"I am worried about Margaret. Mr. Challoner is here constantly, and I cannot help observing how much attention he pays her. He refers to her on every occasion and insists upon asking her opinion. It is almost as though he placed her and himself in opposition to Mr. Savage and me; this causes delays in business, and unnecessary discussions which are very tiresome. His tone in speaking of or to Margaret is protective, as though he thought she was not being well treated. Perhaps I am unjust toward him, but he and Margaret are so frequently together. He asks for her and goes up to the blue sitting-room to see her. I am sure Mr. Savage observes this. I feel very anxious lest any wrong impression should gain ground among the servants or others. I dread anything approaching gossip just now. Since we left Highdene we have always kept ourselves free of that. Ever since we came here people have known little or nothing of our doings and affairs, and it would humiliate me that they should be canvassed now. I wish Margaret would be more careful of appearances. Then, too, although I do not like her, it is our duty to consider Mrs. Spencer. Her name has been so freely associated with that of Mr. Challoner. Every one has taken it for granted they will eventually marry. I ought to remind Margaret of this, since she seems to ignore it, and I have not the moral courage to do so. I am afraid of her tears and reproaches. When the funeral is over, Mr. Challoner will have less excuse for coming so often. I think I will wait. Things may arrange themselves, and I may be spared the unpleasantness of speaking.
"Something happened this evening which threw me into a strange excitement. I hardly know whether to set it down or not. I thought the impression would pass away, but I have been writing for more than an hour and it is still strongly upon me. My state of mind is exaggerated. Perhaps if I set it down I shall become more composed. When I bade Mr. Savage good-night in the hall—Margaret had gone on and was half-way up-stairs, she was not in a good temper—he spoke kindly about the responsibilities which have fallen upon me, and the amount I have had to do lately. He said he admired my business capacity and my high sense of duty. He addressed me as 'my dear cousin,' and kissed my right hand. This surprised and affected me. No one ever kissed my hand before. The tones of his voice are very varied. They caused me unexpected emotion. All was said and done very lightly and gracefully, almost playfully, but I cannot forget it. When I came up-stairs I locked the door of my room, and walked up and down in the firelight, looking at my hand, for a long while before I recovered sufficient self-control to light the candles and sit down and write. I have a strange feeling toward my own hand. It seems to have gained an intrinsic beauty and value, as of something quite apart from myself. I look at it with a sense of admiration. I enjoy touching it with my other hand. And yet I am doubtful whether to write this down. Only these sensations are so new to me that, when they are past, I shall be glad, I think, to have some record of them. I wrote about other things first, to-night, to test whether the impression was fugitive or not. It is still with me, though I am quite composed now. I am composed, but I still look at my hand with emotion. I will not write any more. I think I shall sleep to-night."
CHAPTER VII
IN WHICH ADRIAN HELPS TO THROW EARTH INTO AN OPEN GRAVE
Adrian Savage, meanwhile, his native buoyancy of spirit notwithstanding, became increasingly sensible of the depressing moral atmosphere surrounding him. He was impatient of it. For did they not really take things rather ridiculously hard, these excellent English people? Had they no sense of proportion? Had they no power of averaging, no little consolations of good-tempered philosophy? He went so far, in moments of levity, as to accuse le bon Dieu of reprehensible squandering by thus bestowing the eminently good gift of life upon persons so deplorably incapable of profiting by it. To him they appeared thankless, cowardly, and quite unpardonably clumsy in their handling of opportunity. Moreover, while curiously clannish, ready on the slightest provocation to stand back to back against the world, they waged internecine war, being permanently suspicious of, and unamiable toward, one another. If this represented a fair sample of the much-vaunted English home and the English character—well, for his part, Adrian was of opinion they did these things quite as well, if not a great deal better, in France!
He shrugged his shoulders, elevated his black eyebrows, stroked his neat beard, trying at once to overcome his sense of depression and stifle his sense of humor. The atmosphere would, he told himself, no doubt become more exhilarating when poor Montagu Smyrthwaite's body had been removed from that rather terrible best bedroom—apparently "turned up," as the maids have it, for spring cleaning—and finally consigned to the tomb. Never had he seen a dead fellow-creature treated with such meager tribute, either in language or symbol, of human pity or eternal hope! It shocked his sensibility that the corpse should lie there, locked away by itself in a cold, dismal twilight of drawn blinds, without any orderly setting-out of the death-chamber, without watchers, or prayer offered, or lighted candles, or flowers, or other suggestion either of tenderness or of religious obligation. Observances of this sort, he was given to understand by Joseph Challoner, were discredited in highly intellectual circles, such as that in which the Smyrthwaites moved, as savoring of antiquated and unscientific superstitions. The result, to Adrian's thinking, presented an effect at once so abjectly domestic, and so miserably deficient in any appreciation of the eternal mystery of human fate, that the crudest death-rites of the most degraded aborigines would have been preferable.
And then, by a singular inversion of sentiment, it was held necessary as a testimony of respect to keep the poor, disagreeable old gentleman's body waiting such a quite inordinately long time for interment! During a, to Adrian, positively endless week did it remain there, amid a doleful array of dusting-sheets and disinfectants! So that, what with the dark, snow-patched fir woods without, and the dark, neutral-tinted house within; what with conventionally hushed footsteps and lowered voices, plus an all-pervasive odor of iodiform tainting the close, heated air, the young man found the present among quite the most trying and distasteful of all his personal experiences.
Yet, as the interminable days went by—while Joseph Challoner, jealous alike of his own position and of the newcomer's breeding and ability, alternately bluffed, snarled and flattered, and pompous, little Colonel Haig fell headlong from attempted patronage to a certain fulsomeness of conciliation—against this dismal background the figure of Joanna Smyrthwaite came to stand out, to Adrian's seeing, with an intensity of moral effort and sustained determination of duty both impressive and admirable. Beneath the bloodless surface, behind the anxious, unlovely countenance and coldly nervous manner, he began to divine a remarkable character. He had been mistaken in calling her a shadow. She was a distinct entity, but she was also, to him, quite arrestingly unattractive. And, just on that account, the chivalry both of the man and the artist grew alert to be very gentle to her, to omit no smallest offering of friendliness or courtesy. The very reason and purpose of woman's existence being charm and beauty—his thought turned with a great yearning to remembrance of a certain enigmatic fair lady, the windows of whose rose-red and canvas-colored drawing-room overlooked the heart of Paris from above the Quai Malaquais—it was pitiful in the extreme to see any woman thus disfranchised.
The inherent tragedy of that disfranchisement was brought home to him, with peculiar force, on the evening following Montagu Smyrthwaite's funeral. For eventually, almost to Adrian's surprise, the poor lonely corpse really did get itself buried! Then, at the Tower House, the blinds were drawn up, and the mourners, local and official, returning thither, discarding the appointed countenance assumed as due to the mournful character of the rites lately accomplished and resuming that common to them under ordinary conditions, prepared almost jovially to do justice to an excellent luncheon. The Miss Smyrthwaites excused themselves from attendance, no other ladies being there, so it fell to Adrian's lot to preside at the banquet. He was amused to note the fact that they had left all which was mortal of the late owner of the house in the new West Stourmouth cemetery—which, with its pale monuments, roads and pathways, showed as a gigantic scar upon the face of the dusky moorland—in no perceptible degree impaired the healthy appetite of any member of the company. To eat offers agreeably convincing testimony that one is as yet well within the pale of the living; and none of the eighteen or twenty gentlemen present, whatever their diversities of profession or of social standing, entertained the faintest desire to follow Montagu Smyrthwaite—their neighbor, kinsman, patron, or employer—to the grave in any sense save a strictly complimentary one. That final civility being now duly paid in respect of him, it was in the spirit of those who receive well-earned reward for well-performed labor that they sat down to feed.
In Adrian, both the Latin and the Catholic were still somewhat in revolt against this scant tenderness shown toward death. The whole matter from start to finish had been, as he reflected, notably of the earth-to-earth order. The alacrity, displayed by the assistants, in the direction of food and drink, was of the earth earthy, too. It, however, had at least the merit of being very human. Therefore, to him, it came as a rather humorous relief. Since his childhood his visits to England had been infrequent. With London and London society he was fairly well acquainted, but of provincial life and its social conditions he knew next to nothing. It followed that, in their racial and psychological aspects, the members of the present company were interesting to him. He tried to forget the poor, unloved corpse lying beneath the rattling snow-sodden gravel of the moorland and absorb himself in observation of the men seated on either side the dinner-table; to where, at the opposite end of it, the hard-featured, taciturn, sagacious, Yorkshire manufacturer, Andrew Merriman, manager and part proprietor of the Priestly woolen mills, faced him. This man had not taken off the appointed countenance, for the very good reason that he had never put it on, his nature being of a type which disdains conventional manifestations, either of joy or woe. Throughout the day, in this as in other particulars, Merriman's personality had struck Adrian as distinct, standing away from the rest of the company, silently declaring itself as possessed of unusual vigor and independence. He tried to enter into conversation, but invariably Joseph Challoner contrived to intervene; and it was not till evening, shortly before Merriman and the rest of the Yorkshire contingent were due to depart to Stourmouth on their return journey by the night mail to Leeds, that he succeeded in getting private speech of him.