He that will not when he may; vol. III

by Mrs. Oliphant

The fact was that the English winter was a terrible experience for Sir Gus. He had not contemplated anything so unlike all that he had previously known. He had heard of it, of course, and knew that there was cold to encounter such as he had never felt before, but he was not aware what were the consequences of that cold, either mental or bodily. He shrank visibly in the midst of his wrappings, and grew leaner and browner as the year went on, and sat shivering close by his great fire when the boys came in glowing with exercise, and the little girls, his favourites, with brilliant roses of winter on their cheeks. “Come out, come out, and you will get warm!” they all cried; but he would not leave his fire. A man more out of place in an English country-house in a severe winter could not be. Gus could do nothing that the other gentlemen did. He neither hunted nor shot, nor even walked or rode. He did not understand English law or customs, to occupy himself with the duties of a magistrate; he did not care about farming; he knew nothing about the preserving of the game, or even the care of the woods. He was fretful when the agent or his clerk came to consult him on any of these subjects. Go out and look at the timber! he only wanted more to burn, to have better and better fires.

By this time the family at Markham had almost begun to forget that Gus was an intruder. There was no more question of Lady Markham’s removal to the dower-house. Nothing had been said about it by one or the other, but it had been quietly, practically laid aside, as a visionary scheme impossible in the circumstances. They all lived together calmly, monotonously, in perfect family understanding. Even Alice, who stood out so long against him, had learned to accept Gus. The little girls made him their slave; he was always ready to do anything they wanted, to take them wherever they pleased. But life got to be very heavy upon Gus’s hands as these winter days went on. He had nothing to do; he did not even read—that resource of the unoccupied; he had no letters to write, or business to do like his father, and he soon began to hate the library which had been appropriated to him, notwithstanding its huge fireplace. He was more at home in the soft brightness of the drawing-room, with velvet curtains drawn round him, and the lights reflected in the mirrors and sparkling on-the pretty china and ornaments. The ladies found him in their territories more than in his own. He interrupted nothing, but notwithstanding, there, as everywhere, there was nothing for him to do. It was only now and then, not once a day at the most, that there was a skein of silk or of wool to hold for some one. Sometimes he would volunteer to read aloud, but he soon tired of that. He bore this want of occupation very well on the whole, sitting buried in the big bamboo chair, which he had filled with soft cushions, at the corner of the fire in the drawing-room, looking on at all that was doing, and more interested in the needlework than those who worked at it. Poor little gentleman! Sir Gus did not even care for the newspapers; he looked at the little paragraphs of general interest, but turned with a grimace from the long reports of the debates. “What good does all that do me?” he said, when Lady Markham, who was somewhat horrified by his indifference, endeavoured to rouse him to a sense of his duties.

“But it concerns the country,” she would say, “and few people have a greater stake in the country.”

“That is how Paul would have felt,” said Sir Gus; “he would have read all these speeches; he would have understood everything that is said. It would have mattered to him——”

“Indeed it matters to us all,” said Lady Markham, with grave dignity. Of all people in the world to listen while a parliamentary debate is talked of with contempt, the wife of a man who was once a Cabinet minister is the last—and all the more if her husband held but a secondary place. She was half-offended and half-shocked; but Sir Gus could not see the error of his ways. He got all the picture-papers, which he enjoyed along with Bell and Marie; and sent to the boys after, when they were at school. He cared nothing about the game, except to eat it when it was set before him. From morn to chilly eve he would sit by that fire, and note everything that happened. Not a letter arrived but he was there to see how it was received, and what was in it. Lady Markham declared that had she heard anywhere else, or read in a book, of a man who was always in the drawing-room, who had no duties of his own, and who sat and watched everything, the situation would have seemed intolerable. But it was not so intolerable in reality. They got used, at last, to the big bamboo chair and its inhabitant; they got used to his comments. There was no harm in Mr. Gus; but life was hard upon him. Everybody else was doing something—even the little girls in the school-room were learning their lessons—but he, burying himself in the cushions of his chair, showing nothing out of it but two little brown hands, twirling a paper-knife, or a pencil, or anything else he had got hold of, had nothing to do. Sometimes he would get up and walk to the window. When it was fine it would give him much pleasure to watch the birds collecting about the breadcrumbs, which he insisted on scattering everywhere.

“There is a lazy one, like me,” he would say; and a little pert robin redbreast, a sort of little almoner, who came and superintended the giving away of these charities, gave Sir Gus the greatest amusement. But the people who came to call were not equally amusing. When a man came, he expected Sir Gus to take an interest in the debates, or in the places where the hounds met, and stared, when he knew that Gus, like Gallio, cared for none of these things. And he was not even interested in the parish. When Dolly Stainforth brought up a report of some village catastrophe, Sir Gus was not the one who responded with the greatest liberality. He was not used to have very much money to spare, and he was careful of it. It was not that he loved money, but he had not the habit of spending it lavishly, as we foolish people have. Sometimes he would drive out in a close carriage, to the great contempt of everybody concerned.

“The new master, he be a muff,” the people in the porter’s lodge said. Even from that mild exercise, however, he was glad to come in, shivering, and call Brown to put on a great many more coals in the fire. The house was full of schemes for warming it more effectually. Hot water, hot air—all kinds of expedients; and never had so much fuel been used in Markham in the memory of man.

“He will ruin my lady in coals,” Brown said; but Sir Gus did not take this into consideration. It was about the greatest pleasure he had in the good fortune which was to make him so happy.

In February there came, as there sometimes comes, a spell of bright weather—a few soft, spring-like days—and the poor little gentleman from the tropics brightened along with the crocuses. “It is over at last,” he said, in beatific self-delusion; and he was persuaded to pay a visit to town when Parliament was on the point of meeting, and the general tuning up for the great concert of the season had begun to begin. Here Sir Gus was confided to the charge of Fairfax, who took him into his own house, and roasted him over huge fires, and made little dinners for him, collecting other tropical persons to meet him. But very soon Sir Gus found out that it was not over. He found out that not to be interested in the debates, nor in society, nor in books and pictures, and, above all, not to “know people,” were sad drawbacks to life in London. He sat dumb while his companions talked of meeting So-and-so at Lord What-d’ye-call-’em’s, and of the too-well-known intimacy—“Don’t you know?”—between Sir Robert and Lady John. He stared at the talkers, the poor little foreigner! and tired even of Fairfax’s big fires. The skies that hang so low over the London streets, the rain and muddy ways, or the east wind that parched them into whiteness, made his very soul shrink. That was not at all a successful experiment. He went back on Lady Markham’s hands in March, having ensconced himself now in a coat lined with sables, which buried him still more completely than the big chair.

“England is a very fine place,” he said, with his teeth chattering, as he came in, out of a boisterous March wind, which carried upon it bushels of that dust that is worth a king’s ransom. “It is a very fine place but—only I don’t seem to agree with it.” But that summer must certainly come some time—and spring was certainly come at this period, though Gus did not recognise that pleasant season in its English garb—they must all have given in altogether. But when the primroses appeared in the woods Sir Gus began to get back a little of his courage. Fortunately the summer opened brightly, promising to be as warm and genial as the winter had been severe; and by degrees the little gentleman let his fires go down, and left off his furs. Who can doubt that the winter had been very long at Markham for the whole household? They were living alone in their mourning, and Paul, though only in London, was separated from them, and in a state of great uncertainty and doubtful comfort. And other visitors were banished too. But when the spring came back the household awoke, and broke the bonds of gloom. Even Lady Markham began to smile naturally upon her children—not with the smile of duty put on for their advantage, but with a little natural rising of the clouds. And Alice brightened insensibly, knowing that “they” were to come for Easter; that is, Paul and “one of his friends.” Nothing had been said to Alice upon any subject that was likely to agitate her prematurely, but it was pleasant to look forward to that visit from Paul and his friend-from which fact it may be divined that Lady Markham had been not unfavourably moved by the last item in Fairfax’s confession.