Chapter Twenty-one

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FROM the time of their coming to London it had required no effort on their part for the Belchambers to be very little together, but after the ball at Sunborough House, Sainty was aware that they avoided each other. On the rare occasions when they met, he was conscious in his wife's manner of a more thinly veiled contempt, while on his side he felt a shyness with her which was the beginning of dislike.

There was something almost frightening to him in the absolute quality of her egotism. In the scene of which he had been a horrified witness between her and his mother, Lady Charmington had by no means displayed a conciliatory courtesy, but if she had been rude she had at least lost her temper in a thoroughly human manner---she had cared. Had Cissy shown heat in return, he could easily have understood it. What revolted him in her attitude was the complete indifference as to what her mother-in-law thought of her, or whether they were on good terms or ill. The way in which, when she wanted nothing more of them, people simply ceased to exist for her, seemed to him monstrous. She had summarily declined to make any overtures towards peace, alleging, not without justice, that she was the injured party. "Lady Charmington had insulted and abused her in her own house, and she had taken it with the meekness of a lamb. She really could not see what there was for her to apologise about; she was quite ready to accept an apology if her mother-in-law wished to make one"; but that lady, oddly enough, showed no signs of any such desire. She had departed next day without so much as seeing Cissy again, merely mentioning to her son before she left that he would probably suffer the curse of childlessness, as a punishment for his wife's behaviour and his own inability to guide and chasten her.

So the young couple drifted more and more apart, Sainty realising with a terrified fatalism the extent to which this creature, at once so hard and so capricious, who bore his name and spent his money, yet had never been his wife and had become almost a stranger to him, had it in her power to injure him irretrievably.

After the duchess's ball he received no more anonymous letters, which confirmed him in his theory of their authorship. Miss Winston, having played her trump card in the disclosure she thought she had made to him, evidently judged it useless to continue the letters which were meant to lead up to it. One day, however, the post brought him an envelope which, at first sight, he made sure was the beginning of a new series. He was on the point of destroying it, unopened, when he was aware of his own coat-of-arms and crest gorgeously emblazoned on the back, and a closer inspection proved that the illiterateness of the handwriting was not feigned but perfectly genuine. It was from Lady Arthur, and contained the unwelcome news that his brother had been ill, more seriously than she had at first imagined, and a request that he would come and see him. "He won't make the sign," she wrote, "and I expect he'd be very angry with me if he knew I was writing, but all the same I know it would be a comfort to him to see you. He's worrying about money matters. You see, being so ill has made him think if he was to die what would become of me and the children." It was put rather crudely, but Sainty admitted that it was a legitimate cause for solicitude, and hailed this proof that Arthur was taking thought for others. Even if it were the others who were taking thought for themselves, a poor woman could not be blamed for wishing to secure the future of her helpless offspring. He decided that he must go down and see his brother. He was sorry Arthur had been so ill; he never remembered him ill in his life, since the measles and chicken-pox of early childhood.

Sainty did not judge it necessary to say anything to Cissy about his expedition; it required no diplomacy on his part to conceal any of his movements; if he should be absent for a  week, she would neither know nor care, and he found by consultation of Bradshaw that he could go and return in the long summer day. It was a relief to him that he need not spend a night in the house of kinsfolk whom he did not receive in his own. The situation was awkward and unpleasant, and when he thought of all that Arthur's marriage had made him do and suffer, it must be confessed that he approached his brother's home and wife with invincible repugnance.

The Chamberses had taken up their abode (of course in a hunting country) in an old vicarage from which a victim of shrunken tithes had been glad to move into a smaller house. Arthur had added new and magnificent stables that had cost Sainty a pretty penny before they were completed. The house itself might have been transplanted bodily from the heart of Belgravia. It was of such commonplace and uncharacteristic architecture that even the process known to Lady Arthur as "Smartenin' the old place up a bit" had failed materially to disfigure it. It was approached through all the dignity of a lodge gate and "carriage sweep," which swept round a mound of damp laurels opposite the front door, and deposited Sainty at a small Ionic portico of stucco pillars. Having confided his name and business to a dingy man in a shiny dress-coat who opened the door to him, Belchamber was told "'is lordship was expecting of 'im, and would 'is lordship please to walk this way," and followed the butler upstairs to Arthur's room. He smiled to see how exactly the interior of the house corresponded with his anticipations: everything was modern, ugly, expensive, and already shabby. A great litter of caps, gloves, sticks, and hunting-crops encumbered the hall, together with a female garden-hat ornamented with huge red bows and faded muslin poppies. A strong smell of cooking pervaded the staircase, and from some of the many open doors came the sound of women's voices in dispute, and high above all else the shrill wailing of a baby.

It was with a conflict of feelings that Sainty found himself once more face to face with Arthur, whom he had not seen since his fruitless attempt to detach him from the woman who was now his wife. They had parted as boys, they met again as married men, and with no particularly happy experiences behind them. Sainty noted with pained surprise how much of his brother's good looks had been what the French call "the devil's beauty." That boyish freshness was gone for ever, and the face had gained nothing of manly dignity in its place.

The young man was sitting propped with pillows in a big easy-chair, arrayed in a gorgeous silk dressing-gown. His recent illness had given him a pinched, bluish-white look about the nose, but the colour had set and hardened on the cheek bones, and the eyes had a tired, shifty look. The beautiful curls were already worn a little thin at the temples, and an absurd little fair moustache seemed to be ineffectually trying with its waxed points to conceal the two lines that ill-temper had traced beside the nostrils.

"Very good of you to come," he said, as he held out his hand.

"I'm so sorry to hear you've been ill. What was it?" Sainty asked, as he sat down beside him, struggling with a lump that would rise in his throat.

"I fancy I've been pretty bad," Arthur answered. "Some superior form of mulligrubs. I don't believe the damn fool of a doctor knows quite what was the matter. I think he was frightened himself. He gets into corners with Topsy and whispers, till I want to break his head. I've pulled through all right, but, of course, another time I mightn't, you know, and that's what I wanted to see you about."

There was no suggestion that he wanted to see him for any other reason. They met after two years of absence and estrangement, and after what seemed a very fair chance that they might never meet again. The elder brother was husky with emotion, the younger as unmoved by any thought of their common past as though it were his solicitor whom he had summoned to the discussion of a matter of business.

His coldness reacted on Sainty, and helped him to steady his voice as he answered, "Your wife intimated in her letter that you were troubled about money matters."

"That's it. You see, as long as I live I've got this cursed pittance. A fellow can't live like a gentleman on it, but at least we don't starve. But as the missus pointed out to me, if I was to hop the twig, there'd be just nothing for her and the kids; so I made her write and tell you I was ill; I thought I owed it to her. She grumbles a good deal, and she's a damn bad manager, and we have our rows, but she's not a bad sort of an old girl. Last winter she went without a pony for her shay, so as I could keep another hunter. Now that was rather decent of her. I'm not very partial to the kids myself; it's unbelievable how they yell; but I shouldn't like 'em to be left in the gutter, you know."

"Do you know me so little, Arthur, that you could suppose if anything happened to you, I shouldn't provide for your wife and children?"

"Well, you were never a particularly free parter, you know, old man, and then you didn't approve of the connection. How was I to know?"

"Of course, in case of your death, I should continue the same allowance to your widow."

"Would you now? Well, that's all right. But I say, suppose you were to kick? you're not so remarkably strong, you know, yourself."

"In that case, your boy comes in for the whole thing, and of course the trustees would make a suitable provision for his mother."

"Oh, gammon! we don't count on that, you know. What's to prevent your having children yourself? By the way, isn't Lady Belchamber showing any signs yet?"

"Er---no; as a matter of fact---not----"

"Well; she'd better look sharp, or we shall begin to indulge unholy hopes. But, bar chaff, you couldn't put it in writing, could you, about the allowance going on in case we were both to what the papers call 'join the majority'?"

"If it will be any comfort to you I can, but I should think you could trust me; and in case I should ever have an heir, I promise at once to add a codicil to my will, providing for your children."

"Well, let's have that in writing too; then there can't be any mistake about it, and Topsy 'll let me alone. She's got her damned old mother with her (she's an old vulgarian, I tell you), and the two of 'em have nagged my life out of me about this. I never will have old Mother Mug here, but I was going to town for a lar---on business, if I hadn't been taken ill, and so I said she could have her to keep her company while I was away, and I'm blowed if the old devil didn't turn up, just the same."

"How do you like this place on the whole?" Sainty asked.

"It isn't bad in the winter; just between two packs, you know; and one or two of the people round have given me some shooting. But at this time o' year it's simply infernal; not one blessed thing to do. As I told you, if it hadn't been for this cursed illness, I was going to town for a bit; if I didn't get away now and then I should rot and burst."

"Is there nobody you see or like in the neighbourhood?"

Arthur winced. "Well, you see," he said, "most of the huntin' lot go away in the summer, and the regular county sort of set ain't particularly lively; and then the women jib a bit at Topsy. One or two of 'em have called, but not many. Our parson and his wife toady her freely; they ain't particular as long as she's my lady, and will give 'em money for the school treat. I assure you she's becoming quite the charitable, religious lady; nothing else to do, poor girl. But most of these county women are a damned stiff-backed lot; they ain't like Londoners."

At this point in the conversation the dingy butler, who looked like the "heavy father" of a not very prosperous travelling company, came to say that "lunching was served, and Lady Harthur Chambers 'oped Lord Belchamber would do 'er the honour to come down." He also brought Arthur's meal on a tray, over which the invalid let fly a volley of curses: "the napkin was dirty, the soup was cold, the bread was stale; he could take it back to the damn cook and tell her, ------ her, if she couldn't send up a decent basin of broth to a sick man, ------ her, and ------ her, she'd better ------ well go."

To this rolling accompaniment, Sainty got himself out of the room, saying he would come up again after lunch, and was conducted by the seedy retainer into the presence of his sister-in-law, who received him with much state.

The three years that had elapsed since their last meeting had not treated Lady Arthur more kindly than her husband. They were in her case three years considerably nearer to the term of youth. In the days of the supper at the Hotel Fritz she had been a decidedly handsome young woman, if a little over-florid. In the interval she had grown more florid and less handsome, and suggested an impression of having run to seed. A growing tendency to corpulence was resisted by violent compression, with disastrous results to the complexion, imperfectly corrected by a plentiful application of blanc de perle. Her attire was gorgeous beyond the needs of the occasion, but left somewhat to be desired in the matter of tidiness, and exhaled a heavy scent of musk that made Sainty feel sick. She presented him to her mother, a terrible warning of what she was on the highroad to become. This lady was a shorter and twenty years' older edition of Lady Arthur, more coarsely painted, more frankly vulgar, more consentingly fat, and she wore an olive green wig of Brutus curls.

"Do you like the country, Mrs. de Vere?" Sainty asked, as they sat at meat together in heavy silence.

"Muggins," the lady corrected, with a giggle. "De Vere was Maria's---I mean Cynthy's---stage name."

"My Nong de Tayarter," said her daughter, with a warning look at the dingy man, who was handing the potatoes with an air of forced abstraction.

"Well," said Mrs. Muggins, "I was connected with the profession myself when I was young; there's nothing to be ashamed of in it. It's an art, and nowadays very highly considered. But you was askin', my lord, if I liked the country. For a little visit like this, I don't say, but to live in, year in, year out---no thank you. It may be all very well for them that were born to it, but give me London. I like to see my fellow-creeturs. I should think Cynthia'd die of the mopes in this place. I should, I know, if I was her."

"It isn't very lively," assented her daughter.

"I can't think whatever you find to do all day," said the elder lady.

"I have my children," said Cynthia, with the air of a Cornelia, "and I'm getting quite interested in the village and the poor people."

"Well, it wouldn't amuse me," said her mother. "I call it cruel of your brother, my lord, to keep her mewed up in a place like this. Such a winter as she's had. It's all very well for him, 'untin' five days a week, and shootin' with Squire this, that, and the other, but what fun does she get out of it, poor child? Their stuck-up wives don't even come and see her, and the moment the 'untin' and shootin's over, my lord was off to London and Newmarket, if he hadn't been took ill. He was hardly here a week last summer. Does he offer to take her?---not him, not if he knows it."

"Three weeks at the sea was all the change I got last year," said Lady Arthur.

"And that I had to make you insist upon, or you wouldn't have got that," chimed in mamma.

"It was more for baby's sake than my own," said Cynthia; "the child needed sea air."

"Dear little Arthur was baby then," explained Mrs. Muggins; "the second little dear wasn't even expected. Now there's two of 'em they'll want a change more than ever."

"You have two children?" Sainty said. "Are they both boys?"

"Both of 'em," assented Lady Arthur proudly. "Poor as we are, there's many people would be glad of my two little boys, or even one of 'em," and she pointed this delicate allusion by a side glance at her mother, as who should say "I had him there."

The ill-concealed hostility of these people, the way they abused his brother to him, his sister-in-law's hint at the want of ease in their circumstances, all combined to make Sainty's visit thoroughly uncomfortable.

"What's been the matter with Arthur?" he asked, to change the subject.

"Eating and drinking too much," responded Mrs. Muggins readily. "And so I told him. 'Arthur, my boy,' I says to him 'you mark my words: you're digging your grave with your teeth.'"

Lady Arthur simpered. "It's rather awkward to talk about insides to gentlemen," she said; "but it was of that nature. The doctor said he had had a narrow squeak of---what was the word?---perrynaitis, or perrytaitis or something. I told him he couldn't expect ladies to remember his long Latin names, but it was some kind of inflammation from what he said."

"What she don't tell you," put in the irrepressible Mrs. Muggins, "was how she nursed him. Three nights she never went to bed nor had her clothes off her, and, as often as not, sworn at for her pains."

"I only did my duty," said Cynthia nobly; "but I hope I shan't often have to do the same again."

"What she wants," said Mrs. Muggins, "after being shut up so much, and the anxiety and all, is a good change. Why don't you come up and stop with me a bit, when I go back, and see the theatres and the shops? The spring fashions are very pretty: sunshades are very tasty this year, I must say."

"I do want a new sunshade," Lady Arthur admitted, "and for that matter, lots of things; but Arthur don't care how I'm dressed now," and she removed a discoloured tear with the untorn corner of an imitation lace handkerchief.

As they were leaving the dining-room, she detained Sainty a moment to whisper in his ear, "Has Arthur spoken to you about what I wrote?"

"Oh yes," said Sainty, "we have talked about it. I assured him that would be all right."

Lady Arthur looked relieved. "What should I have?" she asked.

"Oh!---er---the same as now," Sainty gasped.

"You'll think me very mercenary, I fear," said his sister-in-law, with an attempt to climb back into the grand manner from which she had so swiftly descended. "I don't care for myself, you know; I've worked for my living before, but a mother must think of her children; even a bear will fight for its cubs."

The "cubs" were presently produced, of course. The baby was a mere bundle of lace and ribbons; but the elder child, who appeared to be nearly two, and had been most carefully combed and starched and decorated for the occasion, was set upon two chubby legs within the door, and stared stolidly at his uncle. Sainty tried hard to see something of Arthur in the little boy who would probably be his heir, but the younger Arthur was a most unmistakable miniature edition of Mrs. Muggins, with the same prominent eyes and hanging lower lip, and even his "oiled and curled Assyrian locks" suggested a sort of childish imitation of the Brutus wig. His grandmother was fully aware of the likeness, and evidently thought it must be a cause of unmixed gratification to Lord Belchamber.

"He favours our side of the family," she said proudly, "and, though I say it that should not, a handsomer little picture of a cherub I don't think you'll easily find."

"Give uncle a sweet kiss, dearie," said the proud mother; but on Sainty's stooping to receive the embrace, the amiable infant set up such a piteous howl, in which the baby promptly joined, that both children had to be conducted into retirement.

"I think," said Sainty, "if you'll let me, I'll go up and see my brother again for a few minutes. I see I must be leaving in about half an hour, if I am to catch the afternoon train up. I told the fly to come back for me."

"Well, if you must go," said his sister-in-law, "there's no good pressing you to stop. I'm afraid the lunch was not what you're accustomed to. No doubt you have a French cook and every luxury, but we have to cut our coats according to the cloth, you know. I may not see you again before you go, I'm going to take mamma for a bit of an airing. I hope Lady Belchamber is well. She has no children, I think."

"Well," said Arthur, when Sainty returned to him, "what do you think of old Mother Mug? She's a beauty, isn't she?"

"She seemed to think you were a little inconsiderate about your wife, that she needed a certain amount of change and amusement; and, indeed, that poor woman must have a dull life, so very different to everything she has been accustomed to."

"No doubt the pair of 'em have been abusing me finely, and, of course, you take their part. What the devil's she got to complain of, I should like to know? Haven't I made an honest woman of her, and jolly well muckered my own life by doing it? I suppose she expects me to give up the little fun I do get, and take her to London and show her round. Don't you marry your mistress, old man. You can take it from me, it isn't good enough. But there!---you are married, and you haven't got a mistress."

Sainty did not escape without the usual demand for money, which Arthur irritated him by calling a loan.

"What's the good of talking like that?" Sainty said. "You know you haven't the slightest intention of repaying it. As you are always rubbing it into me that you can't live on what I give you, is it likely that next quarter, or next year, you will be able to save the amount you require out of the same insufficient allowance?"

"You don't suppose I enjoy having to ask you for every dirty penny I want?" retorted the invalid sullenly.

"Then why don't you try to live within your income, and then you wouldn't have to?"

"I must say you always make it as unpleasant as possible."

"Well, don't let's wrangle about money; I give it just the same. I'll send you a cheque. Good-bye, and I hope you'll soon be better."

"And these are the people who are to come after me!" Sainty said to himself bitterly as the train took him back to London. He had a vision of Belchamber, his beloved Belchamber, overrun and ravaged by these barbarians; of Cynthia "smartenin' the old place a bit," with the aid of Mrs. Muggins's suggestions as to what would be "tastey"; of Arthur cutting down the trees and selling the books and pictures to buy more horses and lose bigger bets; of that unattractive child with its stiff curls and goggle eyes coming in turn to make final havoc of the ruin its parents had left. And it was for this end that he had given his name, his future, his honour, into the keeping of a beautiful, parasitic creature without heart or conscience, who obeyed no law but her own imperious appetites!