The Weavers, Complete - Gilbert Parker
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He was about to reply, when there appeared in the path before them Luke
Claridge. His back was upon them, but he heard their footsteps and swung
round. As though turned to stone, he waited for them. As they approached,
his lips, dry and pale, essayed to speak, but no sound came. A fire was
in his eyes which boded no good. Amazement, horror, deadly anger, were
all there, but, after a moment, the will behind the tumult commanded it,
the wild light died away, and he stood calm and still awaiting them.
Faith was as pale as when she had met Eglington. As she came nearer, Luke
Claridge said, in a low voice:
"How do I find thee in this company, Faith?" There was reproach
unutterable in his voice, in his face. He seemed humiliated and shamed,
though all the while a violent spirit in him was struggling for the
mastery.
"As I came this way to visit my sister's grave I met my lord by the mill.
He spoke to me, and, as I wished a favour of him, I walked with him
thither--but a little way. I was going to visit my sister's grave."
"Thy sister's grave!" The fire flamed up again, but the masterful will
chilled it down, and he answered: "What secret business can thee have
with any of that name which I have cast out of knowledge or notice?"
Ignorant as he was of the old man's cause for quarrel or dislike,
Eglington felt himself aggrieved, and, therefore, with an advantage.
"You had differences with my father, sir," he said. "I do not know what
they were, but they lasted his lifetime, and all my life you have treated
me with aversion. I am not a pestilence. I have never wronged you. I have
lived your peaceful neighbour under great provocation, for your treatment
would have done me harm if my place were less secure. I think I have
cause for complaint."
"I have never acted in haste concerning thee, or those who went before
thee. What business had thee with him, Faith?" he asked again. His voice
was dry and hard.
Her impulse was to tell the truth, and so for ever have her conscience
clear, for there would never be any more need for secrecy. The wheel of
understanding between Eglington and herself had come full circle, and
there was an end. But to tell the truth would be to wound her father, to
vex him against Eglington even as he had never yet been vexed. Besides,
it was hard, while Eglington was there, to tell what, after all, was the
sole affair of her own life. In one literal sense, Eglington was not
guilty of deceit. Never in so many words had he said to her: "I love
you;" never had he made any promise to her or exacted one; he had done no
more than lure her to feel one thing, and then to call it another thing.
Also there was no direct and vital injury, for she had never loved him;
though how far she had travelled towards that land of light and trial she
could never now declare. These thoughts flashed through her mind as she
stood looking at her father. Her tongue seemed imprisoned, yet her soft
and candid eyes conquered the austerity in the old man's gaze.
Eglington spoke for her.
"Permit me to answer, neighbour," he said. "I wished to speak with your
daughter, because I am to be married soon, and my wife will, at
intervals, come here to live. I wished that she should not be shunned by
you and yours as I have been. She would not understand, as I do not.
Yours is a constant call to war, while all your religion is an appeal for
peace. I wished to ask your daughter to influence you to make it possible
for me and mine to live in friendship among you. My wife will have some
claims upon you. Her mother was an American, of a Quaker family from
Derbyshire. She has done nothing to merit your aversion."
Faith listened astonished and baffled. Nothing of this had he said to
her. Had he meant to say it to her? Had it been in his mind? Or was it
only a swift adaptation to circumstances, an adroit means of working upon
the sympathies of her father, who, she could see, was in a quandary?
Eglington had indeed touched the old man as he had not been touched in
thirty years and more by one of his name. For a moment the insinuating
quality of the appeal submerged the fixed idea in a mind to which the
name of Eglington was anathema.
Eglington saw his advantage. He had felt his way carefully, and he
pursued it quickly. "For the rest, your daughter asked what I was ready
to offer--such help as, in my new official position, I can give to
Claridge Pasha in Egypt. As a neighbour, as Minister in the Government, I
will do what I can to aid him."
Silent and embarrassed, the old man tried to find his way. Presently he
said tentatively: "David Claridge has a title to the esteem of all
civilised people." Eglington was quick with his reply. "If he succeeds,
his title will become a concrete fact. There is no honour the Crown would
not confer for such remarkable service."
The other's face darkened. "I did not speak, I did not think, of handles
to his name. I find no good in them, but only means for deceiving and
deluding the world. Such honours as might make him baronet, or duke,
would add not a cubit to his stature. If he had such a thing by
right"--his voice hardened, his eyes grew angry once again--"I would wish
it sunk into the sea."
"You are hard on us, sir, who did not give ourselves our titles, but took
them with our birth as a matter of course. There was nothing inspiring in
them. We became at once distinguished and respectable by patent."
He laughed good-humouredly. Then suddenly he changed, and his eyes took
on a far-off look which Faith had seen so often in the eyes of David, but
in David's more intense and meaning, and so different. With what deftness
and diplomacy had he worked upon her father! He had crossed a stream
which seemed impassable by adroit, insincere diplomacy.
She saw that it was time to go, while yet Eglington's disparagement of
rank and aristocracy was ringing in the old man's ears; though she knew
there was nothing in Eglington's equipment he valued more than his title
and the place it gave him. Grateful, however, for his successful
intervention, Faith now held out her hand.
"I must take my father away, or it will be sunset before we reach the
Meeting-house," she said. "Goodbye-friend," she added gently.
For an instant Luke Claridge stared at her, scarce comprehending that his
movements were being directed by any one save himself. Truth was, Faith
had come to her cross-roads in life. For the first time in her memory she
had seen her father speak to an Eglington without harshness; and, as he
weakened for a moment, she moved to take command of that weakness, though
she meant it to seem like leading. While loving her and David profoundly,
her father had ever been quietly imperious. If she could but gain
ascendency even in a little, it might lead to a more open book of life
for them both.
Eglington held out his hand to the old man. "I have kept you too long,
sir. Good-bye--if you will."
The offered hand was not taken, but Faith slid hers into the old man's
palm, and pressed it, and he said quietly to Eglington:
"Good evening, friend."
"And when I bring my wife, sir?" Eglington added, with a smile.
"When thee brings the lady, there will be occasion to consider--there
will be occasion then."
Eglington raised his hat, and turned back upon the path he and Faith had
travelled.
The old man stood watching him until he was out of view. Then he seemed
more himself. Still holding Faith's hand, he walked with her on the
gorse-covered hill towards the graveyard.
"Was it his heart spoke or his tongue--is there any truth in him?" he
asked at last.
Faith pressed his hand. "If he help Davy, father--"
"If he help Davy; ay, if he help Davy! Nay, I cannot go to the graveyard,
Faith. Take me home," he said with emotion.
His hand remained in hers. She had conquered. She was set upon a new path
of influence. Her hand was upon the door of his heart.
"Thee is good to me, Faith," he said, as they entered the door of the Red
Mansion.
She glanced over towards the Cloistered House. Smoke was coming from the
little chimney of the laboratory.
CHAPTER XVII
THE WOMAN OF THE CROSS-ROADS
The night came down slowly. There was no moon, the stars were few, but a
mellow warmth was in the air. At the window of her little sitting-room
up-stairs Faith sat looking out into the stillness. Beneath was the
garden with its profusion of flowers and fruit; away to the left was the
common; and beyond-far beyond--was a glow in the sky, a suffused light,
of a delicate orange, merging away into a grey-blueness, deepening into a
darker blue; and then a purple depth, palpable and heavy with a
comforting silence.
There was something alluring and suggestive in the soft, smothered
radiance. It had all the glamour of some distant place of pleasure and
quiet joy, of happiness and ethereal being. It was, in fact, the far-off
mirror of the flaming furnace of the great Heddington factories. The
light of the sky above was a soft radiance, as of a happy Arcadian land;
the fire of the toil beneath was the output of human striving, an
intricate interweaving of vital forces which, like some Titanic machine,
wrought out in pain--a vast destiny.
As Faith looked, she thought of the thousands beneath struggling and
striving, none with all desires satisfied, some in an agony of want and
penury, all straining for the elusive Enough; like Sisyphus ever rolling
the rock of labour up a hill too steep for them.
Her mind flew to the man Kimber and his task of organising labour for its
own advance. What a life-work for a man! Here might David have spent his
days, here among his own countrymen, instead of in that far-off land
where all the forces of centuries were fighting against him. Here the
forces would have been fighting for him; the trend was towards the
elevation of the standards of living and the wider rights of labour, to
the amelioration of hard conditions of life among the poor. David's mind,
with its equity, its balance, and its fire--what might it not have
accomplished in shepherding such a cause, guiding its activity?
The gate of the garden clicked. Kate Heaver had arrived. Faith got to her
feet and left the room.
A few minutes later the woman of the cross-roads was seated opposite
Faith at the window. She had changed greatly since the day David had sent
her on her way to London and into the unknown. Then there had been
recklessness, something of coarseness, in the fine face. Now it was
strong and quiet, marked by purpose and self-reliance.
Ignorance had been her only peril in the past, as it had been the cause
of her unhappy connection with Jasper Kimber. The atmosphere in which she
was raised had been unmoral; it had not been consciously immoral. Her
temper and her indignation against her man for drinking had been the
means of driving them apart. He would have married her in those days, if
she had given the word, for her will was stronger than his own; but she
had broken from him in an agony of rage and regret and despised love.
She was now, again, as she had been in those first days before she went
with Jasper Kimber; when she was the rose-red angel of the quarters; when
children were lured by the touch of her large, shapely hands; when she
had been counted a great nurse among her neighbours. The old simple
untutored sympathy was in her face.
They sat for a long time in silence, and at length Faith said: "Thee is
happy now with her who is to marry Lord Eglington?"
Kate nodded, smiling. "Who could help but be happy with her! Yet a
temper, too--so quick, and then all over in a second. Ah, she is one
that'd break her heart if she was treated bad; but I'd be sorry for him
that did it. For the like of her goes mad with hurting, and the mad cut
with a big scythe."
"Has thee seen Lord Eglington?"
"Once before I left these parts and often in London." Her voice was
constrained; she seemed not to wish to speak of him.
"Is it true that Jasper Kimber is to stand against him for Parliament?"
"I do not know. They say my lord has to do with foreign lands now. If he
helps Mr. Claridge there, then it would be a foolish thing for Jasper to
fight him; and so I've told him. You've got to stand by those that stand
by you. Lord Eglington has his own way of doing things. There's not a
servant in my lady's house that he hasn't made his friend. He's one
that's bound to have his will. I heard my lady say he talks better than
any one in England, and there's none she doesn't know from duchesses
down."
"She is beautiful?" asked Faith, with hesitation.
"Taller than you, but not so beautiful."
Faith sighed, and was silent for a moment, then she laid a hand upon the
other's shoulder. "Thee has never said what happened when thee first got
to London. Does thee care to say?"
"It seems so long ago," was the reply. . . . "No need to tell of the
journey to London. When I got there it frightened me at first. My head
went round. But somehow it came to me what I should do. I asked my way to
a hospital. I'd helped a many that was hurt at Heddington and
thereabouts, and doctors said I was as good as them that was trained. I
found a hospital at last, and asked for work, but they laughed at me--it
was the porter at the door. I was not to be put down, and asked to see
some one that had rights to say yes or no. So he opened the door and told
me to go. I said he was no man to treat a woman so, and I would not go.
Then a fine white-haired gentleman came forward. He had heard all we had
said, standing in a little room at one side. He spoke a kind word or two,
and asked me to go into the little room. Before I had time to think, he
came to me with the matron, and left me with her. I told her the whole
truth, and she looked at first as if she'd turn me out. But the end of it
was I stayed there for the night, and in the morning the old gentleman
came again, and with him his lady, as kind and sharp of tongue as
himself, and as big as three. Some things she said made my tongue ache to
speak back to her; but I choked it down. I went to her to be a sort of
nurse and maid. She taught me how to do a hundred things, and by-and-by I
couldn't be too thankful she had taken me in. I was with her till she
died. Then, six months ago I went to Miss Maryon, who knew about me long
before from her that died. With her I've been ever since--and so that's
all."
"Surely God has been kind to thee."
"I'd have gone down--down--down, if it hadn't been for Mr. Claridge at
the cross-roads."
"Does thee think I shall like her that will live yonder?" She nodded
towards the Cloistered House. "There's none but likes her. She will want
a friend, I'm thinking. She'll be lonely by-and-by. Surely, she will be
lonely."
Faith looked at her closely, and at last leaned over, and again laid a
soft hand on her shoulder. "Thee thinks that--why?"
"He cares only what matters to himself. She will be naught to him but one
that belongs. He'll never try to do her good. Doing good to any but
himself never comes to his mind."
"How does thee know him, to speak so surely?"
"When, at the first, he gave me a letter for her one day, and slipped a
sovereign into my hand, and nodded, and smiled at me, I knew him right
enough. He never could be true to aught."
"Did thee keep the sovereign?" Faith asked anxiously.
"Ay, that I did. If he was for giving his money away, I'd take it fast
enough. The gold gave father boots for a year. Why should I mind?"
Faith's face suffused. How low was Eglington's estimate of humanity!
In the silence that followed the door of her room opened, and her father
entered. He held in one hand a paper, in the other a candle. His face was
passive, but his eyes were burning.
"David--David is coming," he cried, in a voice that rang. "Does thee
hear, Faith? Davy is coming home!" A woman laughed exultantly. It was not
Faith. But still two years passed before David came.
CHAPTER XVIII
TIME, THE IDOL-BREAKER
Lord Windlehurst looked meditatively round the crowded and brilliant
salon. His host, the Foreign Minister, had gathered in the vast golden
chamber the most notable people of a most notable season, and in as
critical a period of the world's politics as had been known for a quarter
of a century. After a moment's survey, the ex-Prime-Minister turned to
answer the frank and caustic words addressed to him by the Duchess of
Snowdon concerning the Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs. Presently he
said:
"But there is method in his haste, dear lady. He is good at his dangerous
game. He plays high, he plunges; but, somehow, he makes it do. I've been
in Parliament a generation or so, and I've never known an amateur more
daring and skilful. I should have given him office had I remained in
power. Look at him, and tell me if he wouldn't have been worth the
backing."
As Lord Windlehurst uttered the last word with an arid smile, he looked
quizzically at the central figure of a group of people gaily talking.
The Duchess impatiently tapped her knee with a fan. "Be thankful you
haven't got him on your conscience," she rejoined. "I call Eglington
unscrupulous and unreliable. He has but one god--getting on; and he has
got on, with a vengeance. Whenever I look at that dear thing he's
married, I feel there's no trusting Providence, who seems to make the
deserving a footstool for the undeserving. I've known Hylda since she was
ten, and I've known him since the minute he came into the world, and I've
got the measure of both. She is the finest essence the middle class can
distil, and he, oh, he's paraffin-vin ordinaire, if you like it better, a
selfish, calculating adventurer!"
Lord Windlehurst chuckled mordantly. "Adventurer! That's what they called
me--with more reason. I spotted him as soon as he spoke in the House.
There was devilry in him, and unscrupulousness, as you say; but, I
confess, I thought it would give way to the more profitable habit of
integrity, and that some cause would seize him, make him sincere and
mistaken, and give him a few falls. But in that he was more original than
I thought. He is superior to convictions. You don't think he married
yonder Queen of Hearts from conviction, do you?"
He nodded towards a corner where Hylda, under a great palm, and backed by
a bank of flowers, stood surrounded by a group of people palpably amused
and interested; for she had a reputation for wit--a wit that never hurt,
and irony that was only whimsical.
"No, there you are wrong," the Duchess answered. "He married from
conviction, if ever a man did. Look at her beauty, look at her fortune,
listen to her tongue. Don't you think conviction was easy?"
Lord Windlehurst looked at Hylda approvingly. She has the real
gift--little information, but much knowledge, the primary gift of public
life. "Information is full of traps; knowledge avoids them, it reads men;
and politics is men--and foreign affairs, perhaps! She is remarkable.
I've made some hay in the political world, not so much as the babblers
think, but I hadn't her ability at twenty-five."
"Why didn't she see through Eglington?"
"My dear Betty, he didn't give her time. He carried her off her feet. You
know how he can talk."
"That's the trouble. She was clever, and liked a clever man, and he--!"
"Quite so. He'd disprove his own honest parentage, if it would help him
on--as you say."
"I didn't say it. Now don't repeat that as from me. I'm not clever enough
to think of such things. But that Eglington lot--I knew his father and
his grandfather. Old Broadbrim they called his grandfather after he
turned Quaker, and he didn't do that till he had had his fling, so my
father used to say. And Old Broadbrim's father was called I-want-to-know.
He was always poking his nose into things, and playing at being a
chemist-like this one and the one before. They all fly off. This one's
father used to disappear for two or three years at a time. This one will
fly off, too. You'll see!
"He is too keen on Number One for that, I fancy. He calculates like a
mathematician. As cool as a cracksman of fame and fancy."
The Duchess dropped the fan in her lap. "My dear, I've said nothing as
bad as that about him. And there he is at the Foreign Office!"
"Yet, what has he done, Betty, after all? He has never cheated at cards,
or forged a cheque, or run away with his neighbour's wife."
"There's no credit in not doing what you don't want to do. There's no
virtue in not falling, when you're not tempted. Neighbour's wife! He
hasn't enough feeling to face it. Oh no, he'll not break the heart of his
neighbour's wife. That's melodrama, and he's a cold-blooded artist. He
will torture that sweet child over there until she poisons him, or runs
away."
"Isn't he too clever for that? She has a million!"
"He'll not realise it till it's all over. He's too selfish to see--how I
hate him!"
Lord Windlehurst smiled indulgently at her. "Ah, you never hated any
one--not even the Duke."
"I will not have you take away my character. Of course I've hated, or I
wouldn't be worth a button. I'm not the silly thing you've always thought
me."
His face became gentler. "I've always thought you one of the wisest women
of this world--adventurous, but wise. If it weren't too late, if my day
weren't over, I'd ask the one great favour, Betty, and--"
She tapped his arm sharply with her fan. "What a humbug you are--the
Great Pretender! But tell me, am I not right about Eglington?"
Windlehurst became grave. "Yes, you are right--but I admire him, too. He
is determined to test himself to the full. His ambition is boundless and
ruthless, but his mind has a scientific turn--the obligation of energy to
apply itself, of intelligence to engage itself to the farthest limit. But
service to humanity--"
"Service to humanity!" she sniffed.
"Of course he would think it 'flap-doodle'--except in a speech; but I
repeat, I admire him. Think of it all. He was a poor Irish peer, with no
wide circle of acquaintance, come of a family none too popular. He
strikes out a course for himself--a course which had its dangers, because
it was original. He determines to become celebrated--by becoming
notorious first. He uses his title as a weapon for advancement as though
he were a butter merchant. He plans carefully and adroitly. He writes a
book of travel. It is impudent, and it traverses the observations of
authorities, and the scientific geographers prance with rage. That was
what he wished. He writes a novel. It sets London laughing at me, his
political chief. He knew me well enough to be sure I would not resent it.
He would have lampooned his grandmother, if he was sure she would not, or
could not, hurt him. Then he becomes more audacious. He publishes a
monograph on the painters of Spain, artificial, confident, rhetorical,
acute: as fascinating as a hide-and-seek drawing-room play--he is so
cleverly escaping from his ignorance and indiscretions all the while.
Connoisseurs laugh, students of art shriek a little, and Ruskin writes a
scathing letter, which was what he had played for. He had got something
for nothing cheaply. The few who knew and despised him did not matter,
for they were able and learned and obscure, and, in the world where he
moves, most people are superficial, mediocre, and 'tuppence coloured.' It
was all very brilliant. He pursued his notoriety, and got it."
"Industrious Eglington!"
"But, yes, he is industrious. It is all business. It was an enormous
risk, rebelling against his party, and leaving me, and going over; but
his temerity justified itself, and it didn't matter to him that people
said he went over to get office as we were going out. He got the
office-and people forget so soon. Then, what does he do--"
"He brings out another book, and marries a wife, and abuses his old
friends--and you."
"Abuse? With his tongue in his cheek, hoping that I should reply.
Dev'lishly ingenious! But on that book of Electricity and Disease he
scored. In most other things he's a barber-shop philosopher, but in
science he has got a flare, a real talent. So he moves modestly in this
thing, for which he had a fine natural gift and more knowledge than he
ever had before in any department, whose boundaries his impertinent and
ignorant mind had invaded. That book gave him a place. It wasn't full of
new things, but it crystallised the discoveries, suggestions, and
expectations of others; and, meanwhile, he had got a name at no cost. He
is so various. Look at it dispassionately, and you will see much to
admire in his skill. He pleases, he amuses, he startles, he baffles, he
mystifies."
The Duchess made an impatient exclamation. "The silly newspapers call him
a 'remarkable man, a personality.' Now, believe me, Windlehurst, he will
overreach himself one of these days, and he'll come down like a stick."
"There you are on solid ground. He thinks that Fate is with him, and
that, in taking risks, he is infallible. But the best system breaks at
political roulette sooner or later. You have got to work for something
outside yourself, something that is bigger than the game, or the end is
sickening."