A lady and her husband

by Amber Reeves Blanco White

James slept well that night.

[CHAPTER III]

DURING the next fortnight Mrs. Heyham's sitting-room took on a business-like air. A desk appeared in it, a typewriter, and finally a lady called Miss Percival. She was Rosemary's idea, and the theory of her was that one cannot be certain of doing good, even to waitresses, unless one knows something about them before one begins. Miss Percival, who had been secretary to a philanthropic member of Parliament, was to help her employer acquire this necessary knowledge, and then act, so to speak, as a reservoir of information whose tap would be turned if Mrs. Heyham showed signs of forgetfulness or of letting her feelings run away with her.

There could be no doubt of the lady's fitness for this task, for away in her past behind the conscientious member lay services to every progressive society in London that wanted investigation done for nothing. And if testimonials can be trusted each of these bodies had relinquished Miss Percival with passionate regret.

Mary waited for such efficiency with certain misgivings. Her kind heart had prompted her to buy a fumed oak desk instead of the elegant sycamore she would have liked, in order that her secretary might feel at home. Anything so ugly must, Mary thought, be excessively practical. But when Miss Percival arrived she did not look like a person who would be affected by the material of her desk. She was short, dark, unexpectedly young, and quite kind to every one. She even informed Mrs. Heyham that this was the sort of work she had been hoping to get. The only other thing one noticed about her, at first, was that she would not speak, if she could help it, in front of James or Trent. Mary, when she saw that this was so, felt sorry for her, and almost suspected sad experiences. The M. P. was out of the question—Mary had once sat next to him at dinner—but she had no such guarantee about all the queer people there must have been in the societies. But kindness might be trusted to remove any doubts that lingered in Miss Percival's mind, and in the meantime the important thing was that she seemed to have a clear notion of what she meant to do. This was a relief to Mary, who could organise very well when she must, but took no delight in thinking out a plan for its own sake.

The first thing, according to the expert's scheme, was to ask Mr. Heyham to give them an account of the business. This he willingly did, at ease in his arm-chair, while Mary looked at him with quiet appreciation. Miss Percival was not present. James, when he told a story, liked to tell it in his own way, and in this case Mary's dead father and mother were involved, besides James's own father, who was intensely alive and sinful in South America. Mary could repeat the important facts to Miss Percival afterwards, and then Miss Percival could make a note of them.

The business came into the family in the middle-age of James's father, who in those days was a plausible, restless fellow, continually initiating enterprises and continually throwing them up. At this period in his career he was associated with a dubiously virtuous old man called Matthew Clarkson, and Clarkson persuaded his ally to invest some money they had recently acquired in a mineral water factory in East London. It was called the "'Rule Britannia' Aerated Water Co.," and that, as its vendor pointed out, was a very good name to start from. The factory, as they found it, was small and exceedingly dirty, and perhaps for these reasons congenial to Matthew, who developed a habit of visiting the place very morning in order that he might irritate the foreman, and conduct experiments in an unpleasant cupboard that he called his laboratory. Meanwhile Mr. Henry Heyham was making the most of this brief life, spending a good deal of mysterious money, moving into a larger house, giving his sons a passable education, and looking about him for a suitable match for his daughter Edith. Even her brothers thought Edith a handsome girl, and in particular she was attractively plump. Henry found it possible before his own financial needs became too glaring to marry her to a wealthy gentleman interested in meat. And thank heaven this is a Christian country where marriage is still held sacred.

He bore up until the honeymoon was over, for he always liked to do things decently, but two days after Edith's return he summoned his second son James, fresh from a London school, and told him, with an almost tearful impressiveness, that he, Henry, was for the moment done for. Honourably done for, mind you, not through his own fault but through the fault of those he had trusted. Not that he regretted having trusted them, he would rather have a mind full of faith and confidence in his fellows even if he had to pay for it than pass through the world crammed with ugly suspicions and for ever taking precautions against his neighbour.

Even without the old man's deprecating look, James would have understood that this was Henry's way for apologising for some gross and culminating piece of carelessness.

But that was not all he had to say. Many fathers, if not most fathers, when they had reached the age of having grown-up sons who had been treated with every kindness, supplied with every luxury, and equipped with an unsurpassed education, would consider—and in his opinion they wouldn't go beyond their rights if they did—that the time had come when the said sons were in duty bound to turn to and support the authors of their being. But he, Henry, was not that sort of man. He would never be a burden on any child of his. On the contrary it had been the object of his steadfast endeavour to provide a safe start in life for his boys, no matter what might happen to their old father. Edith couldn't have been better disposed of, Timothy was doing well with the smartest, most up-to-date solicitors in London, and he now proposed to complete the beneficent work by giving James an opportunity that most young fellows would cut off their ears to get, an opportunity so resplendent, if he only liked to use it, that ten years might see him a rich man, and twenty find him a captain of industry—and this in an age when to be a captain of industry, honest British industry, was the goal of every decent man's ambition. There was much that might be said upon this subject, upon the essential meanness and hollowness of politics, art, literature, the Church, the services, science, medicine, and teaching, regarded as careers. But time pressed. He would put what he wanted to say briefly, simply, without trimmings, as befitted a business man. He proposed to make over to his dear son James his share in the thriving mineral water business known as the Rule Britannia Aerated Water Co. And to whatever quarter of the globe fortune might drive him, to whatever depths of squalor she might plunge him, he would never forget to pray for the immediate, the triumphant, the cataclysmic success of his dear son, his old friend, and the Rule Britannia.