Masterman and Son

by W. J. Dawson

XXIII

THE LAST HOME

The summer passed in heavy, brooding heat; the autumn brought long days of diminished sunshine; and at last the winter came, with rain and fog. London looked its worst, dull, drab, dishevelled, and nowhere was its grim squalor more distressing than in Tottenham.

A district of mean streets, formless and chaotic, sprawling aimlessly in a sea of mud; houses gray and dingy, exuding dirt; other houses, new and cheaply built, already overtaken by decay, huddled in shivering wretchedness along roads deep in mire; churches with the paint peeling from their doors; paltry ill-stocked shops visibly struggling for existence; a few smoke-stained trees; a smoke-stained sky; and tribes of men and women moving to and fro dejectedly, with backs hunched against the driving rain, or faces showing pallid in the fog,—such is Tottenham. It is a district without grace, without charm, with no interruption in its uniformity of dullness. The disparities caused by social rank, which elsewhere give some semblance of external variety, are not found here. Poverty sees itself reduplicated at every turn; it looks into its own face, and sees no other. A district no man chooses; into which he may be thrust by dire misfortune, in which he may dwell with resentment, with a heart swollen with regret, with a mind embittered; but which excites in him no respect and no affection. London, with its glories and adventures, shines afar; it shines splendid and contemptuous. For here there are no adventures; memories, but no prospects; life without ardour; struggle without hope; toil without release.

It was in this district that Masterman had chosen to live. Its tragic dreariness presented a subtle correspondence with his own temper. Having sought wealth for so many years with a fierce intensity of passion, he now embraced poverty with an equal ardour. The world had humiliated him, and, as if to show how little he cared for the world's verdict, he added to his humiliation features which the world had not intended. He hungered for renunciation, not as saints have hungered, but with the bravado of a broken heart. He would show himself unsubduable; that was his main thought. And in what more striking way could he do this than by a complete indifference to the world's opinion, a voluntary descent into indignity? To toil in harsh labours, to eat poor food, to live in the meanest way, without complaint, without visible resentment,—this was his challenge to the world, by which he declared his complete contempt for the world's judgment and opinion.

This had been his sole motive for rejecting the proffered generosity of Bundy. And there were others beside Bundy, the friends and acquaintances of his prosperity, who would gladly have given him a helping hand. But, since he could not wholly recover his old position, he scorned a partial reclamation. To move before the eyes of these former friends shorn of his power, narrowed, limited, perhaps pitied, was a thing impossible. Better far to leave the arena for ever, and leave it with a proud disdain. Exile was less painful than toleration. The exile may at least keep his pride; but what pride is possible to the broken supernumerary who "lags superfluous on the stage"?

"No," he said, when Bundy pressed him to accept his help, "I can't do it. I know you mean it kindly; but I can't."

"But why not?"

"You wouldn't understand if I told you."

"I understand you're the most obstinate man I ever met," said Bundy, with a touch of indignant heat.

"Obstinate? Well, p'raps so. We'll let it go at that. Yes, I'm obstinate."

And his smile was so grim and tragic that Bundy said no more.

It was one of the curious features of his situation that the house he chose to live in at Tottenham was a triumph of architectural mendacity; the same kind of house, in fact, as those with which he himself had disfigured London, but some grades lower than his own flimsiest performances. The doors were badly hung and would not close; the wainscots, fashioned of green wood, were already shrunken; the window frames rattled and let in the cold air; the chimneys smoked; the ceiling plaster was already in process of disintegration; there was nothing in the house that was not eloquent of fraud. Perhaps he had been moved by the spirit of irony in the selection of such a house as his final habitation. He might have lived elsewhere; but nowhere else could he have gratified his perversity with such completeness. Grimes employed him; well, let him live in one of Grimes's houses too; in doing so he anticipated the world's laughter by laughing himself.

"He's a holy terror, is Grimes," he would remark. "I thought I knew how to build a thirty-pound house myself pretty well; but Grimes beats me hands down. He can give me points every time."

And then he would recapitulate with sardonic skill all the building tricks of which Grimes had been guilty, specifying each with bitter humour.

"I did sometimes use sand in my mortar; but Grimes uses mud—mere road mud at that. And I did put down drains of some sort; but Grimes beats me there—he don't appear to have heard of drains. And his party-walls, holy Moses! I believe if I spat at them they'd fall down."

When Arthur came home in the evening, he would meet him at the door with ironic warnings.

"Here, mind you shut that door quietly. If you bang it, it's my belief the whole gimcrack will be about your ears. And be careful you take your boots off before you go upstairs. Those stairs weren't meant for boots. And, whatever you do, don't you be leaning against the walls. They kind o' shake every time a fly walks over them. I guess it wouldn't need much of a Samson to pull them down. He wouldn't need to touch 'em; I reckon a sneeze would do the trick."

"Father, I can't bear to see you so bitter."

"Bitter? Oh no, I'm not bitter. I'm amused, that's all."

"I wish you wouldn't live here, father. There's no need. Let me find another house. Between us, we've money enough."

"Well, Arthur, you see I kind of like living here. It's exciting. You never know what's going to happen. And, besides, it's instructive. I'm studying the methods of my friend Grimes, in case I should want to start again presently as a contractor. I'm learning every day. There's more than meets the eye in this contracting business; and, since I've worked for Grimes, I begin to think I never knew a thing about it."

Remonstrance was so clearly useless that after a time Arthur ceased to attempt it. He accepted his father's bitter humour, thankful for the humour, if hurt by its bitterness. He even contrived to laugh at times when his father grew increasingly sarcastic over the iniquities of Grimes; but it was the kind of laughter that was more painful than tears.

More than once he tried to persuade his father to leave London altogether. He pictured to him the life at Kootenay, the quiet, the freedom, the exhilarating sense of triumph over crude nature, with all the skill and eloquence at his command. At times his father would listen with interest, asking many questions, but always at the end he would say, "No, no; it's too late for that. I'm a have-been. I can't begin again. And, besides, it would look like running away, and I won't do that. A man has to take his medicine, and I'm going to take mine."

At times a strange religious vein showed itself in his conversation. He never went to church now, and, indeed, entertained a strong rancour against what he called "church-folk." Scales had been an officer in the church, and was a rascal. The church-folk had all deserted him in his downfall. Clark, indeed, had called upon him, but had nothing to say. It was all a kind of play-acting, very pleasant if you'd nothing better to do, and that was all. "Churches are meant for comfortable people. All very well while you've money in your pocket, and a good coat upon your back, but they aren't for the like of me," was one of his sayings. "The Church don't know anything about real life," he would remark, "and it doesn't want to. If it once saw things as they are, it would be frightened out of its wits. So it draws the blind down, and won't look. It's like folk sitting round a good fire on a winter night, and when the rain's coming down and a gale's blowing. The more the gale blows, the more comfortable you are. What's the good of looking out of the window? Why, they might see some poor wretch like me, and that would make them unhappy. Better not look. Stir the fire up, and forget all about it."

"I don't believe the church-folk think like that, father."

"Oh yes, they do. I've done it myself, and I know."

And then, amid these bitter criticisms and confessions, that curious authentic religious vein would struggle into light. He would often sit up late reading those portions of the Scripture most characterised by melancholy wisdom.

"Listen to this," he said on one of those occasions: "'He that buildeth his house with other men's money is like one that gathereth himself stones for the tomb of his burial.... Weep for the dead, for he hath lost the light; and weep for the fool, for he wanteth understanding; make little weeping for the dead, for he is at rest; but the life of the fool is worse than death.' The man who wrote that knew something about life now, if you like. Couldn't pay his mortgage, as like as not; been a bankrupt, I guess. Just wanted to die, and be done with it all—like me. Yet God let him have a hand in writing the Bible—queer thing that, isn't it? And God must have known the kind of fool he was. That's what I like about the Bible; it don't shirk things—tells you the truth every time. It's a big thing is the Bible—big as a rock; and the Church is just a little limpet sticking on it. Don't see how big it is; probably can't see it." And then, with a sudden pale illumination on the strong worn face, "Well, I guess God's got to put up wi' me. He's big enough to understand the sort I am. And I'm not for apologising to Him. I reckon He don't want me to."

Gradually there seemed to settle on him a languor, which expressed itself in a kind of patience which Arthur found infinitely pathetic. He went to his work before daylight, came home weary, and often wet through, ate his coarsely cooked meal in silence, but made no complaint. He had ceased to take interest in the outer world. He received the news of Helen's marriage without remark, and displayed no curiosity. Once only he was roused to any interest in her. Bundy, in one of his numerous journeys to Paris, insisted on taking Arthur with him, and Arthur told his father that he would no doubt see Helen.

"Paris, did you say? Ah! I was there once. It was there they took me. So she's living in Paris, is she?"

He left the room and went upstairs. Arthur could hear him moving to and fro for a long time. When he came down, he held a little parcel in his hand.

"I suppose my creditors ought to have had this," he said. "Only they didn't get it."

"What is it, father?"

He slowly undid the parcel, and put upon the table a small gold watch.

"It didn't rightly belong to the creditors, either," he said in a low voice. "It was hers."

"Whose, father?"

"Your mother's. The first thing I gave her after we'd begun to get on a bit. I can mind how pleased she was. Lord! it seems like yesterday. And then her face kind of clouded over, and she said, 'But can you afford it?' That was just like your mother—always afraid I couldn't afford things."

He became silent, and stood with wide intent eyes, as if he saw that far distant past limned upon the air. He had never spoken of his dead wife before. The mention of her name invoked God knows what sweet and painful memories.

"Thought I couldn't afford it," he repeated softly. "Put it away in a drawer, didn't like to wear it, thought it too good for her. Some women are like that—not many, though. I guess Helen isn't like that...." And then, with a sudden lifting of the head, as though he emerged from a sea of dreams, "Well, I want you to give the watch to Helen. I haven't given her a wedding-present. That's about all I have to give. I hope she'll value it."

In due course Arthur gave the watch to Helen. She glanced at it with an air of insolent depreciation. "It isn't likely I'm going to wear an old thing like that!" was her sole remark. She also put it in a drawer, where it was forgotten. When she left the Hotel Continental, a year later, it was lost. She never missed it.

It was on his return from this journey to Paris that Arthur noticed for the first time a distinct physical change in his father. The big frame remained, but the flesh was shrunken.

"Aren't you well, father?" he asked.

"Oh yes, I'm well—a bit thinner, that's all. I'd begun to run to fat, you know, sitting about in offices. There's nothing like hard work to take your flesh down."

That night, as they sat beside the fire, he talked with an interest he had never shown before about Arthur's prospects in life. He drew from him a particular account of his work upon the ranch, the scenery, the business possibilities in fruit-growing, and so forth.

"I suppose now men get rich out there pretty quick, don't they?"

"A few."

"But there's gold and copper in those hills, isn't there?"

"So they say. There are old men who have been looking for it all their lives, though, and they haven't found it."

"But you might find it, eh? You've education, and that counts for a lot anywhere. And you've brains—you could organise things. I wouldn't wonder if you were rich some day."

"I don't want to be rich, father. The rich people appear to me the unhappiest people in the world."

"Ah, that's true, too! It's the same everywhere. You see, if a man's born rich, he grows up to it, and knows how to behave. But when he gets rich, he generally makes a mess of things. Isn't used to it, and it goes to his head like wine." A long pause—and then, "What's the verse about choosing the better part? Well, I reckon you've chosen the better part. I didn't think so once, but I've begun to see a lot of new things of late, and that's one of them."

"Then you forgive me for going away, father?"

"Oh! I don't know about that. Isn't it enough if I say that I think you did the wise thing? It's pretty hard for me to say that, and you must be content with it."

He talked on for an hour or so, in a quiet, musing voice, recalling the histories of men he had known, most of them dead. He recalled their struggles, their ambitions, their infrequent victories, their frequent defeats, their occasional rise into social eminence, and the domestic infelicities that poisoned their success. It was a sorry record, a kind of epitome of modern covetousness, through which wailed the sombre note of the Hebrew moralist, Vanitas Vanitatum! Arthur could not but notice that he spoke no longer as a participant in the strife, but as a mere spectator. He saw the frantic whirl of men in pursuit of gold as something far off, unimportant, inherently mean and despicable. And he himself spoke as a man completely disillusioned, a derider and a mocker, whose dominant temper was ironic pity.

"Poor Sandy Macphail—I knew him when he earned a pound a week." And then would come a caustic sketch of Sandy, lying for his life in some crisis of his fortunes, "eating dirt," as he put it, to creep into a big man's favour, dragging with him into social light a wife who was the laughing-stock of unfamiliar drawing-rooms, and his cubs of boys, who took to drink or gambling—ending with the grim comment, "Spent his last years wheeled about in a chair, did Sandy—paralysed, you know."

Or it would be, "There's Steiner, South African millionaire, you know. I met him once in my great days. Poor wreck of a man, nerves all gone, took drugs, so they said. Committed suicide, did Steiner."

It was a long, almost involuntary unfolding of the filaments of memory. Man after man appeared in that phantasmagoric vision, foolish, pitiable, misguided, and sank out of sight pierced by the shaft of some ironic phrase.

"Well, I'm out of it all, and a good job, too," he concluded. "They'll be saying the same things about me when I'm dead. My! it's twelve o'clock! An old bankrupt fellow that works for Grimes ought to ha' been a-bed long ago. These are no hours for the British working man."

The next day was Sunday. To Arthur's surprise his father appeared after breakfast clothed in the fashion of his former life. The worn serge suit and low hat were laid aside; they were replaced by a black frock coat, a white waistcoat, and a top hat. He looked once more the city magnate—rather faded. And in some subtle way the better clothes had affected the physical aspect of the man. He no longer stooped; he stood erect, held himself well, had something of his former air of command.

"I've a fancy for a walk," he said. "Do you care to come?"

It was one of those mild and exquisite days which are the stars in the dreary firmament of winter. A soft wind blew out of the south-west, soft clouds moved across a blue-gray sky, and the air was pure and sparkling. Even Tottenham was touched with the spirit of a brief vivacity. The normal cloud of dinginess was miraculously dissolved, the sunlight glittered on the rain-pools, and a Sabbath calm lay upon the streets. It was the kind of day which the country-man calls "a weather-breeder"; which the less wise Londoner hails as the first pledge of returning summer.

They wandered forth, apparently without aim, but steadily moving westward. They reached Hyde Park, where they sat for some time watching the gaily dressed people who flowed past like a coloured river. Here and there Masterman discerned a known face, and made brief comments on it. From Hyde Park they turned toward the city. Through the mitigated clamour of the Strand, and the almost total silence of Cheapside, they passed, till they came to the network of lanes and alleys round the Mansion House. They were strangely hushed. Where, day by day, so many thousands passed, driven by eagerness and haste, in an unnoticeable throng, a single footfall now roused clamant echoes.

"It's a queer thing, but I've never been in the city on a Sunday before," Masterman remarked. "I couldn't have believed it was so silent. It's like going to sleep in a thunderstorm, and waking up in a vault, with the coffin-lid nailed over you."

He paused at last before the high narrow building where he had had his offices.

"Wonder whether the caretaker's here. Let us see."

A little dark man answered the door.

"Why, it's Mr. Masterman!" he cried in astonishment. "Come in, sir!"

"So you remember me, Perkins?"

"Of course, sir. And there's no one sorrier than me for what has happened."

"Who's got my offices now?"

"They're still to let, sir. P'raps you'd like to see them."

"Yes, I should."

They went up into the rooms. Masterman's name was still upon the glass door of the outer office. The desk that he had used was in its place beneath the window. But there was dust upon the furniture, dust upon the windows, and a kind of ghostly loneliness in the deserted rooms.

"I've a fancy for sitting at that desk again, Arthur."

He sat quite silent, his hat tilted back, his fingers drumming on the elbows of the chair.

"Let us go, father. It's too lonely."

"Yes—lonely," he said in a low voice. "The place that knew you knows you no more for ever. It's a queer sensation. No more—for ever!"

They left the room, went downstairs; and Arthur noticed with astonishment that Masterman gave the obsequious Perkins a sovereign.

"Oh! you needn't look like that," said Masterman. "I can afford it. And if I couldn't afford it I should do it. Perkins still has his illusions concerning me, and it isn't worth while destroying them. He very likely thinks I'm going to rent the offices again. Well, let him think it."

They left the city and turned northward. The evening had fallen when they reached Highbourne Gardens. The church shone with lighted windows, and on the misty air there floated out the sound of hymn-music. Eagle House reared a dim bulk through the mist. A white-painted board, just beside the gate, informed the public that the house was to be sold.

"Come away," said Arthur. "I can't bear it!"

For at last he saw that in this aimless wandering there had been an aim; his father was revisiting old scenes to take farewell of them.

"Hush!" said Masterman. "Listen!"

As they listened, the hymn-music became recognisable.

Swift to its close ebbs out life's little day;
Earth's joys grow dim, its glories pass away;
Change and decay in all around I see...

The hymn ceased.

"Give me your arm, Arthur; I feel a little faint. That's right. Now let us go back."

The rain had begun to fall, and the wind was rising. It was nine o'clock when they reached Tottenham, and both were wet through.

The next day he went to his work as usual. The weather was miserable. A raw north-east wind blew, bringing with it snow. The snow became sleet, and the wind changed to the south-east, bearing on its wings continuous rain. After the rain came black, impenetrable fog. Tottenham was submerged beneath the clammy vapour.

On the Thursday, when Arthur returned from Bundy's, he found his father huddled over the fire, coughing violently.

"Are you ill, father?" he asked in alarm.

"Oh! just a cold. Nothing to be troubled over."

But the next morning he did not rise from his bed. Bronchitis had declared itself. A local doctor, hastily called in, hinted at some injury to the lungs, and spoke guardedly of a possible weakness of the heart. From that hour Arthur never left his father's bedside.

Mrs. Bundy no sooner heard the news than she flew to the rescue. The astonished street beheld a carriage with prancing horses at the door, from which emerged a lady in a long sealskin jacket, who entered the humble house, and did not return. She had established herself as Masterman's nurse, glad to exchange the idle trivialities of Kensington for these hard duties of helpful service. Bundy sent his own physician, a famous specialist, who took Arthur aside, and asked him gravely what his father's habits of life had been. When Arthur told him who his father was, and how he had lived since he came to Tottenham, he became yet more grave.

"I think I see," he said. "You won't mind my saying that a sudden change of life at your father's age was a great mistake."

"My father would have it so."

"I understand."

"Is there any danger?"

"There is always danger where there is serious illness. I ought to tell you, your father's condition is precarious. There is such a thing as a man's loosening his grasp on life—doing it purposely, I mean. Against that condition the best medical skill is useless."

"Then you think he will die?"

"Yes; his troubles are nearly over."

Arthur returned to the sick-room with a sinking heart. It seemed an inconceivable thing that that strong frame, the vehicle of so many energies, should be in process of dissolution. It had fulfilled the intention of its Maker for so many years, borne heat and cold, the strain of struggle and fatigue, with such a perfect adaptation, with such indefatigable vigour, its every atom mutely obedient to the guiding will; and now it must be numbered with the spent forces of creation. It must return to the womb of Nature from which it sprang, and become part of the innumerable dust of perished generations. Such was the law of waste that ruled the world—an awful thought to a son beside a father's death-bed. And against the certain working of that law, what had man to place but frail and feeble hopes; what, at best, but the solemn asseveration of a faith daily contradicted by the incontrovertible realities of physical dissolution, by the stark facts of departure, disappearance? ... An awful thought, indeed, before which the stoutest hearts have trembled.

His father lay quite silent. He had not spoken for many hours. There was no sound but the soft hissing of the steam in the bronchitis kettle, and the dropping of a cinder on the hearth.

Towards dawn he spoke.

"Well... well! ... Seems as if it was all a mistake.... A-striving and a-struggling, and nothing come of it. Folk'll laugh.... Him as had the city at his feet, working for poor old Grimes. It's a poor end!—a poor end!"

"Father, don't you know me?"

"It isn't Helen, is it? No, she went away. Poor little girl!"

The mind pursued its own sad communings.

"Well, I guess God's got to put up wi' me. He's big enough to understand. He don't want apologies. I am what I am."

The grayness of the dawn filled the room.

Suddenly he raised himself slightly on his pillow. He grasped Arthur's hand. There came into the tired eyes a new light, a long, intense wonder-look.

"Mary!"

It was his wife's name.

Then the strong face grew slowly empty of expression, the eyes closed.

Archibold Masterman had laid himself down to rest among the generations of the dead, and all his love and hatred had perished with him, neither had he any more a portion in anything that is done under the sun.