Fraternity

J >> John Galsworthy >> Fraternity


"Will you apply that to human nature?"

"It's human nature to want health."

"I wonder! It doesn't look much like it at present."

"Take the case of this woman."

"Yes," said Hilary, "take her case. You can't make this too clear to me,
Martin."

"She's no use--poor sort altogether. The man's no use. A man who's been
wounded in the head, and isn't a teetotaller, is done for. The girl's no
use--regular pleasure-loving type!"

Thyme flushed crimson, and, seeing that flood of colour in his niece's
face, Hilary bit his lips.

"The only things worth considering are the children. There's this
baby-well, as I said, the important thing is that the mother should
be able to look after it properly. Get hold of that, and let the other
facts go hang."

"Forgive me, but my difficulty is to isolate this question of the baby's
health from all the other circumstances of the case."

Martin grinned.

"And you'll make that an excuse, I'm certain, for doing nothing."

Thyme slipped her hand into Hilary's.

"You are a brute, Martin," she-murmured.

The young man turned on her a look that said: 'It's no use calling me a
brute; I'm proud of being one. Besides, you know you don't dislike it.'

"It's better to be a brute than an amateur," he said.

Thyme, pressing close to Hilary, as though he needed her protection,
cried out:

"Martin, you really are a Goth!"

Hilary was still smiling, but his face quivered.

"Not at all," he said. "Martin's powers of diagnosis do him credit."

And, raising his hat, he walked away.

The two young people, both on their feet now, looked after him.
Martin's face was a queer study of contemptuous compunction; Thyme's was
startled, softened, almost tearful.

"It won't do him any harm," muttered the young man. "It'll shake him
up."

Thyme flashed a vicious look at him.

"I hate you sometimes," she said. "You're so coarse-grained--your skin's
just like leather."

Martin's hand descended on her wrist.

"And yours," he said, "is tissue-paper. You're all the same, you
amateurs."

"I'd rather be an amateur than a--than a bounder!"

Martin made a queer movement of his jaw, then smiled. That smile seemed
to madden Thyme. She wrenched her wrist away and darted after Hilary.

Martin impassively looked after her. Taking out his pipe, he filled it
with tobacco, slowly pressing the golden threads down into the bowl with
his little finger.




CHAPTER XVII

TWO BROTHERS

If has been said that Stephen Dallison, when unable to get his golf
on Saturdays, went to his club, and read reviews. The two forms of
exercise, in fact, were very similar: in playing golf you went round and
round; in reading reviews you did the same, for in course of time you
were assured of coming to articles that, nullified articles already
read. In both forms of sport the balance was preserved which keeps a man
both sound and young.

And to be both sound and young was to Stephen an everyday necessity. He
was essentially a Cambridge man, springy and undemonstrative, with just
that air of taking a continual pinch of really perfect snuff. Underneath
this manner he was a good worker, a good husband, a good father, and
nothing could be urged against him except his regularity and the fact
that he was never in the wrong. Where he worked, and indeed in other
places, many men were like him. In one respect he resembled them,
perhaps, too much--he disliked leaving the ground unless he knew
precisely where he was coming down again.

He and Cecilia had "got on" from the first. They had both desired to
have one child--no more; they had both desired to keep up with the
times--no more; they now both considered Hilary's position awkward--no
more; and when Cecilia, in the special Jacobean bed, and taking care
to let him have his sleep out first, had told him of this matter of
the Hughs, they had both turned it over very carefully, lying on their
backs, and speaking in grave tones. Stephen was of opinion that poor
old Hilary must look out what he was doing. Beyond this he did not go,
keeping even from his wife the more unpleasant of what seemed to him the
possibilities.

Then, in the words she had used to Hilary, Cecilia spoke:

"It's so sordid, Stephen."

He looked at her, and almost with one accord they both said:

"But it's all nonsense!"

These speeches, so simultaneous, stimulated them to a robuster view.
What was this affair, if real, but the sort of episode that they read
of in their papers? What was it, if true, but a duplicate of some bit of
fiction or drama which they daily saw described by that word "sordid"?
Cecilia, indeed, had used this word instinctively. It had come into her
mind at once. The whole affair disturbed her ideals of virtue and good
taste--that particular mental atmosphere mysteriously, inevitably woven
round the soul by the conditions of special breeding and special life.
If, then, this affair were real it was sordid, and if it were sordid it
was repellent to suppose that her family could be mixed up in it; but
her people were mixed up in it, therefore it must be--nonsense!

So the matter rested until Thyme came back from her visit to her
grandfather, and told them of the little model's new and pretty clothes.
When she detailed this news they were all sitting at dinner, over the
ordering of which Cecilia's loyalty had been taxed till her little
headache came, so that there might be nothing too conventional to
over-nourish Stephen or so essentially aesthetic as not to nourish him
at all. The man servant being in the room, they neither of them raised
their eyes. But when he was gone to fetch the bird, each found the other
looking furtively across the table. By some queer misfortune the word
"sordid" had leaped into their minds again. Who had given her those
clothes? But feeling that it was sordid to pursue this thought, they
looked away, and, eating hastily, began pursuing it. Being man and
woman, they naturally took a different line of chase, Cecilia hunting in
one grove and Stephen in another.

Thus ran Stephen's pack of meditations:

'If old Hilary has been giving her money and clothes and that sort of
thing, he's either a greater duffer than I took him for, or there's
something in it. B.'s got herself to thank, but that won't help to keep
Hughs quiet. He wants money, I expect. Oh, damn!'

Cecilia's pack ran other ways:

'I know the girl can't have bought those things out of her proper
earnings. I believe she's a really bad lot. I don't like to think it,
but it must be so. Hilary can't have been so stupid after what I said to
him. If she really is bad, it simplifies things very much; but Hilary is
just the sort of man who will never believe it. Oh dear!'

It was, to be quite fair, immensely difficult for Stephen and his
wife--or any of their class and circle--in spite of genuinely good
intentions, to really feel the existence of their "shadows," except in
so far as they saw them on the pavements. They knew that these people
lived, because they saw them, but they did not feel it--with such
extraordinary care had the web of social life been spun. They were, and
were bound to be, as utterly divorced from understanding of, or faith
in, all that shadowy life, as those "shadows" in their by-streets were
from knowledge or belief that gentlefolk really existed except in so far
as they had money from them.

Stephen and Cecilia, and their thousands, knew these "shadows" as "the
people," knew them as slums, as districts, as sweated industries,
of different sorts of workers, knew them in the capacity of persons
performing odd jobs for them; but as human beings possessing the same
faculties and passions with themselves, they did not, could not, know
them. The reason, the long reason, extending back through generations,
was so plain, so very simple, that it was never mentioned--in their
heart of hearts, where there was no room for cant, they knew it to be
just a little matter of the senses. They knew that, whatever they might
say, whatever money they might give, or time devote, their hearts could
never open, unless--unless they closed their ears, and eyes, and noses.
This little fact, more potent than all the teaching of philosophers,
than every Act of Parliament, and all the sermons ever preached, reigned
paramount, supreme. It divided class from class, man from his shadow--as
the Great Underlying Law had set dark apart from light.

On this little fact, too gross to mention, they and their kind had
in secret built and built, till it was not too much to say that laws,
worship, trade, and every art were based on it, if not in theory, then
in fact. For it must not be thought that those eyes were dull or that
nose plain--no, no, those eyes could put two and two together; that
nose, of myriad fancy, could imagine countless things unsmelled which
must lie behind a state of life not quite its own. It could create, as
from the scent of an old slipper dogs create their masters.

So Stephen and Cecilia sat, and their butler brought in the bird. It was
a nice one, nourished down in Surrey, and as he cut it into portions
the butler's soul turned sick within him--not because he wanted some
himself, or was a vegetarian, or for any sort of principle, but because
he was by natural gifts an engineer, and deadly tired of cutting up and
handing birds to other people and watching while they ate them. Without
a glimmer of expression on his face he put the portions down before the
persons who, having paid him to do so, could not tell his thoughts.

That same night, after working at a Report on the present Laws of
Bankruptcy, which he was then drawing up, Stephen entered the
joint apartment with excessive caution, having first made all his
dispositions, and, stealing to the bed, slipped into it. He lay there,
offering himself congratulations that he had not awakened Cecilia, and
Cecilia, who was wide awake, knew by his unwonted carefulness that he
had come to some conclusion which he did not wish to impart to her.
Devoured, therefore, by disquiet, she lay sleepless till the clock
struck two.

The conclusion to which Stephen had come was this: Having twice
gone through the facts--Hilary's corporeal separation from Bianca
(communicated to him by Cecilia), cause unknowable; Hilary's interest
in the little model, cause unknown; her known poverty; her employment
by Mr. Stone; her tenancy of Mrs. Hughs' room; the latter's outburst to
Cecilia; Hughs' threat; and, finally, the girl's pretty clothes--he had
summed it up as just a common "plant," to which his brother's possibly
innocent, but in any case imprudent, conduct had laid him open. It was a
man's affair. He resolutely tried to look on the whole thing as unworthy
of attention, to feel that nothing would occur. He failed dismally,
for three reasons. First, his inherent love of regularity, of having
everything in proper order; secondly, his ingrained mistrust of and
aversion from Bianca; thirdly, his unavowed conviction, for all his
wish to be sympathetic to them, that the lower classes always wanted
something out of you. It was a question of how much they would want, and
whether it were wise to give them anything. He decided that it would not
be wise at all. What then? Impossible to say. It worried him. He had a
natural horror of any sort of scandal, and he was very fond of Hilary.
If only he knew the attitude Bianca would take up! He could not even
guess it.

Thus, on that Saturday afternoon, the 4th of May, he felt for once such
a positive aversion from the reading of reviews, as men will feel from
their usual occupations when their nerves have been disturbed. He stayed
late at Chambers, and came straight home outside an omnibus.

The tide of life was flowing in the town. The streets were awash with
wave on wave of humanity, sucked into a thousand crossing currents.
Here men and women were streaming out from the meeting of a religious
congress, there streaming in at the gates of some social function; like
bright water confined within long shelves of rock and dyed with myriad
scales of shifting colour, they thronged Rotten Row, and along the
closed shop-fronts were woven into an inextricable network of little
human runlets. And everywhere amongst this sea of men and women could
be seen their shadows, meandering like streaks of grey slime stirred
up from the lower depths by some huge, never-ceasing finger. The
innumerable roar of that human sea climbed out above the roofs and
trees, and somewhere in illimitable space blended, and slowly reached
the meeting-point of sound and silence--that Heart where Life, leaving
its little forms and barriers, clasps Death, and from that clasp springs
forth new-formed, within new barriers.

Above this crowd of his fellow-creatures, Stephen drove, and the same
Spring wind which had made the elm-trees talk, whispered to him, and
tried to tell him of the million flowers it had fertilised, the million
leaves uncurled, the million ripples it had awakened on the sea, of the
million flying shadows flung by it across the Downs, and how into men's
hearts its scent had driven a million longings and sweet pains.

It was but moderately successful, for Stephen, like all men of culture
and neat habits, took Nature only at those moments when he had gone out
to take her, and of her wild heart he had a secret fear.

On his own doorstep he encountered Hilary coming out.

"I ran across Thyme and Martin in the Gardens," the latter said. "Thyme
brought me back to lunch, and here I've been ever since."

"Did she bring our young Sanitist in too?" asked Stephen dubiously.

"No," said Hilary.

"Good! That young man gets on my nerves." Taking his elder brother by
the arm, he added: "Will you come in again, old boy, or shall we go for
a stroll?"

"A stroll," said Hilary.

Though different enough, perhaps because they were so different, these
two brothers had the real affection for each other which depends on
something deeper and more elementary than a similarity of sentiments,
and is permanent because unconnected with the reasoning powers.

It depended on the countless times they had kissed and wrestled as tiny
boys, slept in small beds alongside, refused-to "tell" about each other,
and even now and then taken up the burden of each other's peccadilloes.
They might get irritated or tired of being in each other's company, but
it would have been impossible for either to have been disloyal to the
other in any circumstances, because of that traditional loyalty which
went back to their cribs.

Preceded by Miranda, they walked along the flower walk towards the Park,
talking of indifferent things, though in his heart each knew well enough
what was in the other's.

Stephen broke through the hedge.

"Cis has been telling me," he said, "that this man Hughs is making
trouble of some sort."

Hilary nodded.

Stephen glanced a little anxiously at his brother's face; it struck him
as looking different, neither so gentle nor so impersonal as usual.

"He's a ruffian, isn't he?"

"I can't tell you," Hilary answered. "Probably not."

"He must be, old chap," murmured Stephen. Then, with a friendly pressure
of his brother's arm, he added: "Look here, old boy, can I be of any
use?"

"In what?" asked Hilary.

Stephen took a hasty mental view of his position; he had been in danger
of letting Hilary see that he suspected him. Frowning slightly, and with
some colour in his clean-shaven face, he said:

"Of course, there's nothing in it."

"In what?" said Hilary again.

"In what this ruffian says."

"No," said Hilary, "there's nothing in it, though what there may be if
people give me credit for what there isn't, is another thing."

Stephen digested this remark, which hurt him. He saw that his suspicions
had been fathomed, and this injured his opinion of his own diplomacy.

"You mustn't lose your head, old man," he said at last.

They were crossing the bridge over the Serpentine. On the bright waters,
below, young clerks were sculling their inamoratas up and down; the
ripples set free by their oars gleamed beneath the sun, and ducks swam
lazily along the banks. Hilary leaned over.

"Look here, Stephen, I take an interest in this child--she's a helpless
sort of little creature, and she seems to have put herself under my
protection. I can't help that. But that's all. Do you understand?"

This speech produced a queer turmoil in Stephen, as though his brother
had accused him of a petty view of things. Feeling that he must justify
himself somehow, he began:

"Oh, of course I understand, old boy! But don't think, anyway, that I
should care a damn--I mean as far as I'm concerned--even if you had gone
as far as ever you liked, considering what you have to put up with. What
I'm thinking of is the general situation."

By this clear statement of his point of view Stephen felt he had put
things back on a broad basis, and recovered his position as a man of
liberal thought. He too leaned over, looking at the ducks. There was a
silence. Then Hilary said:

"If Bianca won't get that child into some fresh place, I shall."

Stephen looked at his brother in surprise, amounting almost to dismay;
he had spoken with such unwonted resolution.

"My dear old chap," he said, "I wouldn't go to B. Women are so funny."

Hilary smiled. Stephen took this for a sign of restored impersonality.

"I'll tell you exactly how the thing appeals to me. It'll be much better
for you to chuck it altogether. Let Cis see to it!"

Hilary's eyes became bright with angry humour.

"Many thanks," he said, "but this is entirely our affair."

Stephen answered hastily:

"That's exactly what makes it difficult for you to look at it all round.
That fellow Hughs could make himself quite nasty. I wouldn't give him
any sort of chance. I mean to say--giving the girl clothes and that kind
of thing---"

"I see," said Hilary.

"You know, old man," Stephen went on hastily, "I don't think you'll get
Bianca to look at things in your light. If you were on--on terms, of
course it would be different. I mean the girl, you know, is rather
attractive in her way."

Hilary roused himself from contemplation of the ducks, and they moved on
towards the Powder Magazine. Stephen carefully abstained from looking
at his brother; the respect he had for Hilary--result, perhaps, of the
latter's seniority, perhaps of the feeling that Hilary knew more of him
than he of Hilary--was beginning to assert itself in a way he did not
like. With every word, too, of this talk, the ground, instead of growing
firmer, felt less and less secure. Hilary spoke:

"You mistrust my powers of action?"

"No, no," said Stephen. "I don't want you to act at all."

Hilary laughed. Hearing that rather bitter laugh, Stephen felt a little
ache about his heart.

"Come, old boy," he said, "we can trust each other, anyway."

Hilary gave his brother's arm a squeeze.

Moved by that pressure, Stephen spoke:

"I hate you to be worried over such a rotten business."

The whizz of a motor-car rapidly approaching them became a sort of roar,
and out of it a voice shouted: "How are you?" A hand was seen to rise
in salute. It was Mr. Purcey driving his A.i. Damyer back to Wimbledon.
Before him in the sunlight a little shadow fled; behind him the reek of
petrol seemed to darken the road.

"There's a symbol for you," muttered Hilary.

"How do you mean?" said Stephen dryly. The word "symbol" was distasteful
to him.

"The machine in the middle moving on its business; shadows like you
and me skipping in front; oil and used-up stuff dropping behind.
Society-body, beak, and bones."

Stephen took time to answer. "That's rather far-fetched," he said. "You
mean these Hughs and people are the droppings?"

"Quite so," was Hilary's sardonic answer. "There's the body of that
fellow and his car between our sort and them--and no getting over it,
Stevie."

"Well, who wants to? If you're thinking of our old friend's Fraternity,
I'm not taking any." And Stephen suddenly added: "Look here, I believe
this affair is all 'a plant.'"

"You see that Powder Magazine?" said Hilary. "Well, this business that
you call a 'plant' is more like that. I don't want to alarm you, but I
think you as well as our young friend Martin, are inclined to underrate
the emotional capacity of human nature."

Disquietude broke up the customary mask on Stephen's face: "I don't
understand," he stammered.

"Well, we're none of us machines, not even amateurs like me--not even
under-dogs like Hughs. I fancy you may find a certain warmth, not to say
violence, about this business. I tell you frankly that I don't live in
married celibacy quite with impunity. I can't answer for anything, in
fact. You had better stand clear, Stephen--that's all."

Stephen marked his thin hands quivering, and this alarmed him as nothing
else had done.

They walked on beside the water. Stephen spoke quietly, looking at the
ground. "How can I stand clear, old man, if you are going to get into a
mess? That's impossible."

He saw at once that this shot, which indeed was from his heart, had
gone right home to Hilary's. He sought within him how to deepen the
impression.

"You mean a lot to us," he said. "Cis and Thyme would feel it awfully if
you and B.---" He stopped.

Hilary was looking at him; that faintly smiling glance, searching him
through and through, suddenly made Stephen feel inferior. He had been
detected trying to extract capital from the effect of his little piece
of brotherly love. He was irritated at his brother's insight.

"I have no right to give advice, I suppose," he said; "but in my opinion
you should drop it--drop it dead. The girl is not worth your looking
after. Turn her over to that Society--Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace's thing
whatever it's called."

At a sound as of mirth Stephen, who was not accustomed to hear his
brother laugh, looked round.

"Martin," said Hilary, "also wants the case to be treated on strictly
hygienic grounds."

Nettled by this, Stephen answered:

"Don't confound me with our young Sanitist, please; I simply think there
are probably a hundred things you don't know about the girl which ought
to be cleared up."

"And then?"

"Then," said Stephen, "they could--er--deal with her accordingly."

Hilary shrank so palpably at this remark that he added rather hastily:

"You call that cold-blooded, I suppose; but I think, you know, old chap,
that you're too sensitive."

Hilary stopped rather abruptly.

"If you don't mind, Stevie," he said, "we'll part here. I want to think
it over." So saying, he turned back, and sat down on a seat that faced
the sun.




CHAPTER XVIII

THE PERFECT DOG

Hilary sat long in the sun, watching the pale bright waters and many
well-bred ducks circling about the shrubs, searching with their round,
bright eyes for worms. Between the bench where he was sitting and the
spiked iron railings people passed continually--men, women, children
of all kinds. Every now and then a duck would stop and cast her knowing
glance at these creatures, as though comparing the condition of their
forms and plumage with her own. 'If I had had the breeding of you,'
she seemed to say, 'I could have made a better fist of it than that. A
worse-looking lot of ducks, take you all round. I never wish to see!'
And with a quick but heavy movement of her shoulders, she would turn
away and join her fellows.

Hilary, however, got small distraction from the ducks. The situation
gradually developing was something of a dilemma to a man better
acquainted with ideas than facts, with the trimming of words than with
the shaping of events. He turned a queer, perplexed, almost quizzical
eye on it. Stephen had irritated him profoundly. He had such a way
of pettifying things! Yet, in truth, the affair would seem ridiculous
enough to an ordinary observer. What would a man of sound common sense,
like Mr. Purcey, think of it? Why not, as Stephen had suggested, drop
it? Here, however, Hilary approached the marshy ground of feeling.

To give up befriending a helpless girl the moment he found himself
personally menaced was exceedingly distasteful. But would she be
friendless? Were there not, in Stephen's words, a hundred things he did
not know about her? Had she not other resources? Had she not a story?
But here, too, he was hampered by his delicacy: one did not pry into the
private lives of others!

The matter, too, was hopelessly complicated by the domestic troubles of
the Hughs family. No conscientious man--and whatever Hilary lacked,
no one ever accused him of a lack of conscience--could put aside that
aspect of the case.

Wandering among these reflections were his thoughts about Bianca. She
was his wife. However he might feel towards her now, whatever their
relations, he must not put her in a false position. Far from wishing
to hurt her, he desired to preserve her, and everyone, from trouble and
annoyance. He had told Stephen that his interest in the girl was purely
protective. But since the night when, leaning out into the moonlight, he
heard the waggons coming in to Covent Garden Market, a strange feeling
had possessed him--the sensation of a man who lies, with a touch of
fever on him, listening to the thrum of distant music--sensuous, not
unpleasurable.