People of Position

by Stanley Portal Hyatt

Both Mr. and Mrs. Grierson belonged to eminently solid families, whose forebears for generations had looked to the City for their living. To them, the Square Mile stood for Respectability, just as the West End typified Laxity and Luxury; whilst outside these limits there was nothing but the Lower Classes. They ignored the Underworld, possibly because they knew nothing of it, more likely because it had no place in their Scheme of Things, the two main articles of their creed being that every man must choose an occupation early and abide by his choice, and that every good woman must stay at home. The logical result of these Grierson ancestors and their kind was the Victorian age, the exaltation of the Supremely Bad in Art and the Supremely Proper in mankind. Mrs. Grierson had been Victorian in the fullest sense of the word, and she had lived and died with all her principles intact, believing in the Evangelical Church, the respectability of wealth, and the evil tendencies of modern thought. On the other hand, some alien strain had crept into Mr. Grierson, and he had not accepted the family traditions in their entirety; in fact, both his own relatives and those of his wife had found much to criticise in his ideas. Had he been able to shake himself free of the family, he would have liked nothing better than to possess a ranch in America or a sheep station in New South Wales. All his life, he longed, in secret, for open air, and freedom, and the society of men whose interests did not stop at Temple Bar; but, in the end, Fate, in the form of a business bequeathed him by his father, sent him to the City, and he resolutely put his dreams on one side. The inevitable happened. He was essentially an honourable man, and, not understanding the meaning of Commercial Morality, he imagined that other men in the City were the same; consequently, he met the fate of he who of old went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, though there was no Samaritan to sympathise; rather otherwise, in fact, for his fellows shook their heads scornfully over his failure, whilst admiring the business capacity of those into whose hands his capital had passed.

The process of Mr. Grierson's ruin had been a comparatively slow one, the law requiring certain decencies to be observed in these matters; and his wife was dead, and his three elder children grown up and married, before the day when he discovered his own ruin, and took the quickest way out of the troubles of this world. He was mad, of course; everyone agreed on that point: not the least of the proofs being the fact that the only message he left was a letter for Jimmy, who was then at Sandhurst. The coroner had read the letter, and handed it back with a remark that it had no bearing whatsoever on the case; but no one else had seen it, nor had Jimmy given a hint of its contents to any of the family. It concerned him alone, he said. He would have to leave Sandhurst now and wanted to go abroad, and the others let him go, if not gladly, at least without any great regrets. They were all provided for; Walter was partner in a growing firm of solicitors; May had married Henry Marlow, a stockbroker; whilst Ida's husband was, if not actually in the City, at least very respectable, being a Northampton boot factor. They were very fond of Jimmy, genuinely fond of him, both from the purely correct point of view, as being their brother, and for his own happy disposition; but, none the less, there had always been a certain jealousy of their father's evident preference for him, a jealousy mingled with surprise, or even resentment, Jimmy being essentially unpractical, and almost unconventional. Moreover, they had never liked the idea of his going to Sandhurst. None of the family had been in the Service before; and it was a matter of common knowledge that no man could make financial headway in the Army. So, when, through Mr. Marlow's influence, the boy obtained a billet in China, the family heaved sighs of relief, and though, throughout the next ten years, his sisters kept up as regular a correspondence as his wanderings allowed, their home concerns and increasing families inevitably weakened their interest in him. They had their own circles, in which he had no part, though, on the other hand, when he did think of England, which was often during those years of hardship and disappointment, Jimmy always looked on them as essentially his own people, to whom, one day, he would return, having no one else....

Mrs. Grimmer sipped her tea slowly, and asked for further particulars concerning the absent wanderer.

"Does he say what he proposes to do?"

Mrs. Marlow shook her head. "No, only that he's sick of knocking about, and thinks he will try his luck at home. It's very selfish of him, because he has never been a credit to us; and, of course, naturally, everyone will know he's our brother."

"What has he done that wasn't—wasn't quite the thing?" the visitor asked.

Mrs. Marlow looked a little puzzled. "Well, I don't know that there's anything, exactly—at least that way. Only, Luke Chapman and her husband met him in Calcutta three years ago—Mr. Chapman has a branch there, you know—and Luke told me that he was doing nothing, and living at a queer sort of hotel, where ships' officers and those sort of people stay, not at all the thing. Then, you see, he's done no good. He's just as poor as when he went out ten years ago."

"So he's done no harm and no good. Then you can keep an open mind about him, May. Meanwhile, if I were you, I should try and find him a wife with money. He's sure to be interesting, you know. Men who travel usually are. Let me know when he comes back, as I should like to meet him again. Well, good-bye, dear, and don't worry too much about your black sheep. The colour may come off, or you may be able to get him whitewashed."

"Edith Grimmer was very flippant about it," Mrs. Marlow complained to her husband that evening, after she had shown him Jimmy's letter and had heard his remarks thereon. "I didn't like her tone at all. She has grown rather coarse lately, since they have got into that new set. They dine in town a good deal now, and I'm sure they can't afford it. She's taken to smoking cigarettes, too."