Anthony John/Chapter 12
MRS. STRONG'NTH'ARM had not spoken figuratively when she had told Betty that there were times when she did not know her own son. As a child, there had always been, to her, something mysterious about him; a gravity, a wisdom beyond his years. There had been, with him, no period of fun and frolic that she might have shared in; no mischievousness for her to scold while loving him the more for it; no helplessness to make appeal to her. From the day when he could crawl his self-reliance had caused her secret tears. He never came to her for comfort or protection. Beyond providing for his bodily wants she was no use to him.
She had thought his father's death would draw him to her, making him more dependent on her. But instead there had grown up around him a strange aloofness that hid him still further from her eyes. For her labour and sacrifice, she knew that he was grateful; that he would never rest satisfied till he had rewarded her. He respected her, was always kind and thoughtful—even loved her in a way; she felt that. In the serving world, where she had passed her girlhood, it was not uncommon for good and faithful servants to be regarded in the same way: with honour and affection.
At first the difference between him and all other boys she had ever known or heard of had been her daily cross. She recalled how eagerly he had welcomed his father's offer to teach him to read—how it was he who had kept his father up to the mark. At six years old he had taught himself to write. He had never cared for play. He was going to be a scholar, a dreamer—some sort of crank or another. She had no use for cranks. They earned but poverty and the world's contempt. Why couldn't he be like other lads, differing from them only by being cleverer and stronger? It was that had been her prayer.
In time she came to understand, and then her hope revived and grew. God intended him for great things. That was why he had been fashioned in another mould. He was going to be rich, powerful. Her dream would come true. He would be among the masters—would sit in the high places.
That he had never fallen in love—had never even had a "fancy"—was further proof of his high destiny. Heaven itself, eager for his success, had chosen the wise Betty to be his helpmeet. She, loving him, would cherish him—help him to climb. But on his side there would be no foolish fondness to weaken or distract him. Youth with its crazy lure of love had passed him by. It was the one danger she had feared; and he had escaped it. Nothing stood between him and his goal. The mother saw all things shaping themselves to the greatness and glory of her son. What mattered her secret tears, her starved love.
And now, in the twinkling of an eye, as it were, all was changed. She saw him shorn of his strength, stripped of his self-reliance, uncertain of his purpose. She would try to draw him into talk about his schemes and projects. It had been their one topic of common interest. He had always valued her shrewd practicability. Now he would answer her indifferently: would lapse into long silences. The steadfast far-off look had gone out of his eyes. They had become the eyes of a boy, tender and shy: the eyes of a dreamer. The firm strong lines about the mouth had been smoothed away as if by some magic touch. She would watch, unknown to him, the smile that came and went about his parted lips. One evening, for no reason, he put his arm about her, smoothed back her thin grey hair, and kissed her. It was the first time he had ever shown her any sign of love, spontaneous and unasked for. Had it come at an earlier date she would have cried for joy. But knowing what she did it angered her, though she spoke no word. It was but an overflowing of his love for this stranger—a few drops spilled from the cup he had poured out for another. Part of her desire that he should marry Betty had been her knowledge that he had no love for the girl. Betty would have taken nothing from her. But a mad jealousy had come to her at the thought that this stranger should have been the first to awaken love in him. What had she done for him, this passerby, but throw him a glance from her shameless eyes? What could she ever do for him but take from him: ever crying give, give, give.
She told him of her talk with Betty, so far as it had been agreed upon between them. She had a feeling of comradeship with Betty.
"It might have been a bit awkward for you," she said, "if she had cared for you. I wanted to see how the land lay."
"How did you find it all out?" he asked. "I'm glad you have. I've been wanting to tell you. But I was so afraid you wouldn't understand."
"Why shouldn't I understand?" she asked dryly.
"Because I don't myself," he answered. "It is as if another Anthony had been growing up inside me, unknown to me, until he had become stronger than myself and had taken possession of me. He was there when I was quite little. I used to catch a glimpse of him now and then. An odd little dreamy sort of a chap that used to wonder and ask questions. Don't you remember? I thought he was dead: that I had killed him so that he wouldn't worry me any more. Instead of which he was just biding his time. And now he is I, and I don't seem to know what's become of myself."
He laughed.
"I do love Betty," he went on, "and always shall. But it isn't with the love that makes a man and woman one: that opens the gates of life."
"It's come to you hot and strong, lad," she said; "as I always expected it would, if it ever did come. But it isn't the fiercest flame that burns the longest."
He flung himself on his knees in front of her, and putting his arms around her hid his face in her lap. She winced and her little meagre figure stiffened. But he did not notice. If she could but have forgotten: if only for that moment!
"Oh, mother," he whispered, "it's so beautiful; it does last. It must be always there. It is only that our mean thoughts rise up like mists and hide it from our eyes."
He looked up. There were tears in his eyes. He drew her face down to his and kissed it.
"I never knew how much I loved you till now," he said. "Your dear tired hands that have worked and suffered for me. But for you I should never have met and talked with her. It is you have given her to me. And, oh, mother, she is wonderful. There must be some mystery about it. Of course, to others, she is only beautiful and sweet; but to me there is something more than that. I feel frightened sometimes as though I were looking upon something not of this world.
"What did Betty say," he asked suddenly; "was she surprised?"
"She said she was glad," his mother answered him, "that you had it in you. She said she liked you all the better for it."
He laughed. "Dear Betty," he said, "I knew she'd understand."
His self-confidence, for the first time in his life, deserted him, when he thought of his necessary interview with Sir Harry Coomber. He himself was anxious to get it over in order to put an end to his suspense. It was Eleanor who held him back.
"You don't know dad," she said. "He's quite capable of carrying me off to China or Peru if he thought there was no other way of stopping it. Remember, I'm only seventeen. Besides," she added, "he may not live very long and I don't want to hurt him. Leave it until I've had a talk with Jim. I'll write him to come down. I haven't seen him in his uniform yet. He'll be wanting to show himself." She laughed.
Jim was her brother, her senior by some five or six years. There was a strong bond of affection between them, and she hoped to enlist him on her side. She did not tell Anthony, but she saw in front of her quite a big fight. It was not only the matter of money, though she knew that with her lay the chief hope of retrieving the family fortunes. It was the family pride that would be her great obstacle. An exceptionally ancient and umbrageous plant, the Coomber genealogical tree. An illustration of it hung in the library. Adam and Eve were pictured tending its roots. Adam, loosening the earth around it, while Eve watered it out of a goat skin. The artist had chosen the fig-leaf period. It was with Charlemagne that it began to take shape. From William the Conqueror sprang the branch that bore the Coomber family. At first they did not know how to spell their own name. It was not till the reign of James I that its present form had got itself finally accepted.
Under this tree Eleanor and her brother sat one evening after dinner beside a fire of blazing logs. Sir Harry and Lady Coomber had gone to bed: they generally did about ten o'clock. Jim had brought his uniform down with him and had put it on: though shy of doing so before the servants. Fortunately there were not many of them. Neither had spoken for some few minutes. Jim had been feeling instinctively all the evening that Eleanor had had a purpose in sending for him. He was smoking a briar wood pipe.
"I like you in your uniform, Jim," she said suddenly; "you do look handsome in it."
He laughed. "Guess I'll have to change into something less showy," he answered.
"Must you?" she asked.
"Don't see who is going to allow me fifteen hundred a year," he answered; "and it can't be done on less. There's Aunt Mary, of course, she may and she mayn't. Can't think of any one else."
"It was rather a mistake, wasn't it?" she suggested.
"It's always been the family tradition," he answered. "Of course, it was absurd in our case. But then it's just like the dear old guv'nor: buy the thing first and think about paying for it afterwards."
She was tapping the fender with her foot. "It's putting it coarsely," she said with a laugh, "but I'm afraid he was banking on me."
"You mean a rich marriage?"
She nodded.
He was leaning back in his chair, puffing rings of smoke into the air.
"Any chance of it?" he asked.
She shook her head. "Not now," she said. "I'm in love."
It brought him up straight.
"In love?" he repeated. "Why, you're only a kid."
"That's what I thought," she answered, "up to a month ago."
"Who is it?" he asked.
"A young local solicitor," she answered, "the son of a blacksmith. They say his mother used to go out charring. But that may be only servants' gossip."
"Good God," he exclaimed. "Are you mad?"
She laughed. "I thought I would tell you the worst about him first," she said, "and so get it over. Against all that, is the fact that he's something quite out of the common. He's the type from which the world's conquerors are drawn. Napoleon was only the son of a provincial attorney. He's the most talked about man in Millsborough already; and everything he puts his hand to succeeds. He's pretty sure to end as a millionaire with a seat in the House of Lords. Not that I'm marrying him for that. I'm only telling you that to make it easier for you to help me. I'd love him just the same if he were a cripple on a pound a week. I'd go out charring, if need be, like his mother did. It's no good reasoning with me, Jim," she added after a pause. "When did a man or woman of our blood ever put reason above love? It's part of our inheritance. Your time will come one day; and then you will understand, if you don't now."
She had risen. She came behind him and put her arms about his neck.
"We've always stood by each other, Jim," she said. "Be a chum."
"What's he like?" he growled.
She laughed. "Oh, you needn't worry about that," she said. "There he is. Look at him."
She took his face between her two hands and turned it towards the picture of the monk Anthony standing with crossed arms, a strange light round about him.
"It's like some beautiful old legend," she continued. "Sir Percival couldn't have killed him. You know his body was never found. It was said that as he lay there, bleeding from his wounds, Saint Aldys had suddenly appeared and had lifted him up in his arms as if he had been a child and had borne him away. He has been asleep all these years in the bosom of Saint Aldys; and now he is come back. It must be he. The likeness is so wonderful and it is his very name, Anthony Strong'nth'arm. They were here before we came—the Strong'nth'arms—yeomen and squires. He is come to lift them up again. And I am going to right the old wrong by helping him and loving him."
"Have you told all that to the guv'nor?" he asked with a grin.
"I'm not sure that I won't," she answered. "It's all in Dugdale. Except about his coming to life again."
"It's his turning up again as a solicitor that will be your difficulty," Jim suggested. "If he'd come back as a curate"
"It wouldn't have been true," she interrupted. "It was the church that ruled the land in those days. Now it is the men of business. He's going to make the valley into one great town and do away with slums and poverty. It was he who made the docks and brought the sea, and linked up the railway. He comes back to rule and guide—to make the land fruitful, in the new way; and the people prosperous."
"And himself a millionaire, with a seat in the House of Lords," quoted her brother.
"So did the old churchmen," she answered. "As Anthony, the monk, he would have become a cardinal with his palaces and revenues. A great man is entitled to his just wages."
Jim had risen, he was pacing the room.
"There'll be the devil to pay," he said. "The poor old guv'nor will go off his head. Aunt Mary will go off her head. They'll all go off their heads. I shall have to exchange and go out to India."
The colour had gone out of her cheeks.
"Why should they punish you for me?" she asked.
"Because it's the law of the world," he explained. "They've got to kick somebody. When he's a millionaire with his seat in the House of Lords they'll forgive us."
"You're making me feel pretty mean and selfish," she said.
"Love is selfish," he answered. "Don't see how you can help that." He halted suddenly in front of her. "You do love him?" he demanded. "You are not afraid to be selfish? You are going to let me down. You are going to hurt the guv'nor, very seriously. He hasn't had much luck in life. This is going to be the last blow. You are willing to inflict it."
The tears were in her eyes.
"I must," she answered.
He took her by the shoulders.
"If you had hesitated," he said, "I should have known it wasn't the real thing. You are under orders, kid, and can't help yourself.
"You needn't worry about me," he said. "I'd have hated taking their confounded charity in any case. We must let the dad down as gently as possible. Leave it to me to break it to him. He must be used to disappointments, poor old buffer. Thank the Lord we haven't got to worry about the mater. Tell her all that about Monk Anthony. She will love all that. Never mind the millionaire business and the House of Lords."
Lady Coomber was a curiously shy, gentlelady, somewhat of an enigma to those who did not know her history; they included her two children. Her name had been Edith Trent. She came of old Virginia stock. Harry Coomber, then a clerk in the British Embassy, had met her in Washington where she was living with friends, both her parents being dead. They had fallen in love with one another, and the marriage was within a day or two of taking place when the girl suddenly disappeared.
Young Harry, making use of all the influence he could obtain, succeeded in tracing her. She was living in the negro quarter of New Orleans, earning her living as a school teacher. She had discovered on evidence that had seemed to her to admit of no doubt that her grandmother had been a slave. It was difficult to believe. She was a beautiful, olive-skinned girl with wavy, dark brown hair and finely chiselled features. Young Harry Coomber, madly in love with her, had tried to persuade her that even if true it need not separate them. Outside America it would not matter. He would take her abroad or return with her to England. His entreaties were unavailing. She regarded herself as unclean. She had been bred to all the Southern American's hatred and horror of the negro race. Among her people the slightest taint of the "tar brush" was sufficient to condemn man or woman to life-long ostracism. She would have inflicted the same fate upon another, and a sense of justice compelled her not to shirk the punishment in her own case.
Five years later a circumstance came to light that proved the story false, and the long-delayed marriage took place quietly at the Sheriff's office of a small town in Pennsylvania.
But the memory of those five years of her life, passed in what to her had been a living grave, had changed her whole character. An outcast among outcasts, she had drunk to the dregs their cup of terror and humiliation. In that city of shame, out of which for five years she had never once emerged, she had met men and women like herself: refined, cultured, educated. She had shared their long-drawn martyrdom. For her, the veil had been lifted from their tortured souls.
As a girl, she had been proud, haughty, exacting. It had been part of her charm. She came back to life a timid, gentle, sorrowful woman with a pity that would remain with her to the end for all creatures that suffered.
Left to herself, she would have joined some band of workers, as missionary, nurse or teacher—as servant in any capacity. It would not have mattered to her what so that she could have felt she was doing something towards lessening the world's pain. She had yielded to her lover's insistence from a sense of duty, persuaded that she owed herself to him for his faithfulness and patience. The marriage had brought disappointment to them both. She had hoped some opportunity would be afforded her of satisfying her craving to be of help if only to some few in some small corner of the earth. But her husband's straitened means had always kept her confined to the bare struggle for existence. Another, in her place, might have been able to give at least sympathy and kindliness. But she was a woman broken in spirit. All her strength went out in her endeavours to be a good wife and mother. And even here she failed. She was of no assistance to her husband, as she knew. For business she had neither heart nor head. In society she was silent and colourless. On her husband's accession to the baronetcy and what was left of the estate, she had made a last effort to play her part. But the solitary years on the ranch had tended to increase her shyness, and secretly she was glad of the need for economy that compelled them to live abroad more or less in seclusion. The one joy she had was in her love of birds. To gather them about her, feed them, protect them by cunning means against their host of enemies, had become the business of her life. Even in the days of poverty she had been able to do that. She had come to love The Abbey even in the short time they had occupied it. She had made of its neglected gardens a bird sanctuary. Rare species, hunted and persecuted elsewhere, had found there a shelter. At early morning and late evening her little grey-clad figure could be seen stealing softly among the deep yew hedges and the tangled shrubberies that she would not have disturbed. One could always tell her whereabouts by the fluttering of wings above her in the air—the babel of sweet voices that heralded her coming.
Her children had never been told her story. She had exacted that as a promise. Though her reason had been satisfied that the rumour told against her had been false, the haunting fear that it yet might be true remained with her. She would not have it passed on to them lest it should shadow their lives as it had darkened hers. Rather than that she was content that they should grow up wondering at the difference between her and other mothers, at her lack of interest in their youthful successes and ambitions; at her strange aloofness from the things that excited their fears and hopes.
As Jim had said, Eleanor's marrying a blacksmith's son would not trouble her. The story of Monk Anthony she would love. The wrong done to him would probably bring tears into the still childish eyes. The prophecy of his millions and his seat in the House of Lords would not interest her.