Go!' I said, 'Keep your--money, and tell me whose son I am.' Ididn't care really. I only said it on the off-chance of hurting her. Sure enough, she caught on to the doorhandle (being lame)and said, 'I can't--I promised--I don't really want to,' and Wilbraham did stare. Then--she's very queer--she burst out laughing, and went for the packet after all, and we heard her laugh through the window as she got it. She rolled it at me down the steps, and she says, 'A leaf out of the eternal comedy for you, Stephen,' or something of that sort. I opened it as I walked down the drive, she laughing always and catching on to the handle of the front door. Of course it wasn't comic at all. But down in the village there were both cricket teams, already a little tight, and the mad plumber shouting 'Rights of Man!' They knew Iwas turned out. We did have a row, and kept it up too. They daren't touch Wilbraham's windows, but there isn't much glass left up at Cadover. When you start, it's worth going on, but in the end I had to cut. They subscribed a bob here and a bob there, and these are Flea Thompson's Sundays. I sent a line to Leighton not to forward my own things: I don't fancy them. They aren't really mine." He did not mention his great symbolic act, performed, it is to be feared, when he was rather drunk and the friendly policeman was looking the other way. He had cast all his flannels into the little millpond, and then waded himself through the dark cold water to the new clothes on the other side. Some one had flung his pipe and his packet after him. The packet had fallen short. For this reason it was wet when he handed it to Ansell, and ink that had been dry for twenty-three years had begun to run again.
"I wondered if you're right about the hundred pounds," said Ansell gravely. "It is pleasant to be proud, but it is unpleasant to die in the night through not having any tobacco.""But I'm not proud. Look how I've taken your pouch! The hundred pounds was--well, can't you see yourself, it was quite different?
It was, so to speak, inconvenient for me to take the hundred pounds. Or look again how I took a shilling from a boy who earns nine bob a-week! Proves pretty conclusively I'm not proud."Ansell saw it was useless to argue. He perceived, beneath the slatternly use of words, the man, buttoned up in them, just as his body was buttoned up in a shoddy suit,--and he wondered more than ever that such a man should know the Elliots. He looked at the face, which was frank, proud, and beautiful, if truth is beauty. Of mercy or tact such a face knew little. It might be coarse, but it had in it nothing vulgar or wantonly cruel. "May Iread these papers?" he said.
"Of course. Oh yes; didn't I say? I'm Rickie's half-brother, come here to tell him the news. He doesn't know. There it is, put shortly for you. I was saying, though, that I bolted in the dark, slept in the rifle-butts above Salisbury, the sheds where they keep the cardboard men, you know, never locked up as they ought to be. I turned the whole place upside down to teach them.""Here is your packet again," said Ansell. "Thank you. How interesting!" He rose from the seat and turned towards Dunwood House. He looked at the bow-windows, the cheap picturesque gables, the terracotta dragons clawing a dirty sky. He listened to the clink of plates and to the voice of Mr. Pembroke taking one of his innumerable roll-calls. He looked at the bed of lobelias. How interesting! What else was there to say?
"One must be the son of some one," remarked Stephen. And that was all he had to say. To him those names on the moistened paper were mere antiquities. He was neither proud of them nor ashamed. A man must have parents, or he cannot enter the delightful world. Aman, if he has a brother, may reasonably visit him, for they may have interests in common. He continued his narrative, how in the night he had heard the clocks, how at daybreak, instead of entering the city, he had struck eastward to save money,--while Ansell still looked at the house and found that all his imagination and knowledge could lead him no farther than this: how interesting!
"--And what do you think of that for a holy horror?""For a what?" said Ansell, his thoughts far away.
"This man I am telling you about, who gave me a lift towards Andover, who said I was a blot on God's earth."One o'clock struck. It was strange that neither of them had had any summons from the house.
"He said I ought to be ashamed of myself. He said, 'I'll not be the means of bringing shame to an honest gentleman and lady.' Itold him not to be a fool. I said I knew what I was about. Rickie and Agnes are properly educated, which leads people to look at things straight, and not go screaming about blots. A man like me, with just a little reading at odd hours--I've got so far, and Rickie has been through Cambridge.""And Mrs. Elliot?"
"Oh, she won't mind, and I told the man so; but he kept on saying, 'I'll not be the means of bringing shame to an honest gentleman and lady,' until I got out of his rotten cart." His eye watched the man a Nonconformist, driving away over God's earth.
"I caught the train by running. I got to Waterloo at--"Here the parlour-maid fluttered towards them, Would Mr. Wonham come in? Mrs. Elliot would be glad to see him now.
"Mrs. Elliot?" cried Ansell. "Not Mr. Elliot?""It's all the same," said Stephen, and moved towards the house.
"You see, I only left my name. They don't know why I've come.""Perhaps Mr. Elliot sees me meanwhile?"
The parlour-maid looked blank. Mr. Elliot had not said so. He had been with Mrs. Elliot and Mr. Pembroke in the study. Now the gentlemen had gone upstairs.
"All right, I can wait." After all, Rickie was treating him as he had treated Rickie, as one in the grave, to whom it is futile to make any loving motion. Gone upstairs--to brush his hair for dinner! The irony of the situation appealed to him strongly. It reminded him of the Greek Drama, where the actors know so little and the spectators so much.
"But, by the bye," he called after Stephen, "I think I ought to tell you--don't--""What is it?"
"Don't--" Then he was silent. He had been tempted to explain everything, to tell the fellow how things stood, that he must avoid this if he wanted to attain that; that he must break the news to Rickie gently; that he must have at least one battle royal with Agnes. But it was contrary to his own spirit to coach people: he held the human soul to be a very delicate thing, which can receive eternal damage from a little patronage. Stephen must go into the house simply as himself, for thus alone would he remain there.
"I ought to knock my pipe out? Was that it?" "By no means. Go in, your pipe and you."He hesitated, torn between propriety and desire. Then he followed the parlour-maid into the house smoking. As he entered the dinner-bell rang, and there was the sound of rushing feet, which died away into shuffling and silence. Through the window of the boys' dining-hall came the colourless voice of Rickie-"'Benedictus benedicat.'"
Ansell prepared himself to witness the second act of the drama;forgetting that all this world, and not part of it, is a stage.