in Frenchmen—and she's got to pay for her folly, and it'll be a hard, long price before she's through with it, be sure of that. December and May—I never did know any good come of that kind of marriage yet. No, no. Your father's to be pitied, but he's got his pride; and you are to be pitied, but you've got your youth and freedom; but, if you ask me who is to be pitied most, it's that poor motherless girl. She may have a hard heart, but it can bleed; yes, and life will make it bleed before long, I doubt."
And so from Mrs. Bundy Arthur once more learned that lesson in life which he had found so difficult to master, the lesson always difficult to youth, and perhaps the most difficult of all to those whose ideals are highest—the lesson of charity, of tolerance, of lenient judgment toward the faulty. Mrs. Bundy had once before shown him the better road, when she had made him acquainted with virtues in his father which he had ignored; he had learned something of what charity meant from Vyse upon the Saurian, and Horner in New York, each with his catholic axiom that Englishmen ought to stand by one another; he had remarked Vickars's altered attitude to life, his sense of life's complexity, and his allowance for faults in men, for which their own will was but partially responsible: four times the Angel of Charity had stood beside him, and each time he had turned his face away. He had not allowed Mrs. Bundy's plea; he had accepted Horner's kindness, but without any accurate conception of the rarity and real beauty of his character; he had heard Vickars's confession, and in his utmost heart had thought him an apostate prophet. And now the same test met him again in the case of his sister. He saw her hardness and shallowness with more than sufficient accuracy; what he had not seen was her weakness, her terror under sudden disaster, and the tragic folly to which she had been driven by her terror. It was left to Mrs. Bundy to show him that. Suddenly he saw it; and he saw much besides. He saw that there is a vision of the mind and a vision of the heart; that the one is judging vision, the other sympathetic vision; that the one sees the surface only, the other the depth; and that therefore the vision of the heart is the only true vision. Of the four persons who had instructed him, three were quite simple persons, without the least claim to intellectual superiority; the other a man of genius, who had become humble by contact with human sorrows. And there was a fifth—there was Bundy himself, an adventurer whom he had secretly despised and ridiculed, but from whose hand had come salvation in his own hour of direst need. And the bond between these persons was quite simple; they had warm, human hearts, and in the difficult hours of life they were governed by warm impulses. Ah! that had been his error; he had looked at life with the mind, rarely with the heart. He had set himself up to judge others, and now he was judged. He had not pitied his sister; it was left for a stranger to do that; and in that moment he saw, as clearly as though expressed in tongues of heavenly flame, the divine grace resting on the head of Mrs. Bundy, and himself standing in the dark shadows cast by his own proud egoism.
"O Mrs. Bundy!" he cried, "I have been wrong—quite wrong; you have made me see it!"
And, having no mother, he was not ashamed to turn to this motherly heart for comfort. He knelt before her, and laid his head upon her lap, as he had often done in childish troubles; and her kind hands were upon his head, and her kind voice soothed him.
"There, there, laddie, that's all right. You've been badly hurt yourself, and you've been very brave over it. It's not easy to keep sweet-tempered when you're hurt—you know that, don't you, Bundy? Many's the time and oft I've said hard things I didn't mean, because my heart was bleeding. We all do it sometimes. But I think God turns His head away and doesn't listen. Perhaps He couldn't go on loving us if He did. And you know what the prayer says: 'Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us.' I never understood anything about theologies, and that kind of thing; but I know that's true. It's true because we can't go on living without it. So that's over, my dear, and don't you think any more about it."
And so she drew the bitterness out of his heart, and kissed him, and finally laughed at him through her tears, calling herself a foolish old woman to be supposing she could teach a big, clever fellow like him, until they were both laughing into one another's eyes like a pair of lovers.
"Well, now, we'll write Helen, and wish her joy. And, Bundy, you're going to Paris next week, aren't you? You will go to see her, of course. And we must send the poor child a present. It's a mercy, after all, she hasn't got into worse mischief than getting married to an old Frenchman. And perhaps he may make her a good husband, there's no telling—even though he is a Frenchman. And now I've a surprise for you. What do you think it is?"
"Something pleasant, no doubt."
"Well, it ought to be. Vickars and Elizabeth are coming to lunch. And you must stay, of course. And after lunch you can talk to Elizabeth, and we old folk will go away and talk about you, and see what can be done for you."
"Yes," said Bundy. "It's all very well for your father to work for Grimes; but you have to get to work too. Ah! there's the bell. That'll be Vickars, so we'll postpone that business."
It was a delightful lunch. For the first time since his return to England Arthur attained a real cheerfulness. In this atmosphere of warm affection it was impossible to think too urgently of past griefs. And it did seem as if the black shadow was at last rolling off, like a rain-cloud with trailing skirts edged with pure light.
Vickars, to his surprise, took quite a cheerful view of Helen's marriage.
"What Helen always needed was duties," he remarked. "Duties give poise and ballast to life. I suppose, ever since she left school, she has had no real duties to fulfil, and nothing makes people so selfish as a total absence of some kind of daily duty. If marriage does nothing else, it does impose duties on men and women. It takes them out of themselves, makes them look outward instead of inward, which is always a great thing."
"Then you don't think she has made a mistake?" said Arthur.
"No one can know that. But there's a kind of instinct in people which often guides them to what is right for them, though to an outsider their actions may appear quite foolish and incomprehensible. They unconsciously know what's good for them, just as animals know the kind of food that suits them best. Not a very complimentary analogy, is it?" he added, with his whimsical smile.
"No; but I see what you mean, I think."
"It doesn't need much seeing, for it meets us everywhere. Have you ever watched a dog in a field? He knows exactly what grasses are good for him, and he finds them. We don't know in the least the principle of his discrimination. Well, it's like that with men and women. They make their own choice, and it often seems to us a matter of folly or caprice. But, in nine cases out of ten, if they are left to themselves, they do somehow manage to choose what's best for them."
"And you would apply the same principle to my father?"
"Precisely. He is probably doing the only thing that was left for him to do. He knows what is the best medicine for his wound, and no one else knows anything at all about it."
"Poor father! At this moment, while we are feasting, he is working in bitterness of heart."
"Well, you don't know that. Very likely he is forgetting his bitterness of heart in his work, and if he were here he would remember it."
"And what about yourself?" cried Arthur. "If men really guide themselves by instinct, and do it with efficiency, there's a poor occupation for the man who sets out to reform them."
"I know it, my boy. Didn't I tell you I've given up thinking that I am competent to guide the world? Don't remind me of an old vanity of which I am ashamed. I guide the world! Why, God Himself appears to do that with difficulty."
"Can one man do nothing then for another?"
"Of course he can. But he won't do it by shouting in the market-place. The only thing he can really do is to live in such a way that other people see that his way of living is better than their own. Let him live—not just talk about living."
"And what about reform, all that bright dream of a reconstruction of society which——?"
"Yes, I know what you are going to say. And my answer is, that reform comes by example, too. One man who shows others how to live by living accomplishes more than all the books that were ever written."
"You needn't think father means to stop writing, for he doesn't," said Elizabeth, with a smile.
"No, I shall write, because that's my métier—the grass that suits me best. But there's this difference. I used to think, when I had written a book, that I had done all that was required of me. Now I see I must live my books. There's far too much writing in the world, and far too much preaching; there's never been enough living."
"I'm sure you've discussed that point long enough," said Mrs. Bundy. "Come and look at my new conservatory. Do you know I've turned orchid-grower? I really prefer roses; but Bundy wants orchids, just because they're expensive. It's a terrible thing to be rich, because you've got to have what other people want, instead of what you want."
They went into the conservatory, and presently, under the skilful management of Mrs. Bundy, Arthur found himself alone with Elizabeth. They sat there a long time, hand in hand, in sympathetic silence. For these two had reached that most perfect union of spirit, which is quite beyond the common mediations of language. Love for them had found its rarest form, a complete repose. From the first they had rested on each other, and, by a kind of spiritual clairvoyance, had read the deepest secrets of each other's thought. They had no need to reiterate the lover's hungry question, "Do you love me?" Such a question implies dubiety, and they had no doubts. Elizabeth's hand, laid in his, said everything; her lips, yielded willingly to his, would have been profaned by speech. And in those long sacramental silences there was something holy—an ardour of the spirit, for which language had no symbols.
They returned at last into the library, where they found Vickars and Bundy engaged in conversation.
"You have quite made your mind up to live with your father?" asked Bundy.
"Yes. I could not leave him alone."
"Very well, then. No doubt you're right. Well, listen. I once asked you to be secretary to the Dredging Company in New York, and you refused. I want you now to act as my private secretary for a few hours every day. In that way you will be earning something, and you can go on living with your father as long as you think fit."
"And I cheerfully accept," said Arthur.
"Then we'll take that as settled. And if you can persuade your father to come back to the life which I think he is better fitted for, why do. He may count on me."
"I don't think he will ever do that. But I am sure he will be glad to know you thought of it."
"Poor fellow," said Bundy, his eyes full of tears. "The world has used him hardly. It somehow doesn't seem fair that I should be here and he there." And then, with a trembling voice, came the old sentiment. "But it's great, all the same, the way he takes things. Your father's a great man."
"I think so too," said Arthur. "He's the greatest man I ever knew, and you are the best."