Book: The Good Comrade

U >> Una L. Silberrad >> The Good Comrade




"What part have I in this scheme?"

"You will help your mother," he answered, "and of course the concern
will be nominally yours; that is to say, you will put your money in
it, invest it in that instead of railways or whatever it is now in. I
shall see that the thing is properly secured."

He glanced at Captain Polkington as he spoke, as if he thought he
might have designs upon the money or investment. Julia only said, "I
see," but in so soft a voice that she roused Mr. Ponsonby's
suspicions. He had dealt a good deal with men and women, and he did
not altogether like the amused observing eyes of the legatee, and he
distrusted her soft voice of seeming acquiescence.

"It is of no use for you to get any nonsensical ideas," he said,
"about what you will do and won't do; this is the only thing you can
do; you have got to make a living, and you have got to pay your debts;
beggars can't be choosers. The fact is, you have all lived on charity
so long that you have got demoralised."

Violet flushed. "Really," she began to say, "though you have helped us
once or twice, I don't think you have the right to insult--" but Mrs.
Polkington raised a quieting hand; she did not wish to offend her
brother.

He was not offended; he only spoke his mind rather plainly to them
all, which, though it did no harm, did little good either; they were
too old in their sins to profit by that now. After some more
unpleasant talk all round, the family conclave broke up; Mr. Frazer
came home, and every one went to bed.

Mr. Ponsonby had Julia's tiny room; there was nowhere else for him,
seeing Violet and her husband had the one she and her youngest sister
shared in their maiden days. Julia had to content herself with the
drawing-room sofa; it was a very uncomfortable sofa, and the blankets
kept slipping off so she did not sleep a great deal; but that did not
matter much; she had the more time to think things over. Dawn found
her sitting at the table wrapped in her blanket, writing by the light
of one of the piano candles; she glanced up as the first cold light
struggled in, and her face was very grave, it looked old, too, and
tired, with the weariness which accompanies renunciation, quite as
often as does peace or a sense of beatitude. She looked at the paper
before her, a completely worked-out table of expenditure, a sort of
statement of ways and means--the means being L50 a year. It could be
done; she knew that during the night when the plan took shape in her
mind; she had proved it to herself more than half-an-hour ago by
figures--but there was no margin. It could only be done by renouncing
that upon which she had set her heart; she could not work out the
scheme and pay the debt of honour to Rawson-Clew. The legacy had at
first seemed a heaven-sent gift for that purpose, but now, like the
blue daffodil, it seemed that it could not be used to pay the debt.
That was not to be paid by a heaven-sent gift any more than by a
devil-helped theft; slow, honest work and patient saving might pay it
in years, but nothing else it seemed. She put her elbows on the table
and propped her chin on her locked hands looking down at the
unanswerable figures, but they still told her the same hard truth.

"I might save it in time; I could do without this--and this," she told
herself. It is so easy to do without oneself when one's mind is set on
some purpose, but one has no right to expect others to do without,
too--the whole thing would be no good if the others had to; she knew
that. No, the debt could not be paid this way; she had no right to do
it; it was her own fancy, her hobby, perhaps. No one demanded that it
should be paid; law did not compel it; Rawson-Clew did not expect it;
her father considered that it no longer existed; it was to please
herself and herself alone that she would pay it, and her pleasure must
wait.

Possibly she did not reason quite all this; she only knew that she
could not do what she had set her heart on doing with the first of
Aunt Jane's money, and the renunciation cost her much, and gave her no
satisfaction at all. But the matter once decided, she put it at the
back of her mind, and by breakfast time she was her usual self; to
tell the truth, she was looking forward to a skirmish with Uncle
William, and that cheered her.

After breakfast she led Mr. Ponsonby to the drawing-room, and he came
not altogether unprepared for objections; he had half feared them last
night.

"Uncle William," she said. "I have been thinking over your plan, and I
don't think I quite like it."

"I dare say not," her uncle answered; "I can believe it; but that's
neither here nor there, as I said last night, beggars can't be
choosers."

Julia did not, as Violet had, resent this; she was the one member of
the family who was not a beggar, and she knew perfectly well she could
be a chooser. She sat down. "Perhaps I had better say just what I
mean," she said pleasantly; "I am not going to do it."

"Not going to?" Mr. Ponsonby repeated indignantly. "Don't talk
nonsense; you have got to, there's nothing else open to you; I'm not
going to keep you all, feed, clothe and house you, and pay your debts
into the bargain!"

"No," said Julia; "no, naturally not; I did not think of that."

"What did you think of, then?" her uncle demanded; he remembered that
she had the nominal disposal of her own money, and though her
objections were ridiculous, even impertinent in the family
circumstances, they might be awkward. "What do you object to? I
suppose you don't like the idea of paying debts; none of you seem to."

"No," Julia answered; "it isn't that; of course the debts must be paid
in the way you say, it is the only way."

"I am glad you think so," the banker said sarcastically; "though I may
as well tell you, young lady, that it would still be done even without
your approval. What is it you don't like, spending your money for
other people?"

Julia smiled a little. "We may as well call it that," she said; "I
don't like the boarding-house investment."

"What do you like? Seeing your parents go to the poorhouse? That's
what will happen."

"No, they can come and live with me. I have got a large cottage, a
garden, a field, and L50 a year. If we keep pigs and poultry, and grow
things in the garden we can live in the cottage on the L50 a year till
the debts are all paid off; after that, of course, we should have
enough to be pretty comfortable. We need not keep a servant there, or
regard appearances or humbug--it would be very cheap."

"And nasty," her uncle added. He was not impressed with the wisdom of
this scheme; indeed he did not seriously contemplate it as possible.
"You are talking nonsense," he said; "absurd, childish nonsense; you
don't know anything about it; you have no idea what life in a cottage
means; the drudgery of cooking and scrubbing and so on; the doing
without society and the things you are used to; as for pigs and
gardening, why, you don't know how to dig a hole or grow a cabbage!"

But he was not quite right; Julia had learnt something about drudgery
in Holland, something about growing things, at least in theory, and so
much about doing without the society to which she was used at home
that she had absolutely no desire for it left. She made as much of
this plan to Mr. Ponsonby as was possible and desirable; enough, at
all events, to convince him that she had thought out her plan in every
detail and was very bent on it.

"I suppose the utter selfishness of this idea of yours has not struck
you," he said at last. "You may think you would like this kind of
life, though you wouldn't if you tried it, but how about your mother?"

"She won't like it," Julia admitted; "but then, on the other hand,
there is father. I suppose you know he has taken to drink lately and
at all times gambled as much as he could. What do you think would
become of him in a boarding-house in some fashionable place, with
nothing to do, and any amount of opportunity?"

Mr. Ponsonby did not feel able or willing to discuss the Captain's
delinquencies with his daughter; his only answer was, "What will
become of your mother keeping pigs and poultry and living in an
isolated cottage? It would be social extinction for her."

"The boarding-house would be moral extinction for father."

Mr. Ponsonby grew impatient. "I suppose you think," he said irritably,
"that you have reduced it to this--the sacrifice of one parent or the
other. You have no business to think about such things; but if you
had, to which do you owe the most duty? Who has done the most for
you?"

"Well," Julia answered slowly, "I'm not sure I am considering duty
only; people who don't pay their debts are not always great at duty,
you know. Perhaps it is really inclination with me. Father is fonder
of me than mother is; I have never been much of a social success.
Mother did not find me such good material to work upon, so naturally
she rather dropped me for the ones who were good material. I admire
mother the more, but I am sorrier for father, because he can't take
care of himself, and has no consolation left; it serves him right, of
course, but it must be very uncomfortable all the same. Do you see?"

"No, I don't," her uncle answered shortly; "I am old-fashioned enough
to think sons and daughters ought to do their duty to their parents,
not analyse them in this way." He forgot that he had in a measure
invited this analysis, and Julia did not remind him, although no doubt
she was aware of it.

"I should like to do my duty to them both," she said; "and I believe I
will do it best by going to the cottage. Father would get to be a
great nuisance to mother at the boarding-house after a time, almost as
bad as the pigs and poultry at the cottage. Also, if we had the
boarding-house, father's moral extinction would be complete, but if we
lived at the cottage mother's social one would not; she could go and
stay with Violet and other people the worst part of the time, while we
were shortest of money. Besides all that, there are two other things;
I like the cottage best myself, and I believe it to be the best--I
know the sort of living life we should live at a boarding-house--and
then there is Johnny Gillat."

Mr. Ponsonby had no recollection of who Johnny Gillat was, and he did
not trouble to ask; Julia's other reason was the one he seized upon.
"You like it!" he said; "yes, now we have come to the truth; the
person you are considering is yourself; I knew that all along; you
need not have troubled to wrap it up in all these grand
reasons--consideration for your father, and so on!"

"Oh, but think how much better it sounded!" Julia said, with twinkling
eyes.

Mr. Ponsonby did not see the twinkle; he read Julia a lecture on
selfishness and ended up by saying, "You are utterly selfish and
ingrain lazy, that's what you are; you don't want to do a stroke of
honest work for any one."

"Dishonest work is where I shine," Julia told him. "Oh, not
scoundrelly dishonesty, company promoting, and so on," (Mr. Ponsonby
was on several boards of directors, but he was not a company promoter,
still he snorted a little) "I mean real dishonest work; with a little
practice I would make such a thief as you do not meet every day in the
week."

"I can quite believe it," her uncle retorted grimly; "lazy people
generally do take to lying and stealing and, as I say, lazy is what
you are. Sooner than work for your living, you go and pig in a
cottage, because you think that way you can do nothing all day; lead
an idle life."

"Yes," Julia agreed sweetly; "I think that must be my reason--a nice
comfortable idle life with the pigs and poultry, and garden, and
cooking, and scrubbing, and two incompetent old men. I really think
you must be right."

Here it must be recorded, Mr. Ponsonby very nearly lost his temper,
and not without justification. Was he not giving time and
consideration and (probably) money to help this hopeless family on to
its legs again? And was it not more than mortal middle-aged man could
bear, not only to be opposed by the only member with any means, but
also to be made sly fun of by her? He gave Julia his opinion very
sharply, and no doubt she deserved it. But the worst of it was that
did not prevent her from exercising the right of the person who is not
a beggar to choose.

The Polkington family, who were soon afterwards called in to assist
at the discussion, sided with Mr. Ponsonby. Violet and Mrs. Polkington
with great decision, the Captain more weakly. Eventually he was won
over to Julia because her scheme seemed to hold a place for him where
he could flatter himself he was wanted. The argument went on and
angrily, on the part of some present; Julia was most amiable; but, as
the Van Heigens had found, she was an extremely awkward antagonist,
the more amiable, the more awkward, even in a weak position, as with
them, and in a strong one, as now, she was a great deal worse. Mr.
Ponsonby lost the train he meant to catch back to London; he did not
do it only for the benefit of his sister, but also because Julia had
given battle and he was not going to retire from the field. Violet and
Mr. Frazer deliberately postponed the hour of their departure; Violet
was determined not to leave things in this condition; Julia's plan,
she considered a disgrace to the whole family. Mr. Frazer was asked
not to come to the family council; Violet explained to him that they
were having trouble with Julia; she would tell him all about it
afterwards, but it distressed her mother so much that it would perhaps
be kinder if he was not there at the time. Mr. Frazer quite agreed; he
shared some of his wife's sentiments about appearances; also he had no
wish to be distressed either in mind or tastes.

Violet did tell him about it afterwards; a curtailed and selected
version, but one eminently suitable to the purpose. On hearing it he
was justly angry with Julia's heartless selfishness in keeping her
legacy to herself. He was also shocked at her determination to go and
live a farm labourer's life in a farm labourer's cottage. He was truly
sorry for Mrs. Polkington, between whom and himself there existed a
mutual affection and admiration. He said it was bitterly hard that her
one remaining daughter should treat her thus; that it was
barbarous, impossible, that a woman of her age, tastes, refinement and
gifts should be compelled to lead such a life as was proposed. In fact
he could not and would not permit it; he hoped that she would make her
home at his rectory; nay, he insisted upon it; both Violet and himself
would not take a refusal; she must and should come to them.

[Illustration: "A wonderful woman"]

Julia smiled her approval; when things were worked up to this end; she
would have liked to clap her applause, it was so well done. Mrs.
Polkington and Violet were so admirable, they were already almost
convinced of all they said; in two days they would believe it quite as
much as Mr. Ponsonby did now. She did not in the least mind having to
appear as the ungrateful daughter; it fitted in so beautifully with
Violet's arrangement. And really the arrangement was very good; the
utilitarian feelings of the family did not suffer at wrenches and
splits as did more tender ones; no one would object much to an
advantageous division. And most advantageous it certainly was; the
cottage household would go better without Mrs. Polkington and she
would be far happier at the rectory. She would not make any trouble
there; rather, she would give her son-in-law cause to be glad of her
coming; there would be scope for her there, and she would possibly
develop better than she had ever had a chance of doing before.

So everything was decided. The house in East Street was to be given
up, and most of its contents sold; as Julia's cottage was furnished
already with Aunt Jane's things, she need only take a few extras from
the home. The debts were to be paid as far as possible now, and the
small income was to be divided; part was to go as pin money to Mrs.
Polkington, the main part of the remainder to go to the debts, and a
very small modicum to come with the Captain to the cottage.

Julia was quite satisfied, and let it be apparent. This, with her
obvious cheerfulness, rather incensed Violet, who regarded the sale of
their effects as rather a disgrace, and Julia's plans for the future,
as a great one.

"You ought to be ashamed of yourself," she told her younger sister,
just before she left Marbridge. "I am positively ashamed to think you
belong to us. It will be nice to meet Norfolk people at the Palace or
somewhere, who have seen you tending your pigs and doing your washing.
It is such an unusual name; I can quite fancy some one being
introduced to mother and thinking it odd that her name should be the
same as some dirty cottage people."

"Well," Julia suggested, "why not change it? Such a trifle as a name
surely need not stand in our way; we have got over worse things than
that. Mother can be something else, or I can; mother had better do it;
father will forget who he is if I make a change."

"Don't be absurd," Violet said; "I only wish you could change it
though; I never want to write to you as Julia Polkington in case some
servant were to notice the address; one never knows how these things
come out."

"Don't write as that," her sister told her; "address me as 'Julia
Snooks' or anything else you like; I am not particular."

Violet did not take this as a serious suggestion; nevertheless, Julia
told Mr. Frazer on the platform at Marbridge that she and Violet had
been having a christening, and that she was now Julia Snooks. Mr.
Ponsonby said it was ridiculous, to which Julia replied--

"That is what I am myself."

Mrs. Polkington said it was foolish too, but she did not say so
vehemently; she felt that in the Frazer circle, especially at the
Palace where she would meet people from everywhere, she might possibly
come across some one who had heard of Julia. It was unlikely; still it
is a small world, and Polkington an uncommon name. "Why not choose
something simple, like 'Gray'?" she suggested.

"Because," Julia answered, "that is what I am not."

* * * * *

But fate had one exceedingly bitter pill for Mrs. Polkington. On the
day after Cherie and her husband sailed for South Africa, it was known
in Marbridge that the news of Mr. Harding's engagement was false. The
girl gossip had coupled with him was engaged, it is true, and to a Mr.
Harding, but to another and entirely different bearer of the name. The
real, eligible Mr. Harding called at East Street to explain to Mrs.
Polkington how the mistake had arisen, to tell her that he himself had
been away in the north for some weeks and so had heard nothing of it.
Also to hear--and he had heard nothing of that either--that Cherie was
married and gone.

The news of Mr. Harding's freedom and his call, and what she fancied
it might have implied, did not reach Cherie till after her arrival in
Africa. It did not tend to soothe the first weeks of married life, nor
to make easier the rigorous, but no doubt wholesome, breaking-in
process to which her husband wisely subjected her.




CHAPTER XV

THE GOOD COMRADE


Rawson-Clew was very busy that autumn, so busy that the events which
had taken place in Holland were rather blotted out of his mind; he had
not exactly forgotten them, only among the press of other things he
did not often think about them and they soon came to take their proper
unimportant place among his recollections. Julia he thought of
occasionally, but less and less in connection with the foolish
holiday, more in connection with some chance saying or doing. Things
recalled her, a passage in a book, a sentiment she would have shared,
an opinion she would have combated. Or perhaps it was that some one he
met set him thinking of her shrewd swift judgments; some scene in
which he played a part that made him imagine her an amused spectator
of its unconscious absurdity. He had turned her thyme flowers out of
his pocket; he had no sentiment about them or her, but he did not
forget her; their acquaintance had, to a certain extent, been a thing
of mind, and in mind it seemed he occasionally came in contact with
her still. Also there is no doubt she must have been one of those
virile people who take hold, for though one could sometimes overlook
her presence, in absence one did not forget.

Of herself and her doings he never heard; at first he had half thought
he might have some communication from Mr. Gillat, but as the autumn
went on and he heard nothing, he came to the conclusion that she
really must have arranged something satisfactorily and there was an
end to the whole affair. He settled down to his own concerns and
became very thoroughly absorbed in them, to the exclusion of nearly
everything else. For women he never had much taste, and now, being
busy and preoccupied, he got into the way of scanning them more
critically than ever when he did happen to come across them. Not
comparing them with any ideal standard, but just finding them
uninteresting, whether they were the cultivated, well-bred girls of
the country, or the smart young matrons and wide-awake maidens of the
town.

That autumn the young Rawson-Clew, Captain Polkington's acquaintance,
came into a fortune and took a wife. The latter was, perhaps, on the
whole, a wise proceeding, for, though the wife in question would
undoubtedly help him in the rapid and inevitable spending of the
fortune, she was likely also to enable him to get more for his money
than if he were spending alone. Rawson-Clew was not introduced to this
lady till the winter, then, one evening, he met her at a friend's "at
home."

She was very pretty, small and fair and plump, with childish blue
eyes, and an anything but childish mind behind them. She had dainty
little feet, as well shaped as any he had ever seen, and she was
perfectly dressed, her gown a diaphanous creation of melting colours
and floating softness, which suggested more than it revealed of her
person, like a nymph's drapery. She was the centre of attraction and
talked and laughed a great deal, the latter in little tinkles like a
child of five, the former from the top of her throat with the faintest
lisp and in the strange jargon that was the slang of the moment. She
knew no more of Florentine art or Wagner or Egyptology than Julia
did, and cared even less. She set out to be intelligently ignorant--to
be anything else was called "middle-class" in her set--and she
achieved her end, although she could do some things extremely
well--play bridge, gamble in stocks and shares and anything else, and
arrange lights and colours with the skill of an artist when a suitable
setting for her pretty self was concerned. She had all the charms of
womanly weakness without any old-fashioned and grandmotherly
narrowness; she was quite free and emancipated in mind and manners, no
man had to modify his language for her; she preferred a double meaning
to a single one, and a _risque_ story to a plain one. She had an
excellent taste in dinners, a critical one in liqueurs, and a catholic
one in men.

She was most gracious to Rawson-Clew when he was introduced, breaking
up her court and dismissing her admirers solely to accommodate him.
The instant she saw him, before she heard who he was, she picked him
out as the game best worthy of her prowess, and she lost no time in
addressing herself to the chase with the skill and determination of a
Diana--though that perhaps is hardly a good comparison, enthusiasm for
the chase being about the only quality she shared with the maiden
huntress.

Rawson-Clew did not show signs of succumbing at once to her charms;
she hardly expected that he would, for she gave him credit for knowing
his own value and was not displeased thereby; where is the pleasure of
sport if the quarry be captured at the outset? But if he did not
succumb he did all that was otherwise expected of him, standing in
attendance on her and sitting by her when he was invited to the settee
she had chosen in a quiet corner. So well, indeed, did he comport
himself that by the time they parted she felt fairly satisfied with
her progress.

Perhaps she would have been less satisfied if she had heard something
he said soon after. A man he knew left the house at the same time he
did and persuaded him to come to the club. On the way the little lady
came in for some discussion; the other man chiefly gave his opinion
though he once asked Rawson-Clew what he thought of his young cousin's
wife.

"As a wife?" he answered; "I should not think of her. If I wanted, as
I certainly do not, the privilege of paying that kind of woman's
bills, I should not bother to marry her."

The other man laughed, but if he quarrelled with anything in the
answer, it appeared to be the taste rather than the judgment. He
maintained that the lady was charming; Rawson-Clew merely said--

"Think so?" and did not even trouble to defend his opinion.

At the club he found a box that had come for him by parcels post. A
wooden one with the address printed on a card and nailed to the lid,
which was screwed down. It did not look particularly interesting; he
told one of the club servants to unscrew it for him. When he came to
examine the contents he found, first a lot of damp packing, and then a
wide-necked stoppered bottle, two-thirds full of white powder. It bore
a label printed neatly like the address--

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